The Same Scent

The woman’s twig-thin hands gripped a bamboo cylinder. She shook it, her whole body rocking with the movement.

Under that cold, eerie moonlight, the scene was deeply unsettling.

If I hadn’t been a ghost myself, I might have thought I was looking at one.

“Who’s there?”

A flashlight beam cut across the garden.

Security guards patrolled around the villa.

Startled, the woman tugged the scarf tighter over her face and hurried away through the back gate.

Julian heard the commotion and came outside.

“What happened?”

A guard quickly explained.

“That crazy woman’s back, Mr. Whitmore. She was kneeling over there, up to something. You’ve been kind enough to let it slide before, but she’s getting worse.”

A vague memory surfaced.

I thought I had seen that woman around here once before.

She had suddenly rushed in front of my car, making muffled, incomprehensible sounds. The guards came running and dragged her away.

At the time, I assumed she was trying to stage an accident for money. I was late for a meeting at the office, so I hadn’t bothered getting involved.

I forgot the incident almost immediately.

Now I wondered.

Had she known something? Had she been trying to tell me?

Julian glanced at the six-pointed design on the ground.

When his gaze fell on my photograph, his eyes visibly chilled.

“Find that lunatic. Have her locked up in a psychiatric hospital.”

“Yes, sir.”

Once the guards left, Julian picked up the photograph and set it on fire.

Flames shifted in his eyes.

Then he smiled, a strange, vicious little smile.

“You crazy old bitch. You’ll never find her. Not in this lifetime.”

He meant me.

Had that woman been looking for me all along?

I was more confused than ever.

Apart from that brief encounter, I had no memory of her.

Who was she?

Early the next morning, someone arrived with the bid proposal.

It wasn’t Gavin, Julian’s assistant.

It was Anna Mercer.

My assistant.

The woman I had personally hired and spent three years training.

She hadn’t only brought the proposal. She had thoughtfully brought Julian a hot breakfast too.

“Baby, I’ve missed you so much.”

The moment the door closed, Anna threw herself into his arms.

His reaction shocked me even more.

His hands settled on her waist and the full curve of her ass beneath her tight skirt with effortless familiarity.

He even gave her a couple of leisurely strokes.

When the hell had this started?

I stared, stunned.

I had recruited Anna myself three years earlier and taught her everything. I had practically treated her as a younger sister.

Whenever we encountered Julian in public, she stood demurely behind me and addressed him as “Mr. Whitmore.”

All the while, she had been sleeping with him behind my back.

The ungrateful bitch.

When her mother fell seriously ill back home, I had stepped in. I used my connections to find a hospital and specialists. I even paid the surgical expenses up front.

She had cried with gratitude, dropped to her knees in front of me, and sworn she would spend her life repaying me.

I shook with rage.

“Anna! This is how you repay me?”

“Julian, why haven’t you answered any of my messages these last few days?”

Anna slipped her arm through his, pouting playfully.

As she passed through the space in front of me, I caught her perfume.

Rich. Strong. Unmistakably feminine.

A jolt went through me.

Suddenly, I remembered.

The night Julian proposed, I had smelled that exact same fragrance on him.