"I want every security feed from the past six hours pulled and analyzed by a team that understands the meaning of discretion."
My voice cuts through the war room we've established on the thirty-second floor, where monitors glow with news coverage. The suit I found on Ethan's bed lies folded beside me—I haven't been able to let it go since we left his apartment three hours ago.
The fabric still holds the faintest trace of his scent, and something in my chest fractures every time I touch it.
"Legal is already filing injunctions against every outlet that ran the story," Blaine reports from his position near the window. "We're citing invasion of privacy, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The journalist's editor is receiving a call from our attorneys as we speak, and I've personally contacted three board members who owe me favors to ensure the narrative shifts before morning."
"The narrative doesn't matter if we can't find him." Cole's fingers fly across his laptop keyboard, pulling footage from cameras I didn't know we had access to. "I've traced his path from the presentation hall through the service corridors."
"Show me everything you have, starting from the moment he left the bathroom where Hargrove cornered him."
I move to stand behind Cole's shoulder, watching grainy images flicker across the screen.
"There." Cole freezes the footage on a figure exiting through the loading dock at 4:47 p.m. "Service exit, east side of the building. The timestamp puts this approximately twenty minutes after the presentation ended. From here, I lose him in the alley, but I cross-referenced nearby ATM cameras and found this."
The next image shows Ethan at a cash machine six blocks from our building, withdrawing what appears to be the maximum daily amount.
"He's covering his tracks," Blaine says. "Cash withdrawal means he doesn't want credit card transactions leading us to his location. He's running, Asher, and he's running smart."
"Smart enough to rent a car with cash instead of using rideshares we could trace." Cole pulls up another camera feed. "Gray sedan."
"Which direction did he go after leaving the lot?"
"The trail goes cold at the interstate junction." Cole's voice carries frustration I rarely hear from him. "He could have gone north toward Connecticut, south toward New Jersey, or continued east toward Long Island. Without knowing which route he took, we're looking at hundreds of miles of possibilities."
I straighten, forcing my mind into the analytical mode that has served me through every crisis—even as something beneath my ribs screams that analysis isn't enough, that I need to be moving, searching, tearing apart every mile between here and wherever he's hiding.
"Get me Jules Moreau from the creative department. If anyone knows where Ethan might go, it's him."
Jules arrives twelve minutes later, his hair disheveled and his eyes carrying a wariness that borders on defiance.
He stands before my desk with shoulders squared, but I can see the tension in his jaw—a man caught between professional obligation and personal loyalty.
"You wanted to see me, Mr. Varkas?"
"We need your help finding Ethan, Mr. Moreau. You're his closest friend at this company, and we believe you may have information about where he might have gone after the presentation ended."
"With respect, sir, I'm not sure I'm comfortable sharing information about Ethan's whereabouts with the men who—" He stops himself, swallowing whatever accusation was rising in his throat. "I apologize. That was out of line."
"Finish the sentence." I lean forward, needing to hear it. "The men who what?"
Jules meets my gaze with surprising steadiness.
"The men who let him get destroyed in front of twelve thousand people without saying a single word in his defense. Sir."
The words land exactly where they should—in the soft tissue of my guilt.
"You're right. We failed him, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to understand why fear paralyzed me. But I need you to understand that our silence wasn't indifference, Mr. Moreau. It was the misguided certainty that anything we said would make the situation worse for him."
"Worse?" Jules's professional composure cracks slightly. "Forgive me, but how could it possibly have been worse than watching him realize the men he trusted had abandoned him?"
"Because any statement we made would have been twisted into confirmation of every accusation that journalist leveled against him." My voice drops. "If I had defended him publicly, the story becomes 'Varkas brothers confirm inappropriate relationship.' We were trying to protect him from having our defense weaponized against his credibility."
"That's a very logical explanation, Mr. Varkas." Jules's tone softens almost imperceptibly. "But it means absolutely nothing to a man who's been conditioned since childhood to interpret silence as rejection."
"I know we have no right to ask for the chance to fix it. But I'm asking anyway, because the alternative is letting him believe the worst things anyone has ever said about him are true."
The office falls silent. Cole and Blaine watch from either side of the room, their presence a reminder that I'm not the only one who needs this.
"He called me an hour ago from a burner phone." Jules's voice loses its edge entirely. "He wouldn't tell me where he is, only that he's safe and that he needs time. He sounded broken, sir. Completely empty."
"Did he say anything else? Anything that might help us understand what he's thinking?"
"He said you didn't defend him, and he said it like he was stating a fact about gravity." Jules pauses, something painful moving behind his eyes. "He probably thinks the photographs gave you an excuse to walk away."
The words hit my chest like physical blows.
He thinks we don't want him anymore.
"Where is he, Mr. Moreau? Please, if you know anything about his location—"
"I can't tell you that, sir. He never told me." Jules straightens. "But I can tell you he's physically safe, and he's not planning to hurt himself."
"Thank you for your honesty. You're dismissed."
Jules nods once and leaves, closing the door behind him.
Cole's fingers are already moving across the keyboard.
"I can trace the cell tower the burner connected to. It won't give us an exact location, but it will narrow the search area significantly."
"Do it."
The trace takes four minutes. When the results populate, I stare at the map on Cole's screen.
"Rural Connecticut," Cole says quietly. "Approximately sixty miles northeast, somewhere within a fifteen-mile radius of this tower. Mostly farmland, small towns, and the kind of anonymous motels that accept cash without questions."
"Then we search every one of them." I rise from my chair, finally releasing the suit I've been clutching like a lifeline. "We divide the territory into sectors, we visit every motel within that radius, and we don't stop until we find him."
Blaine reaches for his coat. Cole closes his laptop.
We will tear apart every mile of that county until we bring him home.