But as time went on, I started to notice strange things about Max. He would get these...looks on his face. Almost like he was obsessed with me. And the way he talked about my stalker - it was almost...admiring.

A man I’d seen around—someone I knew vaguely as "the guy from 4B"—slammed into him with the force of a freight train. They wrestled on the concrete in a blur of grunts and violence. Mark, my neighbor, didn't just defend me; he fought with a terrifying, primal efficiency. He pinned the stalker, disarmed him, and held him until the sirens drowned out my heartbeat. II. The Debt of Gratitude

It all began when I started noticing strange occurrences around me. At first, it was just a faint sense of being watched, but soon escalated into full-blown stalking. I would receive unwanted gifts, find strange messages on my car windshield, and even catch glimpses of a person lurking in the shadows. The fear and anxiety that gripped me were suffocating, and I felt like I was losing control over my own life.

Using the trauma of the first stalker to manipulate the protagonist into trusting him.