My sister went to my rich boyfriend’s place and told him to “try it,” so I exposed her.

The camera didn’t have audio, but I could see her mouth moving rapidly, probably giving them some sob story about needing to apologize to her sister. Then I watched her pull out her phone and start recording the guards, turning the camera between them and herself.

Other employees coming in for lunch were stopping to watch the scene, some pulling out their own phones to record whatever drama was happening in the lobby. The guards looked uncomfortable but stayed professional, one of them pointing toward the exit while the other stayed on the phone.

My hands were shaking so bad I could barely type as I texted Adam about what was happening. He replied immediately, asking if I wanted him to leave his office and come get me.

I told him I needed to handle this myself, though my whole body was trembling. Just then my manager walked over, having gotten a call from security about the situation downstairs.

She asked if I needed to leave early or if we should call the police. Her face was full of concern as she noticed how pale I must have looked.

I asked her to please have security document everything that was happening for my records and she nodded, picking up her desk phone to make the call. 20 minutes later, after Mia had finally been escorted out, my phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number.

It was a photo of Mia sitting in her car with mascara running down her face and a message saying she just wanted to give me mom’s birthday present for me and calling me cruel for humiliating her. Mom’s birthday wasn’t for another 4 months, which made the whole excuse even more ridiculous.

That evening Adam came over and we sat on his couch discussing whether we should get security cameras for his apartment. We both knew this wouldn’t be Mia’s last attempt, that she was testing boundaries to see what she could get away with.

Around 9:00 that night, mom called upset because Mia had come home hysterical about being humiliated at my workplace. When I explained that Mia had shown up uninvited and caused a scene, mom went quiet for a moment.

Then she sighed and admitted Mia had been acting unhinged lately, using that exact word. I lay in bed that night staring at the ceiling.

I remembered all the times throughout our childhood when Mia had pulled stunts then twisted the story to make herself the victim. The pattern was so familiar it made my chest tight, but this time felt different—more desperate, like she was spiraling without her usual control.

Three days later I got to work and found a bouquet of roses on my desk with no card attached. My co-worker Rachel mentioned a delivery woman had dropped them off about an hour before I arrived.

When she described the woman, it didn’t match anyone from the local florists we usually used. Something about those roses felt wrong, so I asked building security if I could check the lobby cameras from this morning.

The security guard pulled up the footage and there she was—a woman I’d never seen before carrying the exact bouquet. But when we rewound further, we saw her talking to someone in the parking garage first.

The guard zoomed in and my stomach dropped because it was clearly Mia handing the woman cash, looked like a $20 bill, and pointing toward the building entrance. The woman took the money, grabbed the flowers from Mia’s car, and headed inside while Mia drove off quickly.

I asked the guard to save that footage and email it to me immediately. Back at my desk, I noticed the roses were the expensive kind, deep red with perfect petals.

Rachel mentioned they looked like the type Adam’s mom loved, which made my skin crawl. Adam had mentioned that exact detail to Mia at a family dinner months ago.

Rachel suggested I check if Mia was posting anything online, so I logged into her old account and looked at Mia’s Instagram profile. She’d been posting like crazy the past few days.

There were photos of herself with similar roses, fancy restaurant meals, and captions like “Finally knowing my worth” and “When the right one sees what he’s missing” and “Patience pays off for those who wait.” Something doesn’t add up here.

Mia is showing up at the workplace with a gift bag claiming it’s for their mom’s birthday when that’s 4 months away. That’s such a weak excuse it makes me wonder what she was really planning with that whole security.

The time stamp showed she’d posted the rose photo just an hour after the delivery woman left my building. That afternoon Adam texted me that his co-worker Brad had just messaged him something weird.

Brad said a woman who looked exactly like the sister Adam had described was at their building’s coffee shop that morning, asking the barista about Adam’s usual order. She’d told the barista she was picking up coffee for her sister’s boyfriend as a surprise and needed to know his exact preferences.

The barista hadn’t given her any information, but Brad recognized her from the company holiday party last year and thought Adam should know. My hands were shaking as I read the message.

Adam’s office was 20 miles from mine and she’d been at both buildings in the same morning. That evening Dad called while mom was at her book club and his voice sounded tired.

He told me Mia had been asking them for money lately—500 here, 300 there—claiming she needed it for therapy sessions to work through her issues. When he asked for receipts or the therapist’s name, she got defensive.

She said they should trust her to handle her own mental health. He’d given her almost $2,000 over the past month, but something felt off because she never seemed to actually go anywhere on the days she claimed to have appointments.

The Stalking Intensifies and a Dark Past Emerges

A week later I decided to start documenting everything properly. I created a folder on my laptop with screenshots of every Instagram post, the security footage, text messages from Adam about the coffee shop incident, and dad’s list of money transfers to Mia.

Rachel works in HR at a tech company, and when I showed her everything, she got serious fast. She said this was textbook stalking behavior and I should consider filing for a restraining order before things escalated further.

I downloaded forms from the courthouse website and started filling them out that night. Three days after that, Adam forwarded me a LinkedIn message from someone claiming to be a recruiter at Tech Forward Solutions.

The profile looked professional at first glance with a stock photo of a woman in business attire, but the message was weird. It talked about an amazing opportunity that required an immediate in-person meeting at a coffee shop downtown.

Adam said the writing style seemed familiar and when I read it, my blood went cold. It was exactly how Mia wrote—same punctuation habits, same way of emphasizing certain words.

He’d already replied professionally, saying he wasn’t interested in new opportunities and thanking them for reaching out. Within two hours, the fake profile sent another message, this time completely unhinged.

It said he was making the biggest mistake of his career and would regret this decision forever, and that some opportunities only come once. Adam blocked the profile and reported it to LinkedIn, but we both knew it was her.

Around the same time, I started getting texts from mutual acquaintances asking if everything was okay between Adam and me. Turns out Mia had been showing people screenshots of text conversations with Adam, claiming they’d been talking regularly.

When I asked to see these screenshots, I realized she’d taken old messages from before the incident, carefully cropped out the dates, and was presenting them as recent. One friend sent me photos Mia had shown her, and I could see they were from Adam’s birthday dinner 2 years ago, but Mia had edited them to remove the date stamps.

Two days later I was at the grocery store picking up ingredients for dinner when I spotted her car in the parking lot. It was that distinctive red Honda with a dent in the rear bumper.

My whole body went cold and I abandoned my half-full cart right there in the cereal aisle. I walked quickly to my car, keeping my head down, heart pounding as I wondered if she was actually following me or if this was just coincidence.