Love & Gamble

Enchanted

Rosa Giovenesi's P. O. V

With squinted eyes and a scrunched up face, I lean further from my cross legged position. I'm trying my hardest to peer further into the screen, eyes absorbing the sight in front of me all the while as anger and frustration builds up within me.

"Who the fu-," My words stop on my tongue automatically as I click on the little download tab, waiting for the video to load fully before I click on it to take in its contents.

Shock takes the words out of my mouth at the rather grainy footage angled from the hallway of my apartment building. The grey flickering colours not doing much when it comes to cinematography since it looks as if it's a still picture and something that looked decades old rather than security footage from the twenty first century.

I inhale sharply as one figure appears nearly out of reach of the frame, a big burly man stepping further into the hallway and moving towards my apartment door, another tall figure deftly following the first. My hands clench into fists as the first slides a decoy key card on the reader, slipping into swiftly while the second man looks around before also following inside.

From there the recording cuts off, my fingers already swiftly working on my laptop to open up the other attached video. Once the video downloads and pops full image onto my screen, only then do I lean back.

This security footage much more clearer and in high definition, colour and sound both working to my advantage as the interior of my shared living room greets me. The two men walk in as if they were taking a casual stroll in the park only to get slightly lost and end up in my apartment.

How convenient for them.

I watch on in stomach churning silence as the two end up wrecking the place to no end. Showing no mercy, whatsoever, as they discarded my home like it meant absolutely nothing to them which it most certainly didn't. It didn't take the two men in the camera long to wander off to my room after which it only takes seconds for Fen and Lola to scurry out of our home and then eventually to where she came after me.

I skip through the video as they make a mess out of mine and Fen's rooms, no camera being there for obvious reasons but loud crashes and bangs echoing through the flat and reaching me on my bed.

All too soon do the men come back out into frame, none of them exposing their faces but that doesn't deter them in the slightest as they move onto the kitchen, delighted laughter greeting my ears as they waste food and trash the area further. Once my kitchen is truly messed around with, only then do the two show signs of leaving, not even looking back at their destruction as they move out of view of the camera and out of the apartment.

The expression on my face turns discouraged, not liking the lack of information. The video evidence is something I know I should be hopeful about but the blurry recording and then the way the two intruders hid their face from the camera doesn't give much indication as to who they are. Why they attacked my apartment is something I'm ninety percent certain of but I have no more leads as to who these individuals actually are.

It can be harmful if I go in guns blazing only to find out I'm barking up the wrong tree.

The pinging noise of my laptop getting an incoming notification reaches me and grabs my attention. I don't want long to refresh my browser, seeing an attached file to Leo's email through which he sent me the security recording a few minutes ago. Clicking on the blank email, the picture pops up and allows me to see one thing that has my breath hitching.

I'm not sure how Leo did it or rather the IT team we have on sight which basically consists of a bunch of broke college students getting their degree in some computer field. But right on my lighted laptop screen is a- albeit blurry- still picture from the security recording. The image zoomed in but it's clear as day.