Kairo had been searching for weeks.
Every lead he followed had gone cold, every thread unraveled before he could get to it. Arielle had left without a trace — no credit card usage, no calls, no messages, nothing.
But he didn’t stop.
He couldn’t.
The silence she left behind gnawed at him in ways he couldn’t explain. It wasn’t just guilt anymore. It wasn’t just regret.
It was the sharp, unrelenting awareness that he had destroyed the only thing that mattered.
He finally got a break when one of his men traced a small, irregular purchase — paint supplies bought with cash in a coastal town three hours from the city. Normally, that wouldn’t mean much, but Arielle’s old art supplier confirmed something else: someone matching her description had come in weeks ago, asking about cheaper option
