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We searched every room… anywhere either one of us thought he might’ve been. Everything looked normal. His clothes were there. His personal things were there. Nothing looked packed or disturbed. It was like Caspian had stepped out for a minute and simply never came back.

Then we checked the garage.

Every one of Caspian’s vehicles was still at the house—his customized Mercedes-AMG G 63, the Bentley Bentayga he drove when he wanted something more polished, the Rolls-Royce Cullinan he barely let anybody touch, the black Ferrari he kept spotless, and the old-school he only brought out when the weather was right.

Five vehicles sat exactly where he had left them, like he had never planned to go anywhere at all, which somehow made his disappearance feel even more impossible.

If Caspian hadn’t driven away in one of his own cars, then he had either left with somebody else or been taken somewhere.

Neither possibility made me feel any better.

Henrietta kept calling his phone while I moved through the house yelling his name, even though deep down I already knew he wasn’t there.

He wasn’t anywhere.

From there, the search widened.

Henrietta told me to focus on the places I could easily get into—Caspian’s legitimate businesses, restaurants he frequented, hospitals, hotels, anywhere he might have gone without drawing attention. She would handle his friends, the warehouse off the highway, and the other places connected to his business.

That had stopped me cold.

“You’re going to the warehouse?”

“Yes.”

I frowned at her. I knew enough about Caspian’s world to know the men hanging around some of those places weren’t exactly sitting behind desks in button-down shirts. They carried guns openly, handled business I deliberately stayed out of, and weren’t the type of men I would’ve expected a woman Henrietta’s age to go questioning by herself.

“Henrietta, those men—”

“Lakelyn.” Her tone was calm, but firm enough to end the argument before I could finish it. “I know exactly who those men are. Let me handle that side of things.”

Something about the way she said it made me pause.

Not I’ll call somebody.

Not I’ll have someone look into it.

But I’ll handle it.

“Are you sure?”

Henrietta chuckled. “Positive. Lakelyn, I’ve got it under control. You worry about finding my son. Let me worry about where to look.”

I didn’t understand why she seemed so comfortable with any of it, but Caspian had been missing less than twenty-four hours, and I was too terrified to stand there interrogating his mother about something that could wait.

So I did what she asked.

Over the next day, I checked every legitimate place I could think of while Henrietta disappeared into the parts of Caspian’s life I had always kept at arm’s length. Every few hours, we checked in with each other, and every conversation ended the same way.

Still no word from Caspian.

He hadn’t called anybody or stopped by anywhere. Nobody had been told he was leaving town, taking a trip, or disappearing for a few days.

By the second afternoon, his phone stopped ringing entirely and started cutting straight to an automated message.

As the investigation continued, there was no plane ticket, rental car reservation, or hotel booking in his name. The investigators hadn’t found any activity in the personal account I knew Caspian kept for himself either. There was no unusual spending, no sudden withdrawals… nothing that suggested a man with millions at his disposal had simply decided to get up and start another life somewhere else. It was as if someone had reached down from the sky and plucked Caspian clean off the face of the earth.

And the fuckin’ police?