Elliot didn't go home that night.
He walked through the empty streets of Mayfair, coat open against the cold, letting the wind bite at him like punishment. Every step felt deliberate, as though he were measuring the distance between who he had been and who he was becoming.
By the time he reached his building, the sky had turned the dull grey of pre-dawn. He took the lift up, unlocked the door, and went straight to the drinks cabinet. No glass this time. Just the bottle.
He drank standing in the middle of the living room, staring at the wall where a photograph of them still hung — Isabella laughing, head thrown back, his arm around her waist. He had always liked that picture. Now it looked like evidence.
He pulled it down and set it face-first on the table.
The next morning he dressed carefully — charcoal suit, white shirt, no tie. He looked in the mirror and practised the smile he had always used on people he wanted something from. It still worked. Even on himself.
At the office he was charming, efficient, untouchable. Colleagues complimented his focus. He thanked them with that same smile.
But inside he was making a list — not of petty insults, but of people. Isabella's friends. Her colleagues. The women who had always looked at him a little too long when she wasn't watching. The men who had envied him.
He started with Sophia — Isabella's oldest friend from university. They had met a few times at parties. She had always laughed too loudly at his jokes, touched his arm a second longer than necessary.
He sent her a message that afternoon.
Sophia — long time. I'm in town for a few days. Drink sometime? Nothing heavy, just catching up. E.
The reply came in less than ten minutes.
Elliot! God yes. I'd love that. Isabella's been… well, you know. Tomorrow evening?
He smiled at the screen. Not triumph. Not yet. Just the first small turn of the screw.
They met at a quiet bar in Soho — low lights, velvet seats, music soft enough to talk over. Sophia arrived in a black dress that was trying too hard. She hugged him like an old friend who had been waiting for permission.
"You look good," she said, eyes travelling over him. "Really good."
"You always say that," he replied, voice low, letting his gaze linger on her mouth just a second too long.
They talked. Or rather, she talked. About work, about travel, about how Isabella had been "different lately". Elliot listened. He nodded in the right places. He let his knee brush hers under the table once — accidental, then not.
By the second drink she was leaning closer, laughing at things that weren't funny, telling him things she shouldn't.
"She's happy with him," Sophia said, almost apologetic. "But sometimes I think she misses… well. You know."
Elliot tilted his head. "Do I?"
She flushed. "The way you used to look at her. Like she was the only person in the room."
He smiled slowly. "I looked at a lot of people that way."
Sophia's breath caught.
He didn't kiss her. He didn't need to.
He walked her to a cab, kissed her cheek — lingering just enough — and said, "We should do this again. Soon."
She nodded like someone who had forgotten how to speak properly.
The next day he did the same thing with another woman — Isabella's colleague from the gallery. Same bar. Same technique. Same result. Each conversation left a small crack in Isabella's carefully rebuilt world.
He didn't sleep with any of them.
He didn't have to.
Every smile, every touch, every carefully chosen word was a message being sent back to Isabella through the people she trusted most.
And every time he walked away, he felt the thing inside him grow sharper. Not anger anymore. Hunger.
On the third night he came home alone. The flat was too quiet. He stood in front of the mirror in the hallway, still wearing the same suit.
He looked at himself — handsome, calm, dangerous.
Then something strange happened.
The lights flickered.
Not the overhead lights.
A pulse — deep in his chest, like a second heartbeat.
He looked down at his hands. They looked ordinary.
But they felt… heavy. Charged.
He whispered, half laughing, half afraid:
"What the bloody hell…?"
The mirror glass rippled — just once, very slightly.
He stepped back.
And for the first time since she left, the ache in his chest felt like it had teeth.