I let myself into my apartment. Damn, it's been a long, slow day. But our slow days mean that the psychopaths have taken a vacation and aren't hurting anyone else. Like some innocent child. So I like the slow days. There's something not right here. I don't know how I know - it's a cop's instinct or something - but I know there's something wrong, here. I pull my gun from the holster and turn on the lights, hoping to get an element of surprise, if there's someone here.

The display on my coffee table catches my attention, first. On it is a combination of flowers - red roses and white lilies. Their heavy scent is enough to turn my stomach. I look down, careful not to touch anything. A newspaper clipping, from a couple of days ago catches my eye, as well as something else. A notebook. My heart hammers and my stomach lurches. I want to see what's in there, but I don't want to touch it. I whip my cell phone from my pocket and somehow manage to dial Cragen's number with shaking fingers.

He picks up, because he's still in the office. He never goes home. We've all seen the cot stashed in the corner of his office. "What?"

Every time I hear him answer the phone like that, I smile a little bit. Even now. "Don, it's Olivia." We're off the clock. I don't have to call him Captain all the time. The man's like a father to me.

"Something wrong, Liv?" A hint of concern comes into his voice. "You sound upset. Did something happen?"

"No, no. I'm okay. I - someone's been into my apartment. Whoever it was left me a surprise."

"Don't touch anything. Elliot's still here - we'll be there."

Within a few minutes, my boss and my partner arrive. "What the hell?" Elliot stops, looking at me, then at the display on my table. I rub my eyes. "I came home to that."

Don stands there, beside the chair where I'm sitting. He discreetly reaches and gives my shoulder a squeeze. I look up at him, startled, but he just meets my eyes with his own. "You didn't touch anything?" My partner questions, from the table, pulling gloves onto his hands.

"Elliot, I took the same damned classes you did. I know something about how to preserve a scene, okay?" The words come out harsher than I meant them to. I'm tired and not that I'll admit to anyone, more than a little freaked out. "Don't treat me like a rookie."

He looks at me and we trade apologetic looks. His, for questioning me, and mine for snapping at him. He picks up the small, plain notebook from the table and shifts the flowers. "Not much else here - the flowers and the notebook. You recognize this, Liv?"

I glance up he holds up a ring on a gold chain. I get up to look at it more closely and bite my lip. A simple gold band, set with my birth stone. I remember getting one identical to it, at seventeen from my doting boyfriend. Damn it. "Yeah. Mike and I"-

"Lombardo?" Elliot jumps in.

"Yeah." To Elliot, he's just another perp. To me, he's an ex-lover. "Mike and I wanted to get married while we were still in high school, but his parents wouldn't have it and Mom didn't want to see me grow up and leave her to fend for herself. He bought this for me, in October of '83 - I don't know what he meant by it, but I called it a promise ring. The chain I bought, after my first few months on the job - I didn't want to wear it and ruin it, so I just put it on the chain. I had it for six years, before I finally had enough of that son of a bitch and left."

"Why buy the chain?" My partner raises an eyebrow.

"Third month into my probie year, Karen and I delivered a baby in the subway. I bought the chain after that." I smile. We'd gone underground to check something out for transit security, my training officer and I, and then we saw a woman fall on the platform. We went over, obviously and realized she was about to deliver, right there. We called for EMS, but we wound up delivering the baby ourselves. A baby girl. I couldn't stop my hands shaking, as I handed the crying child to her mother.

"You know what I don't get?" I rub my forehead. "Why the hell is he doing this? I haven't seen him since we broke up."

Elliot glances at me, then back at Cragen. The two men both shake their heads. I roll my eyes. I'm being left out of the loop again. "Does someone want to tell me what's going on? There's something you're not telling me."

"Dave and I worked this one." Elliot shakes his head. "I told you about Rosetti, Liv, didn't I?"

Dave Rosetti. His old partner. The one who ate a bullet. "Yeah. You did. So you were working with him when you popped Mike - what's it got to do with anything?"

"The whole time we had him in the interrogation room, before his attorney showed up, he wouldn't answer anything. He just went on and on about this girl of his. We thought maybe a wife or a girlfriend, but we could never find her. All we found was his pissed off ex-wife who suspected him of cheating on her, because he'd called out another woman's name in his sleep, one night."

"She tell you what he said?" I raise an eyebrow.

"Mandy."

I sigh. "So it was me he was babbling about?"

"Yeah. I think so."

"But that still doesn't explain why he's doing this. Don't most normal people move on? It's been fifteen years."

"According to this guy, you were a once-in-a-lifetime-love." Elliot picks up the notebook and flips through the pages. After a minute or two, he shuts it and glances up at me, his eyes sick. Very rarely have I seen that look of horrified disgust and shock on his face. He's one of those seen-it-all veterans who can stomach almost anything. You have to be able to, to work in SVU.

"Lemme see." I reach out a hand.

"You don't wanna see this, Liv."

I glare at him. I'm not one of his kids who needs to be sheltered and protected. Sometimes he tends to forget that I'm not one of his girls. I'm a grown woman, who doesn't need a father or a big brother constantly looking over my shoulder, ready to run off all the bad boys in the neighborhood.

He sighs. "Olivia, this is some really sick shit."

I pull a pair of gloves onto my hands. "Hand it over."

He sighs and hands me the simple, spiral-bound book. I open it, flipping through the pages. Every detail of the sex life I had with Mike is written there, from the time I was seventeen. I bite my lip. It's not so much disgusting as it is humiliating. Now everyone's going to be able to read through six, nearly seven years of my sex life, written in full detail. I feel the blush rising up my face and cringe.

"Hey. It's okay." Elliot steadies me.

"Do you know how damned embarrassing this is?" I question, one hand over my eyes. I can't look him in the eye. I can't. "God, this is a nightmare from hell."

"Olivia." It's Don talking to me this time. "No one else has to see that."

I bite my lip, as the CSU techs arrive. They bag everything and dust for prints. "At least we don't need to take yours for exclusion." O'Halloran comments. For some reason, this guy's always in a good mood.

"Yeah. Run my print through the system and my name'll pop up in about two seconds." I comment, leaving my living room for my bedroom. I need a minute or two to gather myself.

I step in and gasp. My bedroom's been trashed, basically, the drawers pulled out from my dresser and gone through, my closet wide open, half of the clothes that did hang there scattered on the floor. The comforter and sheets from my bed are missing - the bed's been stripped.

On my dresser, I have a small box where I keep what little jewelry I own. It's been opened and sorted through. And above my bed, drawn on the wall is a heart. "Liv?" My Boy Scout of a partner has followed me. "Oh, God." He whispers, finding me standing in the middle of my destroyed room. "Cap, this you gotta see."

Cragen stops just behind him, then looks at me. I decide to check out my bathroom and see what mess this psychopath has created there. My makeup's been gone through and my usual shade of lipstick is missing. The bottle of perfume a friend gave me for Christmas has disappeared, too. But otherwise, he left my bathroom in one piece, thank God. I don't think I could handle two messes tonight.

It's nearly eleven, by the time CSU leaves my apartment and me to clean it up. Cragen goes with them, back to the precinct. But Elliot stays with me. "You can go home, too." I comment, picking up my clothes from the floor and beginning to re-hang them in my closet.

"No. You're freaked out."

"Who wouldn't be?" I comment. I had to go through everything and find what was missing. The heart on my wall was just lipstick - the shade I usually wear. I already washed my wall down.

"So what's all missing?" He questions.

"My lipstick, a bottle of perfume, a pair of earrings and a dress." I sigh.

"Who is this guy?" Elliot questions, as I put my closet back in some sort of order. "What's he want with your stuff?"

"It's gotta be Mike. Who else would know that much about what we did, when we were together?"

"Why don't you come and stay with me, tonight?"

I glare at him. "No. If he was violent and brave, he wouldn't have done this when I wasn't home. He would have broke in when I was home and attacked me."

"But clothes and stuff? I don't get it?"

I sigh and sit down at the edge of my bed. "It's this thing we used to do, when we were together. On the weekends, say if we went out Friday night, he'd dress me from head to toe, and if we went out on Saturday, I'd dress myself. I felt like a human Barbie, but it was fun. We'd laugh about it. It was just a thing, to see which one of us could dress me to draw the most attention."

I pull a fresh set of sheets from my closet and make the bed. I find a spare comforter and throw that on my bed, too. Finally, my apartment's looking somewhat normal, again.

Elliot's cell starts ringing, as I push the drawers back into my dresser. "Cragen wants us." He comments, snapping the phone closed.

"It'll be midnight before we get down there." I bite my lip, realizing I sound whiny. But I'm exhausted. I just want to sleep and forget that this nightmare isn't happening.

"I know you're tired." He reaches and places his hand on my lower back, to reassure me. "C'mon."

When we arrive, Cragen meets us. "I had them run the prints, we got from your place, now. Guess who they belong to."

"Me and Lombardo." I run my fingers through my hair. "So what's the big deal?"

"Do you wanna pick him up for B & E? Your call, Liv." The boss shoves his hands in his pocket.

I roll my eyes. "One thing a lot of people forget about with this guy - he graduated from Fordham Law with high marks. He's smart. He's just not loudmouthed about it. I don't see the point of picking him up on a charge like that, when Mama's gonna run right down and bail him out. He'll find a way out of it, somehow."

"Fordham?" Elliot blinks.

"Yeah. Daddy was paying for it. I helped him study, being the good little girlfriend I was. I helped him pass final exams his senior year in high school. Wait a sec - he's on parole, right?" I stop, thinking.

"He's on parole." Cragen responds.

"If we pick him up, it'd be a parole violation. Enough to get him sent back to Rikers. And I know right where he is, too. Let's go."

I kill the engine outside of a familiar bar. "Riley's Pub. Two blocks from our old place." I explain to Elliot. "Mike used to hang out here, after his father got on his case."

I step out onto the curb, with him behind me, solid and strong. I push through the door and into the bar. The thick smoke and the heavy scent of liquor nearly chokes me. I haven't been into a dive like this since my mother died. The cop bars are pretty much smoke-free - I haven't met that many guys on the job who smoke. It's just a common-sense thing. The lights are dim, leaving shadows in the corners. I scan them with practiced eyes, trying not to gag.

The click of pool balls cuts through the laughter, conversation and pouring of drinks. A full house tonight. Bartender's a busy man, I notice, seeing him mixing two drinks at once.

"There he is. Barstool on the right of the guy in the red Yankees cap and the black t-shirt." I lean in close to my partner, to whisper in his ear.

"I got him." Elliot responds. "Black jacket, blue jeans. What'd you say we act as a couple, huh?"

I grin. Seeing me with a guy might really piss Mike off, but then again, it might be easier than just approaching him. It might make things go easier. With this many people in the bar, I don't want to risk him getting violent. He's just gotten out of prison - he won't go back, quietly.

I hide my gun under my coat and slip onto a barstool beside my partner. He drapes one arm over my shoulders, and I blink, a little confused for a second. Then I remember. I grin at him, playing the girlfriend.

"What can I do you for?" The older bartender comes over.

"Irish on the rocks for me and a beer for the lady." I feel his arm slip around my waist.

I see a glance shot our way and look into familiar dark eyes. We've got Lombardo's attention. Just a little more and we'll have him.