Page 25 of Redamancy (Fated Fixation #2)

Chapter nineteen

I blink down at the dried ink like it might suddenly rearrange itself into something less world ending.

Why would he—

How would he—

What the hell sort of game is—

My thoughts scatter like marbles on hardwood, but I can’t stop staring at the sweeping, fluid arc of Adrian’s elegant signature.

No pauses.

No hesitations.

Just one confident stroke of the pen, and he rewrote the trajectory of my entire year.

Eight months ago.

Five months before he even moved to New York.

Two months before I even saw him at that party.

Acid coats my tongue, and I toss the contract aside, afraid the wine still churning in my stomach might make a reappearance if I keep looking.

Eight fucking months.

I allow myself two of the deepest breaths I can manage before I grab the folder again, determination taking hold.

What the hell else are you hiding?

I select another tab at random— ID Docs —and pull everything out. This section is considerably thinner than the rest, and when I flip the paperwork over, my stomach turns too.

Oh, God.

ID Docs— Identification Documents.

My identification documents.

Photocopies of my birth certificate. My passport. My social security card.

Oh, God.

How did he—

I tear through the rest of the paperwork in a flurry, my breath quickening with the realization that he has copies of everything —even expired driver’s licenses and old health insurance cards that’ve been lost to time.

At least they’re only copies, I think—but the thought brings no relief. For all I know, the original documents have also been stolen from the shoebox under my bed and are just living somewhere else in the folder.

Dread knots my stomach.

What the hell is this?

Some sort of obsessively detailed dossier on…me?

I stare down at the file still brimming with God knows what else.

It’s like watching a train wreck you can’t look away from.

Except— I take another deep breath that does absolutely nothing and tug the file close— it’s my train wreck I’m watching.

Unfortunately, a photocopy of my first-ever driver’s license, issued by the state of Alabama when I was seventeen, is nowhere close to the pinnacle of personal invasion in the folder.

The Med H tab contains my entire medical history. And not just a summary rounding out the key points—but all of it.

Vaccine records from Pratt’s Health Services center.

Dental records and x-rays from back when I actually had the insurance to afford regular cleanings.

Procedure notes from the IUD insertion I had four years ago.

The complete medical report and negative STD results from an urgent care visit following an unfortunate one-night stand and a broken condom two years ago.

My head spins.

Bile prickles the back of my throat.

This is…

Disturbing.

Obsessive.

A complete and utter decimation of my privacy.

How long has he had all these things?

The medical records span the entire decade of our separation, and his purchase of my apartment building has been months—if not a year—in the making, but…

Has he truly been keeping tabs on me for ten years?

Or is this a more…recent fixation?

The thought of finding something worse genuinely makes me nauseous—but I have to. The copies of all my official documents and medical records is violating, to say the least , but him buying my apartment building? Pricing me out of my unit?

That’s warfare.

What other ways has he fucked my life?

What other strings has been pulling?

And how long?

And why? Is this revenge? Or something—

I squeeze my eyes shut.

No.

The urge to spiral is so tempting, but I don’t have time to sit here in overwhelmed, panicked silence and try to make sense of Adrian’s motivations.

I glance at the clock, heart stuttering.

He’s been gone for twenty minutes.

I’ll be lucky if I get another five or ten minutes alone, if that. He could stroll through the office doors any second.

The spiraling will have to wait. Right now, I need to comb through as much of this dossier as I can.

Cold determination seeps over me, my fear, my disbelief, my outrage flattening like a box I’ve tucked into the attic of my brain.

And then I dive back in.

My perusal of the remaining files is only clinical.

When I open Financials and physical copies of my monthly bank statements, credit card debt, and anything else that's ever seen the inside of my bank account in recent years, I don't linger on the horror of it.

And I had absolutely no fucking idea, the thought slips through unbidden—but no spiral. There’s no time.

I take pictures of the most recent statements, and I move on to the next tab.

Those terrifying questions are for future Poppy to answer—preferably with a Xanax onboard .

Network is the hardest section of all to get through.

Perhaps it was foolish to assume the violation would end with the specifics of my bodega order or the detailed report of my IUD insertion.

Of course not.

Of course, he’d need to know everything about the people in my life too.

And still—a little panic seeps past the brick wall I’ve built between me and my emotions when I spot the exhaustive notes on LuAnne. On Joe. On old bosses. On my mother. On Rick. On my dorm mate from Pratt, who I roomed with for nearly all four years of undergrad.

Anyone in the past decade who’s spent more than a couple of months in my orbit is documented here to varying degrees. The notes on LuAnne are, by far, the most extensive—a realization that tightens my chest to an almost painful degree.

She has no idea.

LuAnne has no idea about Adrian, about our history, about this…mess, and still, I’ve dragged her into it just by association.

Guilt turns to confusion when I reach a list of names unattached to any other information.

Steven, Marcus, Ken…

…who the hell are these people?

Am I supposed to know who these—

I still.

Ice slithers down my spine.

Jesus Christ.

Maybe I would’ve made the connection immediately if there’d been photos attached to the names—or better yet, whatever nickname I actually remembered them by.

Regardless, the realization turns my blood to ice.

Steven Krause, an old classmate from Pratt I went on a single date with well over a year ago.

Marcus with-a-last-name-I-can’t-remember-and-the-Australian-accent —though I really only went out with him the second time because I suspected he was faking the accent, and I wanted to know for certain (he was).

And Ken—the hot-barista-turned-one-night-stand.

My eyes trail down the list, the pattern obvious.

This is a list of every man I’ve dated in the past ten years—even the ones like Steven and Marcus, who never made it past drinks at the bar and an awkward side hug.

I linger on Ken’s name.

I remember him.

Not only because he’s one of the few men in New York City to actually make it past the threshold of my bedroom, but because he spent the morning after in my kitchen, completely nude, making me burnt pancakes (and quite possibly the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had in my life).

And then he ghosted me.

Did he ghost me?

The thought strikes like a sledgehammer before I can stifle it, and I blink down at the line through his name in horror.

Oh, God.

Is that why—

I shake my head.

Don’t go there.

Not now.

I breathe through the panic closing around my throat. I snap a photo of the list, all while pretending like I don’t see the correlation between the names that’ve been crossed out and my embarrassingly short list of sexual partners.

Jesus fucking Christ.

He’s even got Ralph from ceramics class on here…who I’m pretty sure I held hands with at the movies when I was nineteen.

This might as well be a list of every man I’ve ever looked twice at in the past decade, I think as I scan the list—but then my brows furrow.

Minus one?

I double-check the names to be certain, but sure enough, there is one name absent from the list.

Tom’s.

He went through the effort of recording Ralph from ceramics, but not Tom?

It feels like a significant oversight, considering I called Adrian while on a date with Tom but…

Maybe he stopped adding to the obsessive record of my dating life when he moved to New York?

Maybe he didn’t think Tom mattered?

Maybe he—

It’s the sound of Adrian’s sharp footsteps drawing near that cuts through my inner monologue.

My heart lurches into my throat, and I glance down at the cracked-open dossier, its contents still strewn across his office floor.

Oh, fuck.

And then I hear the doorknob turn.