"And?"
"And I need you to draft me a contract." Olivio turned from the window. "I'm backing out of the Marquez deal."
Silence. Not the heavy kind. The calculating kind. Eight months of positioning, the Vancouver waterfront property, the meetings, the dinner, the entire strategic framework that had justified everything, all of it being weighed against five words.
"That's a twenty-three-million-dollar decision."
"I'm aware."
"The Marquezes won't take it well. Jun is old-school. He'll see it as a personal—-"
"I don't care."
Another silence. Longer this time. And then Adriano said, with the gentleness of a man who'd once sat in a hotel room at three in the morning wondering if Shayla Kontides would ever speak to him again: "It's about time."
Olivio's jaw shifted. "Don't."
"I've known you since you were eighteen, Olivio. I watched you at dinner. I watched you carry that girl's book out the door like it was made of glass. I've been waiting for this call."
"I didn't call for commentary."
"No. You called because you need help finding your wife, and the contract is your way of proving to yourself that this is real before you let yourself fall apart." A pause. "Am I wrong?"
Olivio said nothing.
"I'll have the withdrawal drafted within the hour. Now tell me what you need."
"I need to find her. She's not at the apartment. She left the office sometime this afternoon, and no one—-" He stopped. Breathed. The sentence had almost broken in the middle, and Olivio Cannizzaro did not break sentences. "No one saw which direction she went."
"I'll call Shayla. She'll reach out to Chelsea's phone. If that doesn't work, I have resources—-"
"Use them."
"Olivio."
He waited.
"She's not gone. She's hurt. There's a difference. The ones who are hurt don't go far."
"Thank you for—-" He stopped. Could not say those words again. "I'll be here."
He ended the call.
His hand didn't leave the phone. He stood there, in the office he'd built from nothing, surrounded by the evidence of twelve years of discipline and strategy and control, and he looked at the room the way a man looked at a house after a fire, recognizing the structure, unable to find anything in it that still worked.
The couch where Chelsea had curled up with her Bible. The spot on the carpet where her Mary Janes had left a faint impression because she always sat with her feet tucked the same way. The conference table where he'd once closed the blinds and kissed a woman in a blue-flowered dress and set in motion the nine days that had unmade everything he understood about himself.
He dialed Aivan.
His brother answered immediately, which meant Aivan already knew. Sienah would've told him, or his father, or the invisible network of Cannizzaro women who communicated information faster than any system Olivio had ever built.
The conversation was short. Aivan didn't sayI told you so.He didn't reference the balcony. He simply said: "What do you need?"
"Eyes. Anywhere she might go. She doesn't have family in Toronto, Edgar is the closest thing, and he's already—-" Olivio's hand was gripping the back of his desk chair, knuckles bloodless. "She doesn't know this city. She's been here nine days and she doesn't know anyone who isn't connected to me."
"I'll make calls."
"Aivan."
