The morning sun, usually a glaring intrusion Hunter ignored, felt different this time. It pooled on the floor of his expansive penthouse, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air—and illuminating the distinct, feminine scent that lingered on his sheets. Hunter woke slowly, the dull throb behind his eyes a gentle reminder of the previous night’s excesses, but beneath the hangover was an unfamiliar, startling lightness.
He reached out an arm, expecting to feel the soft curve of her back, the silkiness of her skin. His hand met cool, empty Egyptian cotton
His eyes snapped open. The space beside him was vacant, the pillows plumped almost as if they hadn’t been disturbed. The lightness vanished, replaced by a sudden, sickening drop in his stomach. The immediate, crushing disappointment was so profound it surprised him. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced since Alicia had walked out—the emotional whiplash of believing something real, only to find it gone in the morning light.
He sat up, the sheets pooling around his waist. Gone.
For six months, he had been trapped in the gray, suffocating fugue of depression, where nothing mattered, and every day was a numb replay of the last. Last night had been a brilliant, reckless explosion of color and life, fueled by whiskey and those astonishing emerald green eyes. She had been a jolt, a connection, a temporary, beautiful destruction. And now she was nothing but a void.
Hunter swung his legs over the side of the bed, running a hand through his perpetually messy hair. He felt the familiar, crushing weight beginning to descend again, ready to reclaim him. She left.
Then he saw it.
Resting on the mahogany nightstand, next to his heavy silver watch and the slim leather of his wallet, was the notepad. A page had been torn from it, but the faint indentation of the writing remained on the top sheet. He picked up the pad, his heart tightening to a frantic rhythm he hadn’t felt since his last marathon meeting with the board.
Two words.
“Thank you.”
Beneath it, a second, more chilling addition.
“Good luck.”
No name. No number. Just a courteous dismissal, a polite farewell to a one-night stand.
Hunter stood there, motionless, the pale morning light painting shadows on his sharp features. The note didn't just confirm the previous night; it confirmed his immediate, catastrophic loss. She hadn’t just slipped away while he was sleeping; she had left him a polite note to underscore the finality of their encounter. She didn’t want to be found.
But in the instant of reading those words, the thick, corrosive despair that had defined his life since Alicia’s departure didn’t just recede; it combusted. The emotional void was instantly, violently filled by something else: a singular, consuming, white-hot obsession.
She had yanked him out of the abyss. He had felt the spark—a genuine, honest connection that transcended the alcohol and the dark club. He knew, with a certainty that defied all logic and reason, that she was not just a distraction, but the key to unlocking himself from his self-made prison. He had spent six months drowning, and she had been a momentary breath of air. He wouldn't sink again, not when he finally knew what breathing felt like.
"Just Lanna," he muttered, the name rolling off his tongue like a mantra.
He grabbed his phone, the hangover forgotten, the apathy burned away by a manic, almost desperate energy. He ignored the dozen missed calls and texts from Erick. He scrolled straight to his number and hit the call button.
"Erick. Now. My place. Code Seven."
Code Seven was reserved for corporate emergencies, hostile takeover attempts, or sudden, catastrophic market collapses. It meant: Drop everything. Immediately.
Erick Sage, Hunter’s best friend, Chief Operating Officer, and reluctant crisis manager, arrived within fifteen minutes. He found Hunter not in the usual disarray of the past half-year, but standing rigidly in the center of the living room, dressed in a black t-shirt and sweats, the picture of focused intensity. The penthouse was still a mess, but Hunter’s mind was frighteningly clear.
"What is it, Hunter? Did the Aldridge deal fall through? Is the SEC calling?" Erick asked, surveying the discarded pizza box and the empty whiskey bottle.
Hunter didn't acknowledge the mess. He didn't even acknowledge the question. His gaze was fixed, distant, focused on something only he could see.
"I need you to find someone," Hunter stated, his voice devoid of the usual weariness. It was sharp, decisive, the voice of the CEO who built the Strauss empire, not the haunted man who had been hiding in it.
Erick blinked, pulling off his jacket. "Alright. Who? A new consultant? A potential acquisition target?"
Hunter finally turned, and Erick saw the transformation. The blue eyes, though bloodshot, were no longer flat and dead. They glittered with an almost alarming, feverish conviction.
"A woman. She was at The Abyss last night
Erick paused, absorbing the abrupt shift. "Hunter, you called a Code Seven... for a girl you met at a club?"
"Don't," Hunter warned, his voice low and dangerous. "Don't dismiss this. I told you, I haven't been alive for six months. She made me feel something real. She wasn't asking for anything, she wasn't seeking out the name or the money. She was just… there. And she left without a trace. She's my ghost of Christmas present."
Erick pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay. Deep breath. You realize you just described fifty percent of the women in the city after two drinks, right? And she didn't leave a name?"
Hunter walked over to the nightstand, snatched up the notepad, and shoved it into Erick’s hand. "She left this."
Erick read the terse message. He sighed, running a hand over his clean-shaven jaw. "This is not exactly a contact card, H. This is a politely worded 'don't call me.'"
"It doesn't matter what it is," Hunter snapped, pacing. "It matters that she existed, and that she pulled me out. I was drowning, Erick. And she—she was the spark. I am not losing her. Not again. We are going to find her."
The search that followed was less an investigation and a more all-out corporate mobilization. Hunter had the vast, global resources of Strauss Media at his disposal, and he wielded them like a desperate monarch.
"We need every contact," Hunter briefed Erick hours later in the penthouse office, now littered with topographical maps of the city’s nightlife districts. "We start with The Abyss. I want to buy the entire security feed, every angle, every moment from 11 PM to 4 AM. I want a team of analysts running facial recognition on every single frame where she might appear."
"Facial recognition won't work perfectly in club lighting, you know that," Erick countered reasonably.
"Then they build a profile! Dark hair, specific height range, the dress," Hunter retorted, circling a downtown grid map with a red marker. "Cross-reference the time we left with any taxis or ride-share pickups in a two-block radius. Use the metadata to track the phone signals that left the club at that exact moment. We need to focus on anyone whose signal didn't return to a registered home address or a hotel. She has to live here."
The plan was excessive, bordering on invasive, but Hunter’s intensity was infectious—and intimidating. Erick, recognizing the shift from suicidal lethargy to manic purpose, knew he had to comply. This obsession, however illogical, was healthier than the depression.
Erick started coordinating. The process was a logistical nightmare:
1. Security Footage: Two tech teams were dispatched to The Abyss, negotiating the immediate purchase and download of dozens of hours of high-resolution video. The footage was immediately sent to the in-house AI team, initially tasked with market trend analysis, now repurposed for 'Operation Green Eyes.'
2. Financial Traces: Hunter provided his credit card statements. They traced the time of his ride-share arrival and departure. The goal: identify the routes and look for a corresponding ride-share drop-off in the general direction.
3. Social Media Mining: An army of junior analysts was tasked with scouring Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms, using geo-tags and timestamps from The Abyss to look for posts matching Lanna's description, focusing on the distinct black dress and hair.
4. Club Personnel: Erick personally contacted the club's owner, leveraging the Strauss name to interview every bartender, bouncer, and coat-check attendant about a woman with "striking green eyes" who had spent time with Hunter. They had seen her, but they knew her as "Just Lanna," or simply, "the beautiful woman with the handsome guy.".
Days bled into a week. Hunter refused to leave the penthouse, running the operation from his office, fueled by coffee and adrenaline. He was sharp, focused, a force of nature—but a force of nature pointed at a single, incredibly elusive target.
Erick would bring him updates, and every update was the same: Zero progress.
"We have a thousand candidates, H," Erick said on Wednesday, tossing a printout of blurry, club-lit faces onto Hunter's desk. "Fifty women matching the description left the club between 3:45 AM and 4:15 AM. We cross-referenced phone records, but most of them went home or to an associate's place. The AI team flagged three potential matches who took public transit and whose phone signals vanished around the university district, but they're all too old, or the face isn't right."
Hunter ran his finger over one of the faces, a pixelated woman with heavy makeup. "No. Not her. The eyes, Erick. They have to capture the eyes. Did you check the hotel records?"
"Every major hotel. No check-ins or check-outs matching her description at that time. She wasn't a tourist. She lives here. She's just damn good at disappearing."
She wasn't flirting for gain. She was flirting to forget.
She never once asked who I was.
The way she smiled when the lights hit her face—it was genuine, unburdened.
He remembered the touch of her hand, the way she had leaned her head against his shoulder during a slow song. That fleeting intimacy, free of the baggage of his wealth and name, was the only thing that had felt real in years. He realized that the life he had built—the one Alicia had rejected—had been a gilded cage. Lanna was a reminder that freedom, and true connection, still existed.
Erick, though supportive, grew increasingly concerned about the psychological cost of this fruitless pursuit. He knew Hunter had simply replaced one extreme form of avoidance (depression) with another (fixated obsession).
"Hunter, we’re burning through resources. We’re using the entire market intelligence division to track a single woman who clearly wanted anonymity," Erick pressed, careful with his tone. "Maybe... maybe you needed that night, and that was the point of it. A catalyst. Now, you’re back. You’re working. Don’t replace one ghost with another."
Hunter looked up from his monitor, his blue eyes hard as diamonds. "You don't understand. She's not a ghost. She's the first thing I've seen that's tangible and true since everything went black. And she’s out there. She’s real."
He stood, walking to the wall of windows, his gaze sweeping over the indifferent city skyline.
"We are going deeper," Hunter announced, his resolve unbreakable. "If the city’s cameras don't have her, the financial institutions do. Start running credit card data cross-referenced with The Abyss. Target women aged 20 to 25 with high transaction volume, looking for one significant anomaly: someone who uses a card often, but whose identity is shielded or linked to a trust."
Erick’s jaw dropped. "Hunter, that is a colossal undertaking, and frankly, a massive overreach. We’re crossing lines here."
"I don't care about lines," Hunter said simply. "I care about finding her. She has striking green eyes, Erick. She is smart, she is complicated, and she hides a secret behind that incredible look. She is an iceberg, and I only saw the tip. I won't stop until I find the rest."
Hunter’s obsession took hold, an iron fist squeezing the breath out of every rational thought. He dedicated every piece of technology, every employee hour, and every ounce of his renewed, feverish energy to a single, impossible mission: hunting down the woman who had brought him back to life, the woman who had the beautiful ghost he simply called Just Lanna. His entire world had narrowed to the impossible task of finding those striking green eyes in a city of eight million souls.
