ALEX
The moment my plane touched down, I felt it—like the sky itself had exhaled in dread.
Something was wrong.
It wasn't anything obvious at first. No sirens. No messages flagged urgent. No missed calls blinking on my screen. But silence—*that* kind of silence—was its own kind of alarm.
The event was today. The one Arrde had been working toward for months. The one that was supposed to restore Stardom Group’s credibility and push it back into the spotlight. She’d been meticulous—hovering over every detail like a hawk, rewriting speeches at 2 AM, snapping at interns for crooked labels and poorly timed slides.
And yet now… nothing.
No chaos. No flurry of frantic calls. No voice notes peppered with thinly veiled panic. No irritated texts from Arrde demanding to know why I hadn’t re
