He hadn’t.
The lease had been mine.
The rights had been mine.
The words in that folder had been mine all along.
Mateo’s power only forced everyone else to stop long enough to read them.
That night, I put the gray folder in the top drawer beside my keys instead of burying it in a box.
Then I took the shower I had wanted twenty-four hours earlier, climbed into my own bed, and listened to the ordinary sounds of the building settling around me.
No movers.
No strangers at my door.
No landlord deciding where my life belonged without asking me.
Just apartment 4B.
My apartment.
And this time, everyone knew it.
