At this time of the day, the sun had climbed in the sky to settle directly overhead, flooding everything visible with bright, scorching rays and, of course, the blistering heat. Sethos Desalegn sighed and cranked up the air conditioner knob. Even at the highest, he was still slick with sweat gumming his shirt to his body.

The AC was either broken or was (believe it or not), at the highest. Seth sighed again, in frustration. Typical summer. 

He almost couldn't believe he had come from the U.K yesterday, it had been raining like it was the last there. Such a mocking contrast to the suffocating heat here.

He turned the knob again and groaned when it wouldn't give. First thing, he had to get a car as soon as possible. A real, classy car that actually looked and worked like it had been made this century, not something like this ancient thing the car rental had given him. The goth guy at the desk had insisted it was a 2010 model Subaru. Pah! They probably told that to all foreign customers who were rich and dumb enough to pre-order before arrival.

The fact that he was now a billionaire still had a little getting used to. Yes, he had always been rich—coming from a family of money—but it was still a huge contrast to the billions of dollars and properties in his name now.

He turned on the radio and almost groaned out in frustration at the traffic report blaring from the speakers. A faulty eighteen wheeler on the HOV lane. Great! First time in Atlanta and he was hating it already. It wasn't even rush hour yet and he had been stuck at the interstate for almost twenty minutes. Okay, almost fifteen minutes. But still, that was too much for him to bear, especially in this horrible sun. Was the ozone layer so striped here that it seemed like the sun was roasting directly over the city?

The blase traffic reporter continued to drone on and Seth zoned him out, picking up a marathon flyer to fan his hot body. He was going through all these discomfort and stress because of that bitch. How he was going to make her pay when he laid his hands on her. And that would be very soon. He was very sure of it. He had been on a cold trail in Scotland when the sure information came through. 

His source had provided a picture that definitely was her. With an Atlanta police. Served her right she had been pulled over for wrong driving. He would find her in no time. She wouldn't see him coming. He would swoop down on her like an hawk on a chick and grasp her firmly in his it claws and shake her.

At first, when Alice had run away, he had been appalled and heart broken. Then, slowly, the feeling had been replaced with relief. Soothing, quiet relief. He had thought their marriage was fine, but, apparently, Alice didn't. Or just wanted out for no reason. She had jilted him and legged it. 

The relief was mainly because they weren't legally married. They had met and fallen madly in love and gotten wedded traditionally in a quiet Panaman island. No legal document binded them together. That had pissed his parents off a lot. Seth believed his Ethiopian father had mostly been pissed off he had married a white girl, and a British at that. His Egyptian mother had just hated him for denying her a proper marriage.

He had moved far away from home to defy his parents. He had started the  business with Alice to show them he could survive on his own without their trust fund. And when the business had thrived and boomed, his parents had sure been surprised. Then they'd gone soft in him and had even forgiven him.

Everything had been sort of fine, till his parents started to pester him for grandchildren. He had wanted children, too, but Alice didn't quite share his inclinations. He never asked her directly, but from her attitude towards kids and the general talk about having kids, he didn't think she wanted one. 

He had just woken up one day and discovered her gone. All the money in their account wiped out to the last dollar. 

Then anger and the thirst for revenge had set in. He had gotten his PI license for a few years now, but never made it his primary profession. Sure, he had helped find a few missing persons and solve a few murders when he felt like taking a case, but his real business had mostly taken up his working time.

And Alice had taken it all. Jilted him and sold their business and run away with the money.

It had been a huge ego pop. He was a PI and his wife had run away right under his own nose. So, why not find her? Nothing was stopping him, he had always solved cases he took, so what was the case of a runaway bitch?

And then his noble Egyptian grandfather had died and willed all his billion dollar multi-national estate property to him. Seth, being a business minded person himself and still seething from his wife's deceit, had taken the business with both hands and expanded it in the span of one month. It had gone from a billion dollar property to a multi billion dollar company. All in one month.

He had been on the news for a while. He'd bet Alice had seen it. She had to have seen it and would deeply regret leaving him. So, really, she was good riddance to bad rubbish. If she had stayed till he became a billionaire, he'd have trusted her with his accounts as well and she'd have cleared everything.

Now that he was a billionaire, the few hundreds of thousands she had gotten away with paled in comparison, but the only thing driving him to find her was his ego. And his sense of justice. He was a useless PI if his own wife escaped from under his nose and he never found her.

The blare of the horn behind him sucked him back into his body in the boiling heat of the afternoon sun. The hold up in front of him had cleared a little and cars now moved freely. He shot the annoyed Honda owner an apologetic smile through the rear-view mirror, although the guy couldn't possibly see it, and stepped on the gas.