chapter 6
1371 Words
The Hunter's Game
Betrayal was not acceptable to Adrian Cross.
With floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the glittering expanse of the city, he stood in his penthouse office like a carved figure of ice. The skyline shimmered under a thin veil of fog, the storm clouds from the previous night still reflected across the glass towers. The world below was waking slowly—cars weaving through streets like sluggish veins, neon signs flickering as if still recovering from the downpour.
His glass of scotch remained untouched on the desk behind him. The amber liquid trembled almost imperceptibly every time his hand tightened around the edge of the polished marble surface.
She’d fled.
Naturally, she had. Emilia Hart had always been too fiery, too unyielding, too unwilling to bow her head—even when bowing would have saved her. He had nearly admired that spirit once. Nearly. But admiration was not justification. Awe did not excuse disobedience.
He exhaled once, coldly.
A nervous shuffle behind him broke the silence.
“Sir,” one of his men reported, forcing steadiness into his voice. “She made it onto the train. The storm— it… it claimed her trail.”
Adrian slowly turned. His eyes, pale and cutting as winter light, narrowed on the man.
“She was lost?”
The man swallowed hard. “Pursuit was slowed by the weather, sir. The rain blocked visibility, and by the time we reached the platform—”
“When,” Adrian interjected in a calm, low voice that chilled the air more than a scream ever could, “did you realize you were chasing a ghost?”
The man’s gaze dropped instantly. His shoulders curled inward like a reprimanded child.
Adrian dismissed him with a flick of his hand. “Get out.”
The door closed quietly, almost fearfully, behind him.
Adrian moved toward the window, placing both palms flat against the cold glass. The city stretched beneath him—alive, bright, busy—but utterly insignificant compared to the storm now thrumming under his skin.
Emilia believed she could sever their connection with a single train ticket. That she could just… vanish. Idiotic. Naïve. She didn’t understand—not yet—what kind of man she had defied.
He never lost.
And he never let go.
He pulled out his phone and opened a secure application, layers of encryption peeling back at his fingerprint. His empire wasn’t built on money alone. Information was power—surveillance networks, satellite links, digital footprints, whispers traded in boardrooms or back alleys. He owned more eyes than any government dared admit.
A recent image of Emilia appeared on the screen. Rain-soaked hair clinging to her face, eyes burning with desperation and defiance, her expression wild in the fraction of a second before she vanished into the storm.
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“Track her,” he ordered into the phone. “Every city, every station she could head toward. Scan all CCTV feeds from here to the coast. Monitor transit hubs. Watch the borders. Freeze every account in her name.”
He paused before adding, voice soft but lethal, “Find her. Unharmed.”
The last word was almost an afterthought—but the truth lingered behind it. Adrian wanted her back not out of affection or loss, but because dominance meant reclaiming what had slipped from his grasp. Control was his nature.
And Emilia Hart had dared to fracture it.
Emilia jolted awake as the train screeched into a new station.
Her breath fogged the cold air of the cabin, which was veiled in a dreary gray morning light barely pushing through the dirty windows. Her body ached from the frantic escape. Every muscle trembled with exhaustion; her clothes were still damp, clinging uncomfortably to her chilled skin.
She clutched her small luggage to her chest. It was the only thing she owned now.
The night had gone well—miraculously well. She had slipped through his men. She had boarded the train. She had survived the storm. That should have felt like a victory.
Yet a knot tightened in her stomach.
Adrian’s words replayed in her mind with a venomous clarity:
Try to run as far as you can. I’ll still track you down.
She pulled out her phone. Her hands were shaking. She powered the device off, then—after hesitating—slid out the SIM card and shoved it into the pocket of an abandoned jacket hanging at the far end of the cabin. A stranger would find it later, maybe confuse his trackers.
She hoped.
She wouldn’t make it easy. If he was truly following her, she needed to become nothing, a shadow swallowed by crowds, slipping into lives too small for a man like Adrian to notice.
But where in the world was safe from a man who owned half of it?
Her thoughts drifted to a small coastal town—a quiet fishing village she had visited with her mother a decade ago. It had felt like a place forgotten by time. Somewhere Adrian’s reach might falter. She could start there. Work off the books. Pay with cash. Disappear into routines of people who woke with the tide and slept with the moon.
The thought warmed her for a moment. But reality smothered it quickly.
This wasn’t simply about finding her.
It was about punishing her for defying him.
About proving that no one escaped Adrian Cross—least of all Emilia Hart.
The train jerked sharply, making her grip the seat. She whispered a shaky prayer she wasn’t sure anyone would hear.
Far away, Adrian stood before a wall-sized map in his penthouse—his analysts clustering behind him. Red lines crossed the map like veins, branching into various possible escape routes she could have taken.
“She boarded at Central Station,” one analyst reported. “She could be heading south. If she disembarks early, she may slip into a rural area and—”
“She won’t disappear,” Adrian said, almost amused. “Emilia leaves a mark wherever she goes. She is too vivid, too passionate to fade into obscurity.”
He turned slightly, his profile carved with dark resolve.
“Find me her flame, and I’ll follow the smoke.”
A lieutenant hesitated before speaking. “Sir… forgive me, but why her? Why go to such lengths?”
Adrian’s voice softened, but the softness was more terrifying than anger.
“Because she challenged me,” he said. “And because she belongs to me—whether she admits it yet or not.”
Silence swallowed the room. No one asked another question.
A few hours later, Emilia stepped off the train into a small town where the air smelled of sea salt and wood smoke. Her legs trembled as she descended the platform steps. Her coat was pulled tight, her face hidden behind her hair.
For the first time in days, she felt almost invisible.
She blended into the flow of strangers—tourists, fishermen, vendors setting up morning stalls. No one looked twice at her. No one recognized her weary eyes or the tremor in her hands.
Then she saw the newspaper.
A headline splashed across the front page:
“Cross Heiress-to-Be Missing — Billionaire Adrian Cross Launches Nationwide Search.”
Below the headline was a picture of her—smiling, radiant, unguarded—from a charity gala she barely remembered attending.
Her heart dropped.
Adrian hadn’t just sent men after her.
He had unleashed the media.
He had painted her as his fiancée—his property—already tethered to his name.
By morning, her face would be everywhere.
Every stranger’s glance could be a threat.
Every kind smile could hide betrayal.
The world was already shrinking around her.
The newspaper slipped from her fingers and fluttered to the ground.
Somewhere far away, inside his high glass fortress, Adrian Cross would be watching the reports roll in. Waiting. Calculating.
The hunt had begun—for real this time.
And Emilia understood, with a shudder that carved deep into her bones, that fleeing was no longer enough.
Not when the man chasing her was no longer chasing a woman—
but reclaiming something he believed was his.
- Writer
