His Obsession, My Doom: A Dark Romance Novel

The photograph arrived on a Tuesday morning, slipped beneath my apartment door like a whispered threat. No envelope, no return address—just a single black and white image of me walking to work three days prior, captured from across the street with telephoto precision. My coffee cup was frozen halfway to my lips in the frame, steam curling upward like smoke signals I couldn't decode.

I stood in my narrow hallway, bare feet against cold hardwood, studying the image with trembling fingers. The quality was professional, almost artistic in its composition. Whoever had taken it possessed both skill and patience, two qualities that made my stomach twist with unease.

Elena Vasquez had always prided herself on being observant, on noticing the details others missed. It came with the territory of working as a forensic accountant—my job required me to spot discrepancies, to find patterns in chaos, to uncover truths hidden beneath layers of carefully constructed lies. But somehow, I had missed this. Someone had been watching me, studying me, documenting my mundane routine with the dedication of a scientist observing a lab specimen.

The building superintendent, Mr. Chen, had seen nothing when I knocked on his door twenty minutes later. The security cameras in our lobby had mysteriously malfunctioned the previous evening—a coincidence that felt anything but coincidental. I filed a police report that afternoon, sitting across from Officer Martinez in the sterile confines of the precinct, but we both knew how these things typically went. No threats had been made explicitly. No laws had been technically broken. Photography in public spaces remained legal, regardless of how it made the subject feel.