The trouble began quietly. One afternoon I reached into the drawer where I kept my wristwatch, a rare collector piece, and felt only empty velvet. I stood there longer than necessary, replaying my own movements from the night before, certain I must have misplaced it. A few days later, a neat stack of bills I had left inside a jacket pocket was gone. Then a silver tie pin disappeared. Each loss was small enough to ignore on its own, yet together they formed a pattern I could not shake.
I said nothing to Yolanda. Instead, I observed. I left cash on my desk. I placed coins on the dresser. Sometimes they remained untouched. Other times, they vanished. And every time something went missing, the only person with regular access to those rooms was her. My mind filled the silence with conclusions that felt rational, even inevitable.
I contacted my security firm and requested a review of the internal cameras. The footage showed nothing overt. No hurried hands. No obvious theft. Yet the unease remained, feeding my certainty rather than dissolving it. Evidence, I told myself, was not always visible.