Looks like karma decided to grant me a ceasefire. Or, failing that—since it's clearly addicted to ruining my life—it at least offered me a change of scenery.
Brace yourself: I won the interuniversity pleading competition. Yes. Me. Eliot. The guy who, just a few months ago, was stammering like a five-year-old in front of my sister's harasser, electrocuted and still smoking. Turns out eloquence really is a matter of context.
My reward for this oratorical miracle? An all-expenses-paid trip to attend a prestigious European law seminar in Prague. And the least we can say is that my university didn't do things halfway for its champion. They put me up at the Palais de Bohême, a five-star hotel so luxurious even the door handles look like they cost more than my annual rent. The whole place smells like beeswax, centuries-old money, and privilege.
My friends—Thomas, Lucas, and Sarah (who, thank God, is now fully detoxed from weird cults and her prana diet)—obviously refused to miss the chance to party in Eastern Europe. They took an endless low-cost bus to join me. Result: I sleep in silk sheets, and they crash in a grimy hostel two streets from my palace, with communal showers and squeaky bunk beds. The contrast is delicious, and I fully intend to enjoy it by taunting them.
But the ceasefire didn't last long.
On the first night, as I crossed the majestic lobby beneath crystal chandeliers the size of a small car, I froze mid-step. My blood stopped circulating.
There, comfortably settled into a huge tufted leather armchair, holding a glass of amber cognac, was Professor Adrien Valmont. Our criminal law professor.
He wasn't alone. A very young woman sat beside him, almost curled in on herself. She looked nervous—exhausted—worrying the fabric of her skirt while staring into nothing.
Before I could turn around or hide behind a ficus, our eyes met. Valmont didn't startle. He simply sketched a slow, unreadable smile. The kind of smile a predator gives when it's just spotted something interesting. With calculated slowness, he lifted his cognac ever so slightly in my direction, like a silent toast.
I nodded, throat tight, violently uncomfortable, and looked away. That man gives off the same energy as a great white shark released into a goldfish tank. Everything about him screams danger.
No, Eliot, I told myself. Not this week. You crossed Europe. You're wearing a suit that actually fits. And you haven't killed anyone in months.
I decided to ignore him completely. I had friends waiting at the bar, an evening to fund with the university's budget, and a vacation to savor.
That very night, the contrast between my scholarship-student life and my temporary existence as a laureate unfolded in all its obscene splendor. I'd invited Thomas, Lucas, and Sarah to join me at the panoramic bar at the very top of the Palais de Bohême.
The place looked like the pure definition of indecent luxury. The walls were lined with dark, padded velvet; the air smelled of sandalwood and cigars priced like kidney transplants; and the huge bay windows offered a breathtaking view of Prague's old rooftops punctured by gothic spires lit in gold. In a corner, a pianist in a tux played a melancholy jazz tune.
Thanks to the absurdly generous allowance my university had given me for "representation expenses," I was playing prince. I paid for thirty-euro cocktails without blinking. And above all: I wore the famous suit I'd rented for the competition. A midnight-blue three-piece, cut to the millimeter, that gave me a build nature had stubbornly refused me until now. Holding my crystal glass, leaning against the bar, I had—for the first time in my miserable life—the feeling of being someone important. A businessman. A golden boy.
It was in that atmosphere of inflated vanity that she made her entrance.
Victoria.
I remember the sound of her heels on the hardwood first. A slow rhythm. Confident. Predatory. She was in her thirties, poured into an emerald designer dress that looked like it had been sewn directly onto her skin. Her neck was bare, highlighting a discreet pendant that was clearly heavy in carats. She wore an intoxicating perfume—jasmine, with something sharper underneath, almost metallic.
She swept the room with ember eyes and—ignoring the middle-aged men in tailored suits devouring her with their gaze—crossed the bar straight toward our table.
Straight toward me.
She moved with the fluid elegance of a panther approaching a watering hole. In less than ten minutes, without even trying, she had completely captivated our little gang of vacationing peasants. Lucas literally spat out the olive from his martini. Thomas sat with his mouth half open like a fish out of water. Even Sarah—usually brutal in her judgments—looked hypnotized by Victoria's worldly aura.
But it was me she spoke to. Only me.
She sat very close—so close the fabric of her dress brushed my knee.
"So, Eliot..." she purred, voice deep and velvety. "What line of business are you in?"
Her very dark brown eyes flicked, casually on purpose, to the ice bucket where the vintage champagne bottle I'd just ordered sat like a trophy. In her mind, the calculation was already done: a guy in his twenties, impeccable bespoke suit, in the most expensive bar in Eastern Europe, ordering Dom Pérignon for friends dressed like magnificent hobos.
The equation was obvious. I was either a young tech heir... or a pampered son from an industrial dynasty.
She asked about my "investments" with fascinated interest. She giggled, subtly touching my forearm every time I made one of my stupid jokes—the ones that usually earn me embarrassed silence. And me, the supreme idiot, flattered by the attention of a goddess looking at me like I owned the world, I didn't correct her. I smiled mysteriously. I stayed vague about my law studies, letting the misunderstanding settle in like it belonged there.
It was the moment she leaned in to murmur a compliment near my ear that I felt it.
Bzzzt.
The shiver.
Not a simple goosebump. An electric jolt—violent, brutal—hitting the base of my neck and radiating down my spine to my fingertips.
My "antenna," silent since that other charlatan Pierre snapped his neck on his own robe, had just lit up with the power of an air-raid siren. It was the same sensation as with Jean-Pierre. The same as with old Dolores. My body—or rather that reptilian survival instinct buried deep inside me—was screaming death in the presence of this sublime woman.
This wasn't a red alert.
This was a black alert.
I rubbed my neck nervously, my palm suddenly damp, trying to chase away the physical unease—the sepulchral cold that had just taken hold of me.
Eastern European draft, I thought desperately, throwing a near-pleading glance at the vast windows. The insulation in these historic buildings is terrible—even in a five-star.
I took my glass and swallowed a long mouthful to force down the lump of anxiety in my throat. I shoved the warning violently into the deepest corner of my mind and locked it there.
For once. Just once in my entire existence paved with catastrophes, bad luck, and accidental corpses, a breathtaking woman was interested in me. I categorically refused to let my usual paranoia ruin this moment of absolute glory. I wasn't going to let my curse steal this night.
The days that followed felt like a waking dream.
Or a perfectly orchestrated mirage.
Victoria naturally inserted herself into our little group. She floated beside us as we walked across the majestic Charles Bridge, almost eclipsing the gothic statues frozen in the morning mist. We visited Prague Castle. We had dinner in chic restaurants where the menus didn't even display prices (which, thankfully, still "worked" on my university credit card).
For three days, she kept treating me with calculated deference. I was the jewel in her imaginary crown—the "young tech heir" about to revolutionize her stock portfolio.
And me?
I bathed in that golden misunderstanding with the bliss of a total fool. Ego—hard drug that it is—had made me completely blind, numbing even the icy shiver that tried to warn me on the first night.
But varnish always cracks. And in my case, it didn't just crack—it exploded mid-flight.
It happened on the third day, late afternoon, as we sat on the terrace of an Art Deco café near the Astronomical Clock. The mood was relaxed, the sun was sinking, and we were demolishing local pastries. I was about to bite into a cinnamon roll buried under an indecent amount of powdered sugar.
That's when Thomas—with his legendary tact and the subtlety of a bulldozer—opened his mouth.
"Careful, man," he said, pointing at me. "If you drop sugar on your pants, you're gonna cry. Reminder: you've been surviving on bargain-store butter pasta for six months, and you have to return that suit to the rental place tomorrow morning. One stain and the penalty will bankrupt you until you graduate."
The silence that followed lasted one second.
One single miserable second.
But at our table, time stopped.
I lifted my eyes to Victoria, a smile glued to my lips, ready to fire off a joke to save the moment—then the smile died on my face.
Victoria's expression had frozen. A fraction of a second—barely perceptible to an untrained eye. But with my habit of studying monsters, I saw it. Her left eye twitched, an involuntary micro-spasm. The mask of the charming socialite, the femme fatale enchanted by my brilliance, dropped with guillotine brutality.
In its place I saw an abyss. Reptilian cold. Her pupils tightened.
She'd understood.
The calculation recomputed at light speed: university budget, rented suit, bargain pasta.
And yet, with terrifying self-control, she recomposed herself. The warm sparkle returned—slightly more mechanical.
"Ah, student years..." she purred with a light laugh, almost perfect. "The best time of life."
I exhaled, thinking the storm had passed.
I should've run right then.
That evening, while my friends headed back to their hostel, Victoria approached me in the palace lobby. Her perfectly manicured nails brushed my sleeve.
"Eliot..." she murmured into my ear, dropping her voice an octave so it was only for me. "It's my last night here. I leave early tomorrow. Join me in my suite on the top floor. One last drink. Just you and me."
My heart missed a beat. Vanity completely silenced survival instinct. I agreed, believing the universe was finally rewarding me for all the misery.
Ten minutes later, I stepped into suite 604.
A huge suite. The light was dim—almost funereal—and a colossal bay window opened onto a balcony hanging over empty air and the city's roofs.
Victoria stood near a small table, back to me. When she turned, she held two champagne flutes. She offered me one with a smile that no longer reached her eyes.
I took the glass, suddenly horrifically nervous, and drank a long gulp in one shot to steady myself.
The taste hit immediately. Behind the bubbles and acidity, there was something else. A chalky, bitter, chemical aftertaste.
"You know, Eliot..." Victoria murmured, setting her own flute—untouched—on the table.
She stepped closer. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Her face hardened, carved from ice.
"I'm a very busy person. I hate wasting my time. And above all... I deeply hate being made a fool of."
My head started spinning. Not a light dizziness—no. The entire room lurched violently. The velvet walls seemed to liquefy.
The champagne—
My God, there was something in the champagne.
I tried to speak, to ask what was happening, but my tongue had become a dead slab of lead in my mouth. My knees buckled. My legs gave out without warning. I collapsed heavily onto the thick carpet less than a meter from the wide-open bay window and the freezing night beyond the balcony.
I couldn't move.
Couldn't blink.
My lungs struggled to find air.
I was trapped inside my own body.
Victoria approached, arms crossed, looking down at me with the expression of an entomologist observing a crushed insect. She let out a short, dry laugh with no human warmth. A mean laugh.
She stepped over my half-paralyzed body with terrifying grace.
"Stay there, pathetic little thing," she spat with contempt. "I'm going to smoke a cigarette on the terrace. And then... we'll see how to stage the tragic fall of a student who drank a little too much from this balcony. It'll be a beautiful accident. One more."
She walked out into the cold Prague night, turning her back on me, casually pulling out a gold lighter to spark her cigarette in front of the void.
On the carpet, panic screamed inside my skull, but no sound left my lips. Massive sedatives flooded my brain. My eyelids became anvils. The world crackled... then began to dim, slowly shutting off. Cold, fear, Victoria's face—everything blurred.
My consciousness went out.
Eliot fell asleep.
But in the abyss of my mind, with death approaching, the seat didn't stay empty for long.
Eliot slept.
But someone else had just woken up.
The body sprawled on the thick carpet stopped twitching. The ragged breathing that had been fighting the chemical suffocation induced by Rohypnol cut off sharply.
For two long seconds, the silence in suite 604 was absolute.
Then—eyelids opened.
Someone else was awake.
There was no trace of panic in those eyes. The opaque narcotic fog that should have dropped this metabolism into a deep, lethargic coma had mysteriously dissipated.
In its place: an abyss.
The pupils, widened by the room's dimness, were black, unfathomable—stripped of the very last spark of human emotion. It was the still, soulless gaze of a great white shark catching the scent of blood in the current.
Chemistry had just lost the battle. By putting Eliot's anxious consciousness to sleep, the sedative had made a fatal mistake.
It had unlocked the cage.
The body sat up. The movement was unnaturally fluid, defying basic laws of pharmacology and anatomy. The clumsy student, usually hunched under the weight of neuroses and civil codes, no longer existed. The spine aligned perfectly.
The posture became martial. Predatory.
Every muscle tightened, calibrated, under the exclusive control of an entity that knew neither doubt, nor hesitation, nor fear.
Outside, on the balcony hanging over Prague's rooftops, Victoria exhaled a long cloud of gray smoke that dissolved into the freezing night air. She shivered suddenly.
Not from the wind.
Something primitive had awakened at the base of her skull. The atmospheric pressure seemed to have dropped. The air had iced over.
With a smug smile on her painted lips—expecting to see her victim crawl pitifully toward the open window and beg—she turned slowly.
Her smile died instantly.
What she saw paralyzed her with pure, animal, primal terror.
The boy she'd just drugged to death stood upright in the doorway, huge in the frame of the open window. Moonlight cut his silhouette into the dark. His face was a perfect marble mask, unreadable. There was no anger. No hatred. No revenge.
Only the impassivity of an executioner.
A silent, irreversible verdict.
"Eliot?" she stammered, voice broken, unrecognizable.
Her fingers shook violently. The cigarette slipped from her hand and rolled across the stone tiles, scattering tiny sparks.
"But... that's impossible..." she breathed, stepping back, eyes wide on the specter before her. "I put enough Rohypnol in that flute to drop a horse..."
The entity didn't answer. It didn't need words.
It advanced. One step. Then another.
The gait was slow, silent, terrifyingly precise—almost surgical. It crossed the threshold and stepped onto the balcony.
Victoria backed up again, survival instinct screaming through every fiber, begging her to run.
But there was nowhere to go.
Her stilettos hit the thick glass railing.
Behind her: absolute void.
Dozens of meters of free fall to the merciless cobblestones of the palace's inner courtyard.
She opened her mouth to scream, to call for help, to bargain the way she always had.
But the thing inside Eliot never bargained.
In a sharp movement—clean, implacable—an arm snapped forward. The hand opened and planted flat, dead center on the young woman's sternum. No wild momentum. No explosive rage. Just the application of kinetic force—mechanical, horrifyingly powerful, grotesquely disproportionate for the student's usual build.
It pushed.
Victoria tipped backward. She didn't even have time to form the beginning of a sound. Surprise, terror, and the violence of the impact stole her breath. Her body went over the glass railing with the ridiculous ease of a limp rag doll.
And then she was gone into the void, swallowed instantly by Prague's night.
A few seconds later, a dull, distant, definitive sound echoed up from the courtyard below.
The lugubrious echo of bone breaking on stone.
Then the heavy silence of night reclaimed everything.
The entity stood motionless near the railing. It stared into the opaque emptiness for exactly two seconds—without leaning, without curiosity, without any trace of morbid interest.
The work was done.
The threat neutralized.
The vermin crushed.
Methodically, with absolute coldness, the silhouette turned and returned inside the suite. Its gestures followed with clinical efficiency. It took a clean cloth handkerchief from the suit pocket, picked up the poisoned champagne flute lying on the carpet, and wiped the glass meticulously—erasing the smallest fingerprint, the tiniest trace.
It did the same with the table's edge. It repositioned the armchair cushion to the millimeter, left the bay window wide open, and slipped out of suite 604 like a ghost, without a backward glance.
Descending one floor via the deserted service stairs, the body returned to the scholarship student's room. The movements stayed mechanical.
It removed the rented luxury suit, folded it carefully on the back of a chair so it wouldn't crease, and slid beneath the hotel's fresh sheets.
Eyelids closed in the dark. Slowly, the posture relaxed. Breathing became ragged again, then calm, soft...
Human.
The monster closed the cage door behind itself.
Eliot slept like lead, deeply unconscious of the perfect murder his own hands had just committed.
The next morning, an industrial-grade jackhammer had apparently decided to set up camp inside my skull.
I woke with a start in my bed, mouth pasty, tongue rough as sandpaper, convinced I'd had the worst hangover of my existence. Daylight leaking through the heavy curtains burned my retinas. I groaned, burrowing under the duvet, trying to gather the scattered shards of my consciousness.
I had no memory of the end of my night.
A total blackout.
A terrifying blank page.
I forced my brain to rewind. The panoramic bar. The cocktails. Thomas mocking my suit. Victoria's invitation. I remembered going up to the top floor. I remembered the dim light of her suite, the intoxicating perfume. The last clear image was her icy smile as she handed me the champagne flute and then...
Nothing.
Void.
I sat up with difficulty, feeling my arms, my legs. I was in boxers. I cast a panicked glance at the desk chair: my rented suit was folded there with manic care, the jacket perfectly draped over the back, the trousers aligned on the seat. Not a stain. Not a single wrong crease.
"Whew... deposit saved," I murmured, relieved. "I must've collapsed like a sack of cement when I got back, but at least my subconscious had the decency to protect my bank account."
That's when the shriek of sirens tore through the morning silence.
Not one.
Several.
Police and ambulances converging on the hotel.
My stomach tightened instantly. I threw on jeans, a wrinkled T-shirt, and rushed into the hallway, then into the elevator.
When I reached the majestic lobby of the Palais de Bohême, the atmosphere had nothing luxurious or hushed about it anymore.
It was chaos.
Czech police in uniform blocked access points. Yellow tape barred the glass doors leading to the back courtyard.
I slipped behind a group of frightened Japanese tourists. Near the counter, a pale valet was explaining the scene—in broken English—to a receptionist in tears.
"A guest... from the top floor. She fell during the night. The delivery guy found her this morning on the cobblestones."
My blood iced over.
Top floor.
Suite 604.
Victoria.
I approached the lobby's huge window, trembling. Through the glass, in the middle of the beautiful paved courtyard, I saw the white tarp. Forensics technicians moved around it.
I stood frozen, horrified. A wave of sincere, deep sadness swept over me.
My God... I thought, tears rising. Did she drink too much? Did she slip on the balcony because of the dew?
I ran back to my room, lungs burning. The moment the door closed, I was hit by a panic attack of legendary violence—Eliot's signature. I crouched, head in my hands, hyperventilating.
What if I was with her on the balcony? What if I tripped with my stupid big feet? What if I shoved her by accident with my legendary clumsiness?!
Terror clawed my insides for a good hour. Then logic clawed its way back.
I would remember, wouldn't I?
Even blackout drunk, you remember pushing someone into empty air. And I'd woken up in my own bed, one floor down, my suit folded with military rigor. I convinced myself I must've drunk that damned champagne, felt sick, and crawled back to my room to collapse before she even went out to smoke.
Czech police were brutally efficient. With the embassy's help—and given the hotel's pedigree—the case was wrapped up at record speed, smothering any media scandal.
That afternoon, I was questioned briefly as a simple witness who'd spoken to her at the bar. What the inspector told me left me speechless.
A search of suite 604 had revealed bottles of extremely powerful sedatives (smuggled Rohypnol) hidden in her toiletry bag, along with several partially empty bottles of alcohol. The first blood tests confirmed a lethal high-dose chemical cocktail.
But that wasn't the worst of it.
The official identification pinged Interpol hard. Victoria wasn't Victoria. Her real name was Sofie Arkia. A professional con artist—a world-famous "Black Widow"—wanted for scamming, ruining, and potentially "driving to suicide" three wealthy heirs in Western Europe. She was drowning in hidden debts and fleeing fake creditors.
The official conclusion fell like a blade—and it suited everyone: accidental death under massive influence of drugs and alcohol, with a strong probability of deliberate suicide given her damning criminal past and her desperate financial situation.
The next day, I left Prague by bus with my friends. In my travel bag sat my pleading prize: a heavy engraved glass trophy. In my head, a persistent headache that refused to go away.
And in my chest, a heavy heart—because for a few days I'd believed a woman could be interested in me for who I was, only to lose her in tragedy.
I was innocent. The police said so. The evidence showed it. My amnesia proved it. I was totally, indisputably innocent.
But as the bus crossed into Germany and I rested my head against the cold window, I realized something strange.
I reached up and touched the back of my neck.
The shiver was gone.
Completely.
That icy burn that had warned me on the first night—that sensation of imminent mortal danger—had evaporated. In its place was a flat calm, almost terrifying.
An inner peace I couldn't explain.
I didn't feel anxious.
Without knowing why, without being able to name what slept in the depths of my own darkness, I felt...
Sated.
Like a predator after the hunt.
Cause of death: Fall from a 30-meter balcony (officially: accident under heavy substances / suicide. In reality: a surgical push orchestrated by a meticulous alter ego).
Red Flag for a Black Widow: Never drug a guy whose body count is higher than yours. Rohypnol can put the man to sleep—but it has the annoying habit of waking the monster.
End of Chapter 5.