Lorenzo POV I walked into my office to find my assistant already standing by the desk nervously, the kind of waiting that told me whatever he had to say, is not a good one.
“I hope,” I said, sitting on my chair, “that this is good news.” “Not really, sir.” His voice was breaking, like a man, who already knew the outcome of his action.
I looked up at him.
“Then why are you standing here?” He stepped closer and carefully placed a brown folder on my desk.
The moment he let go, he pulled his hand back.
“Sir, we have been trying to find her,” He paused, “It’s like she does not exist.
It is strange.” I leaned back in my chair and turned toward the large window behind me.
Outside, the city was busy as always.
People walked the streets, living their lives.
“So you are telling me right now,” I said calmly, “that I spent the night with a ghost.” I turned to him.
Whatever was in my expression made him take half a step backward before he caught himself.
“No, I’m sorry, sir.” He tightened his grip on his trouser.
“This file contains everything we were able to find so far.
But I promise we will find more.” A pause, his jaw working.
“I will deliver her to you as promised.” “Deliver?” I reached for the folder, opened it with one hand.
“I hope you are not referring to my woman as though she were cargo.” “No, sir, that’s not what I meant.” “So I misunderstood you, then.” “No, sir.” He stammered, “I’m sorry, sir.” “Don’t disappoint me again,” I said it quietly, the way I always did, because I hate shouting.
“I promise.
I won’t, sir.” “You can go.” I did not look up from the file.
“Cancel my meetings this morning.” “Yes, sir.” He left the room faster, almost tripping.
I opened the folder properly.
A handful of people outside the club entrance.
A blurred license plate from a taxi that had parked near the entrance around midnight.
A description compiled from three different staff members who had all noticed her, brown hair, approximately five foot, disheveled.
According to the bartender, “it was like she’d had the worst night of her life.” I hate that he shared a moment with her but I would allow it for now.
Nothing that gave me a name.
I sat there for a long moment, staring at the printed image of her face, turned slightly toward the camera, caught somewhere between grief and the particular defiance I had watched cross that bar floor with my own eyes.
Something in my chest tightened, slow and unfamiliar.
I stood up.
One moment I was standing at my desk, the next thing, everything on my desk was on the floor.
The folder, the pen tray, the nameplate on the desk, scattered across the carpet.
I turned and punched the mirror hanging in my office.
Glass exploded everywhere.
The mirror shattered into pieces.
I know my assistant heard the noise but was afraid to check.
I looked down on my bleeding knuckles but still didn’t care.
I scratched the back of my hair with my bleeding hand.
“Baby girl, where are you?” I said quietly, to no one, “Are we playing hide and seek?” I laughed.
It came out wrong, short, humorless, more frustration than amusement.
She had me like this.
Bleeding over a mirror at nine in the morning over a woman whose name I did not know, who had walked out of my life before I had even fully woken from the night we shared.
Fifteen years of careful, deliberate distance, and one single uncontrollable night had managed to undo something I had spent a decade and a half building.
“What would happen,” I thought, looking at my own reflection in what remained of the broken mirror, “if you were actually here with me.” I left the office without answering myself.
My assistant looked up as I passed his desk, still nervous from earlier.
I could see his silent question.
“Clean that mess in my office,” I said, without slowing down.
I did not wait for his response.
I stepped into my private elevator and let the doors close behind me.
My phone had been vibrating all morning.
I pulled it out.
Seventeen missed calls.
All from Mr Victor.
I almost smiled.
He had seen it, then.
The footage of his daughter, alone in a club room with men, having her best night, broadcast live on every channel his entire social circle tuned into every evening.
I imagined him now, pale, furious, frantically trying to call in favors he no longer had the standing to call in, trying to pull a video down that I had already made certain was permanently, irreversibly public.
“He wishes he was dead,” I thought, stepping out of the elevator and into the private garage beneath the building.
“But he isn’t.
Not yet.
He should feel the pain of offending me.
He doesn’t have my permission to die yet.” I walked past my driver without a glance and got into my Audi myself.
I needed the wheel in my hands.
I needed something to control completely, even if it was only a car moving too fast down an empty private road.
I pulled out of the garage, the city opening up in front of me, indifferent and somewhere in the middle of it, holding the one piece of information I needed most.
My phone rang again.
My Victor’s name on the screen.
I ignored it, instead, I dialed my assistant’s number, the phone balanced against my ear, my other hand steady on the wheel, my knuckles still bleeding.
He picked up immediately, “Sir.” “Widen the search,” I said.
My voice came out low.
Controlled.
The kind of control that was somehow more dangerous than shouting would have been.
“Airports, every damn hotel, motel.
Every household register.
Hack into the city’s database.
I want her name on my desk by day break.” “Yes, sir, we are already…” “If I don’t have her,” I said, cutting through whatever reassurance he had been about to offer, “then you are dead.” I ended the call without waiting for his response, not that I needed it.
The city blurred past me as I sped up with one chocolate eye that has occupied my mind since that night.
I did not know her name yet but I want her.