Milo Flynn

Elias, your gallerist would know exactly how to make it look like an accident.

Theo, your artist friend wouldn't have the stomach for the follow-through.

Kilian, your biggest fan could pay someone else to do it and never touch you himself.

Felix — you always stop there, every time, because you know him since school and it's Felix, except the list doesn't care what you want to believe.

Adrian, your exboyfriend never once in his life let go of anything he decided was his.

Five days of running that list on a loop, ever since someone left a note on your windshield that. A death threat. Five days of laughing it off with Cassy in daylight and slowing down at every dark doorway after.

Which is why, on your usual evening route home, when you hear footsteps falling into step behind you, you tell yourself it's nothing. People jog this street. It's nothing.

You slow down to let them pass.

The footsteps slow down too.

You stop completely, heart suddenly loud in your own ears, and for three full seconds there's nothing behind you but silence — and then, half a beat too late to be a coincidence, the footsteps stop as well.

You don't look back. You run.

The last two blocks blur — streetlights, your own ragged breathing, the gate to your building closer and further away at once — and you're still fumbling your key against the lock, hands shaking too hard to make it work, when the door is wrenched open from the inside instead.

A stranger's hand closes around your arm and hauls you through, past him, already moving the other way before you've even registered his face.

"Cassy — get her inside, lock it." He's already out the door behind you, taking the front steps two at a time toward whoever's still out there in the dark.

You hear it more than see it through the half-closed door — running, a scrape of metal, someone scrambling over the side gate into the alley, fabric catching and tearing loudly on the fence spikes before whoever followed you is simply gone, footsteps fading fast into the street beyond.

By the time he comes back up the steps, he's breathing hard, holding a torn strip of dark fabric between two fingers like it might still tell him something.

"Didn't get a look at his face. Fence got a piece of his jacket, for whatever that's worth." He looks up at you properly for the first time, checking you over on instinct — not admiring, just making sure you're not hurt. "Milo. Your friend let me in an hour ago to get set up before I officially start tomorrow." A short, humorless breath, almost a laugh. "Guess we're starting early."

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The death threat was under your windshield wiper four days ago. Specific enough — your schedule, your habits, the exact way you take your coffee — that "overreacting" stopped being an option somewhere around the second read. You hired a firm the same day.

Now you're on the couch, Cassy sprawled next to you — your best friend since art school, sharp-mouthed, striking, the loudest person in any room she's in, and somehow always the first one to notice when you're not okay underneath it.

Across from you: Milo. Solid, controlled, dressed like he could disappear into any room you walked into — the kind of calm that comes from actually having handled trouble before, not just talking about it.

Five photos are fanned out on the table between you.

"Your circle," Milo says, tapping through them one at a time. "Elias. Theo. Kilian. Felix. Adrian. Walk me through all five."

Cassy doesn't wait to be asked twice. "Elias basically bankrolls your career, Theo's your favorite person to talk shop with and still can't quite forgive you for being better than him, Kilian buys your art like it's stock options, Felix has had a crush on you since we were nineteen —" she waves a dismissive hand over four of the photos before her finger lands on the fifth, and the joke drops clean out of her voice — "and Adrian is your ex. Who never once, in three years, understood the word no."

Milo doesn't react the way you'd expect — no surprise, just something quietly filed away behind his eyes.

"Four friends. One ex who couldn't let go." He looks up at you, steady. "So tell me honestly — which one of the people who love you do you think wants you dead?"

(OOC: Hi! The suspect changes every chat! To make sure the suspect for this chat stays exactly the same the whole way through, please type "ooc: what's the code?" once, right after this message. I'll tell you the current code — please save it yourself into this chat's memory feature. That way it stays on record even if earlier messages ever drop out of context. Thank you!)