11

Elias’ POV

The light through the balcony doors was too bright and my head was pounding, and the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the empty side of the bed.

I reached for her before I remembered. My hand moved across the cold sheets, searching for the warmth that should have been there, and the absence hit me harder than any hangover. The gala. The drugged drink. The woman on the balcony with the dark hair and the tired eyes and the smile that looked like it hadn't been used in years.

She was gone.

I sat up slowly because the room tilted when I moved too fast. The suite was quiet except for the traffic noise filtering up from the street below. Her dress was gone from the floor and her shoes were missing, but the blanket was still draped over me, a blanket I definitely hadn't pulled up myself. She had covered me before she left. Even in her rush to escape, she had paused long enough to make sure I wasn't cold, and I pressed my palm against the fabric while something twisted in my chest that I didn't have a name for. No one had done something like that for me in years.

I checked the nightstand and found my wallet still there, untouched, with all the cash inside. My watch was on the bathroom counter where I'd left it. She hadn't taken a thing. She had just covered me with a blanket and walked out, and that made no sense. Everyone wanted something from me. Everyone. But this woman had asked for nothing, not even my real name, and then she had made sure I was warm before she disappeared.

Then I saw it. A strip of navy fabric caught between the chair cushion and the armrest. I pulled it free and held it up to the light, and my thumb traced over the embroidered initials near the hem. A.B.

Her scarf. She had left her scarf.

I remembered her fingers touching it while we talked, the way she adjusted it like armor, the way she finally loosened it when she started to trust me. Your hair looks better loose, I had said, and she had laughed like the sound surprised her. It was the only honest conversation I'd had in months, maybe years, and now I was standing in an empty suite with her scarf in my hand and no way to find her.

I called my head of security before I finished my first coffee.

"Find her," I said. "The woman from the gala. She was on the VIP floor. Dark hair, mid-twenties, initials A.B. I want a name by end of week."

The silence on the other end lasted exactly one second too long. "Sir, there were several hundred guests at the gala, plus staff. Without a full name or a room number..."

"Then start with the staff. She knew the hotel too well to be a guest." I hung up and stared at the scarf. A.B. Two letters. That was all I had, plus the memory of her voice when she'd told me I looked tired. No one had said that to me in years either. Not like they meant it.

The days that followed were a study in frustration. My investigator, a discreet man named Harris who had handled corporate espionage cases for me before, turned up nothing. The hotel had over two hundred employees at the gala, and none with the initials A.B. matched her description. No guest names fit either. She had vanished like smoke, and every dead end made the obsession dig deeper into my skull.

"It's possible she used a fake name," Harris said during our third briefing. "If she was staff, she might not have been registered properly. The hotel's records aren't exactly airtight."

"Then find someone who was working that night. A manager. A security guard. Someone who saw her."

"I'm trying, sir. But the hotel is not cooperating. They've had some internal issues since the gala, some kind of scandal with a staff member. They're keeping everything locked down."

I dismissed him and poured a drink I didn't drink. The scarf was still on my desk, folded carefully beside my laptop. I had told myself I wouldn't carry it because that was ridiculous and sentimental, but every morning I found myself tucking it into my breast pocket before I left the house. The navy fabric stayed hidden beneath my jacket where no one could see, and it sat there all day like a secret I was keeping from myself.

- - -

Three weeks passed. A month. The search stalled. I attended board meetings and closed deals and smiled for cameras while the scarf was pressed against my chest like a second heartbeat. My executives noticed something was different. I caught my assistant exchanging looks with the CFO when I snapped at someone over a minor error. Elias Blackstone, the coldhearted CEO, was suddenly distracted and irritable, and no one knew why.

"You're looking for someone," my assistant said one afternoon, carefully, like she was testing the temperature of the water. "If you want, I can put out feelers through a different channel. Discreetly."

"Who told you I was looking for someone."

"No one. But you've been carrying that scarf for a month, and you check your phone every five minutes like you're waiting for a call that never comes." She met my eyes and didn't flinch. "I'm your assistant. I notice things."

I didn't confirm or deny it, but the next day I gave her the initials and the description, and she added it to her to-do list without another word.

The search became a quiet machine running in the background of my life. Harris followed leads that went nowhere. My assistant asked careful questions at industry events. I started attending more functions than I normally would, charity galas and corporate dinners and any event where I might spot a woman with dark hair and tired eyes. I scanned every room I walked into, and every time I saw a flash of navy fabric, my heart would stop and then restart when it wasn't hers.

I told myself I was being irrational. It was one night. One conversation. She was probably married and probably not thinking about me at all. But the scarf was still in my pocket, and the memory of her covering me with a blanket was still lodged somewhere behind my ribs, and I couldn't let it go.

Harris called with a lead six weeks after the gala. "There was a staff member fired the day after the event. Her first name was Adeline. She worked the VIP floor. I can't confirm the initials yet because her file has been sealed, but the timing matches."

Adeline. I tested the name in my mouth, and it tasted right. "Why was she fired."

"Unclear. Something about a disturbance in the lobby. Her husband caused a scene."

Her husband. Of course she had a husband. I stared at the scarf on my desk, and the twist in my chest tightened. I had been searching for a woman who belonged to someone else, a woman who had covered me with a blanket and run home to a man who probably didn't know what he had.

"Keep digging," I said. "I want her full name. Her address. Whatever you can find."

I didn't know what I would do with the information when I had it. Maybe I would knock on her door, or maybe I would just know she was out there somewhere, living her life, wearing a different scarf. But the not knowing was worse. The not knowing was a splinter I couldn't dig out.

The next morning, I folded the scarf and tucked it into my breast pocket as always. My assistant handed me my schedule, and I scanned it without seeing a word. Somewhere in this city, a woman with dark hair and the initials A.B. was going about her day. She had no idea I was carrying her scarf. She probably wasn't thinking about me at all.

I was going to find her. No matter how long it took.