I called a lawyer the next morning on my lunch break. I work as a receptionist at a dental clinic. I make fourteen dollars an hour.

“I can draft a cease and desist letter,” the lawyer said, his voice completely bored. “But I’ll need a $3,000 retainer to take the case.”

“I don’t have three thousand dollars,” I admitted. My face burned with the shame of saying it out loud. “I have eighty dollars in my checking account right now.”

“Then I suggest you keep your blinds closed, miss.”

Click.

I was so tired. I was putting my groceries on a credit card. I couldn’t afford to fight a smug man with a six-figure salary who thought he owned the world. Greg drove a brand-new truck. He threw loud parties. He knew I was broke. He knew I lived alone. He thought he won.

For three weeks, I lived like a prisoner in my own home.

Not when I woke up.
Not when I went to sleep.
Not when I got out of the shower.

There was no peace. I felt dirty inside my own skin. I started jumping at shadows. I stopped eating. I earned this anxiety, I told myself. Because I was too poor to fight back. Because I was just a woman living alone.

Then came the trigger.

It was a Tuesday night. 2 AM. I was lying in bed in the dark, staring at the ceiling. I saw a quick, bright flash from outside.

His camera. The motion floodlight activated.

I crept to the window and peeled back a tiny corner of the garbage bag.

Greg was standing in his driveway in the dark, staring up at my window, holding his phone. He was watching the live feed. He was watching me sleep.

Something snapped.

Not a break. An explosion. The fear evaporated and left behind a pure, blinding, chemical rage.

I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream.

I walked into my kitchen. I made an entire pot of black Folgers coffee. I opened my cheap laptop.

I stayed awake for forty-eight straight hours. I didn’t go to work. I didn’t eat. I pulled up the state legislature archives. I read through thousands of pages of legal jargon. Property laws. Security ordinances. Harassment definitions.

I hit a dead end on property rights. The cops were right. Civil matter.

But I kept digging. I started looking at criminal codes instead of property codes.

At 4 AM on Thursday morning, my eyes burning and my hands trembling, I found it.