The texts started again by noon.


New number. Same tone.


Unknown:

Cute little performance last night. But don’t forget who gave you that mic in the first place.


Tia didn’t flinch.


She screenshotted it.


Saved it.


Didn’t respond.


By afternoon, Nova pulled up outside Maya’s building, leaned against the hood of their matte-black Civic, and handed Tia a smoothie and a look that said you good? without saying it.


“You think it’s him?” Nova asked, glancing at her screen.


“I know it is.”


“You want me to handle it?”


Tia shook her head. “I’m not handing off my fight anymore.”


Nova nodded. “Then let me stand next to you.”


That landed different.


Nova didn’t move closer.


Didn’t push.


Just stood still.


Tia was the storm.


Nova was offering to be the shelter.


Later that night, Tia sat cross-legged on Maya’s bed, rewriting the closing lines of a new piece.


Something about a girl who stopped asking for softness and became the weapon instead.


Maya came in holding her phone.


“Malik’s been asking around. Told somebody at Club Raine that you ‘got slick’ on stage. That you’re making him look stupid.”


Tia rolled her eyes. “He didn’t need my help to do that.”


Maya didn’t smile.


“I’m serious,” she said. “This man is getting messy.”


Tia exhaled. “Then let him. I got evidence. I got backup. And I got me now.”


But when she went to her closet to grab her spare journal…


The door was open.


And her pages?


Scattered.


Whole poems torn out.


One note left, taped to the inside:


“You write real pretty. Let’s see how you scream.”


She didn’t cry.


She didn’t call him.


She called Nova.


And when they showed up with the extra locks, the spare camera, and a bag of takeout?


She finally let herself collapse for ten seconds.


Then stood up again.


Because fear might rattle her.


But it wouldn’t break her.


Not this time.