The boutique was swallowed by a darkness so thick it felt like velvet, but it was far from silent. Eva could feel Alexander's warmth radiating against her back—a heat so real it was painful. She squeezed her eyes shut as he had commanded, her entire body vibrating with a shattering emotional shock that numbed her limbs. She felt suspended in a void between the living and the dead, anchored only by the heavy pressure of his presence.
Across the room, the shop had turned into a silent slaughterhouse. Marcus was screaming hysterically, "Turn on the lights! Who's there?", his voice cracking with a primordial, gut-wrenching terror. He heard the muffled thud of his bodyguard hitting the floor, followed by the sickening, wet snap of bone. Alexander moved through the blackness like a predator reclaiming its territory; his movements were a blur of justified brutality and protective obsession. Every blow he landed carried the weight of a year's worth of suppressed agony and exiled longing.
Suddenly, Eva felt a strong hand, encased in a cold leather glove, intertwine with hers. The grip was firm, radiating a sense of violent possessiveness that was somehow tender. He didn't say a word, but through that single point of contact, Eva felt everything he had left unsaid: his fury, his regret, and a love that had grown dark and jagged in the shadows.
He pulled her through the wreckage and out a back service door into a narrow, dimly lit Parisian alleyway. Alexander stopped abruptly, pinning Eva against the cold stone wall with his body. The distant, flickering lights of the city reflected dimly in his eyes, which burned with a manic, exhausted brilliance.
In that moment, Eva couldn't endure the distance anymore. She opened her eyes to find his face inches from hers. He was no longer the polished, perfect Alexander she remembered. His face bore a thin, jagged scar that hadn't been there before, and his eyes told stories of a hell she couldn't begin to comprehend.
Eva raised a trembling hand, her fingers grazing his cheek. Her breath hitched as she felt the searing heat of his skin. "You... you aren't a ghost," she whispered, her voice thick with total, heartbreaking devastation.
Alexander closed his eyes tightly at her touch, as if her hand were branding him. His features contorted in a flash of physical pain—the sheer agony of a year's worth of deprivation. "I died, Eva... the man you knew died in that ocean," he rasped, his voice a low growl of blackened bitterness. "What stands before you is a shadow willing to burn the world to ash just so you never have to shed another tear."
Before she could speak, the sound of frantic footsteps and Marcus's echoing shouts reached them. Alexander grabbed her hand and pressed a cold, heavy piece of metal into her palm. It was the Key.
"Go to the Hotel Le Méridien... Room 402. Do not stop, and do not look back," he commanded, his tone an iron-clad absolute, his eyes scanning the alley with savage alertness.
Eva felt a visceral internal tearing; she wanted to stay, to disappear into him even if it meant her death, but the lethal resolve in his gaze told her that her safety was his only weapon. She turned and ran, feeling as though a piece of her soul remained fused to that stone wall with him.
Alexander stood alone in the center of the alley, watching Marcus's men spill out of the boutique. He didn't flee. Instead, he slowly pulled off his glove, his eyes shimmering with a pure, crystalline desire for vengeance. The time for haunting was over. It was time for the "Ghost" to teach them the true meaning of pain.