3 - Old Would, Older Hunger
462 Words
Alexander
The penthouse suite of The Obsidian Crown Hotel smelled of Cuban tobacco and salt-bleached regrets.
Alexander stood silhouetted against floor-to-ceiling windows, black silk robe gaping to reveal the scarred terrain of his chest—that jagged line above his heart, a topographical map of their war. The dying sun gilded his profile like a Renaissance dagger, all lethal angles and forbidden allure.
He scrolled past the deleted call log in his encrypted messaging app, thumb hovering over a notification from @A♥—a dummy account even his cybersecurity team couldn’t trace.
The photo loaded in slow agony: Amelia on Cape City's bluffs, windswept hair catching fire in the sunset. Her once-soft jawline had sharpened into something that cut him deeper than any blade. She wore defiance like her old university hoodie, but her eyes… Christ, those eyes still held that fractured glow he’d spent years trying to extinguish.
His thumb brushed the screen where her lower lip glistened with balm. Phantom pain lanced through his ribs—the old wound, the older hunger.
“Fuck.” The word cracked like a whip. His Rolex Sky-Dweller rattled against a crystal ashtray when he slammed down his phone.
Three floors below, waves clawed at the shore in time with his pulse. He shrugged off the robe, letting it pool like spilled ink. The mirror reflected a battlefield: bullet graze on his hip, surgical scar along his flank, and that f*****g letter opener scar over his heart—her masterpiece.
His personal tailor had outdone himself with the Tom Ford suit. Double-breasted charcoal wool clung to his shoulders like a second skin, the blood-red pocket square a silent provocation.
“Sir?” His assistant’s voice crackled through the Bang & Olufsen intercom. “The car is ready, but… the Cross wedding?”
Alexander snapped a platinum S.T. Dupont lighter shut. “Would you prefer I attend your funeral instead, Gabriel?”
The line went dead.
Downstairs, paparazzi swarm erupted as his Maybach glided past the hotel’s salt-crusted gates. Through tinted windows, he watched Cape City blur into a watercolor of his worst impulses—the jazz bar where she’d first laughed at his jokes, the alley where he’d pinned her against wet brickwork to devour her gasp, the ER where she’d stared at his blood on her hands and whispered “Was it worth it?”
His knuckles whitened around a flask of 25-year Pappy Van Winkle. The bourbon burned less than her memory.
At a red light, his phone buzzed. The @A♥ account had auto-deleted the photo, leaving only a geotag pulsing near the wedding cliffs.
He allowed himself one savage smile.
Let her run.
Let her hide.
Let her think she’d escaped.
The hunt, after all, was where he truly came alive.
- Writer
