The Weight of Guilt

Cesar

It was a pathetic attempt to turn that magical, terrifying night into a business transaction. A lie I told myself to ease the weight that was beginning to crush my shoulders.

I got dressed quickly. Every fiber of my body screamed, pulling me back toward that bed. My instincts begged me to tear up the note and take the money back.

Before closing the suite door, I paused for a moment. I looked back one last time, fixing my eyes on the face of that angel sleeping peacefully, oblivious to the fact that the world outside was falling apart.

And that was when it hit me. A sharp, violent stab of something I had never felt before in my entire life: guilt.

It struck me like a bolt of lightning, scorching what was left of my arrogance.

I fled that room as if I were running from a ghost. I got in my car and drove back to my mansion in Alphaville. But the silence of that enormous house had never felt so deafening. I couldn't sit still. I paced back and forth across the living room. I lost count of how many glasses of whiskey I drank, but the alcohol couldn't erase the image of that bloodstain and the innocent face of that girl.

I didn't sleep the rest of the night. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt her in my arms and the scent of fresh flowers.

The agony was so unbearable that the moment the first rays of morning sun crossed the horizon, I couldn't take it anymore. I grabbed my car keys and raced back to the hotel. I needed to see her. I needed to apologize, to understand who she was, to somehow repair the damage I had done.

I opened the presidential suite door with my magnetic key card, stepped inside, and felt as though my heart would stop beating right then and there.

The room was exactly as I'd left it, but the emptiness was absolute.

I approached the bed with faltering steps. Everything was still there -- the stack of cash sitting untouched on the nightstand, the note in my handwriting right where I'd placed it, the bloodstain on the sheet still accusing me of my crime.

But the girl... the girl was gone.

I always left strict, absolute orders with the front desk and hotel management: no one was permitted to enter the suite reserved under my name unless I personally requested it. No housekeeper, no staff member had been inside.

She had woken up, seen the money, the note, and left on her own -- carrying the pain of the humiliation I had inflicted.

I ran my hands through my hair, feeling a knot tighten in my throat.

The cold, calculating Cesar Montenegro had made a terrible mistake -- a mistake that might have no way back.

I had taken the innocence of a girl who was nothing like the other women. Someone who didn't want my money, who didn't want to be used. I had broken her.

I stared at the empty room, feeling the weight of my own suit suffocating me. I needed to find her. The problem was that in that moment, I understood the full extent of my punishment: I was completely obsessed with an angel whose identity I had no idea how to discover, without a single clue of where to find her in the vastness of a city with millions of people.

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