CHAPTER NINE
999 Words
Victor's POV
I mixed some strong black coffee for myself, then walked over to the dining table. I preferred making it without adding any Sugar because it tasted richer somehow.
I raised the cup to my lips and paused.
I looked down a the table. This was the exact table where I had f****d Arielle. I could still see her perfect t**s bouncing as I f****d her. The way her p***y responded. All wet and stretchy, taking every inch of me. The sounds she made. I could still hear her voice begging me for more and the way her nails dragged down my back without her even realising she was doing it.
I set the coffee down and rubbed my chin.
I had pretended since she left that I hadn't thought about her. But that was all a lie. I thought about her all the time. In the mornings when the apartment was too quiet. At night when I lay on the same side of the bed she had slept on. Her scent had faded from the sheets days ago but I still noticed the exact moment it was completely gone.
I moved to the sofa.
I needed to stop this. The best way to stop thinking about someone was to remind yourself of who they actually were, where they came from, what their life looked like, all the ordinary details that pulled a feeling back down to earth. At least that was the only way I could keep my sanity. I picked up my phone. Just to look. Just to get it out of my system.
I typed in Arielle Hunt on the internet and a lot of details came up immediately. But as soon as I saw her face, I recognized her.
Arielle Hunt. Only daughter of billionaire CEO Harrison Hunt of the Hunt Group. Fans praise her because of her voluptuous body and exceptional beauty.
Interesting. I scrolled down.
Photos loaded one after the other. Her at a five-star hotel lounge, laughing at something off-camera, head thrown back, completely unguarded. Next she posed in a beauty spa, eyes closed, head tilted back, at ease with herself in the way people were when comfort had always come naturally to them. In another photo she was standing proudly on a yacht somewhere sunny, smiling like the whole ocean belonged to her and she already knew it.
She looked like herself in every single photo. That was the thing that got me. Open and warm. That same energy she had the morning she walked up to me in the courtyard with her hand stretched out like she fully expected me to take it. Like rejection wasn't something she had been taught to prepare for.
I smiled briefly and kept scrolling.
There were photos of her with her fiancé, David. I remembered him as the man that picked her up from my house and was acting all paranoid.
They were at different locations, different settings,restaurants, rooftops, one at what looked like a charity gala with chandeliers in the background. He had his hand at the small of her back in most of them. That looked practiced like the gesture of a man who had grown used to standing beside her without really seeing her.
My chest tightened slightly.
I told myself it was nothing and kept scrolling.
I went past more photos, a few write-ups about social appearances, and a short business piece about the Hunt Group's latest expansion into three new markets. I scrolled past a photo of her father at a press conference . He was a tall man, sharp suit, the kind of face that had learned to stay controlled in public. Then I scrolled past something and stopped.
I went back up.
A headline. It was older, dated several years back, buried under newer content but still sitting there when you went looking for it.
Harrison Hunt, CEO of Hunt Group, loses wife in a shocking incident. Suspect still at large. Police increase efforts to find the culprit.
I read it once.Then I read it again.
I scrolled down slowly through the article. The writing was careful the way news writing was when the facts didn't quite add up to something anyone wanted to print plainly. Words like alleged and unconfirmed reports and Mr Hunt's account has not been independently verified scattered through the paragraphs like the journalist had been embarrassed to type what they were typing.
Then I found something else.
Mr Hunt clearly denies any human involvement in his wife's death. He claims a supernatural wolf-like creature tore his wife apart before him. The case continues. No arrest has been made.
I stopped scrolling.I checked the date of the report.I checked it again.
The phone was still in my hand but I couldn't feel it anymore. I couldn't feel anything in the room. The coffee on the table, the sofa under me, the sounds coming from outside the window, all of it fell away and there was just the date on the screen and the date in my head sitting side by side, looking identical and undeniable.
It was the same night.
The exact same date that had been living quietly in the back of my head for years, the way certain things did when you could never fully put them down no matter how far you moved or how much time passed. The full moon that came on too fast. The shift I couldn't stop. The woods and the dark and the sounds and the thing I had done before I even fully understood I was doing it.
Her husband had been there.
He had seen everything. He had seen me shift back. He had seen my face in the moment before I ran.
And he had gone to the police and told them exactly what he saw and nobody had believed him.The case continues.
My hands began to shake.I stared again at the name at the top of the article.
Harrison Hunt.
- Writer
