"I need you to drive me to Ethan's apartment," I tell Sofia when she picks up.
Her silence stretches a few seconds too long. "Ari. Have you slept?"
"No."
"Ari, have you eaten anything today?" Her concern presses through the speaker with practiced warmth. "Actual food. Not caffeine and adrenaline."
"Not relevant. I need to search his apartment, Sof."
"It's extremely relevant and I need you to not collapse."
"Sofia." My voice fractures on her name. "Please. I can't just sit here. I need to do something, and his apartment is the only place the police haven't contaminated with their incompetence yet."
A pause, then the jingle of keys. "Twenty minutes. But you're eating something on the way, and I swear to God, if you argue…"
"I won't."
I've been awake for thirty-six hours. The police produced nothing except another condescending voicemail about "pursuing leads." Ethan has been gone for over forty-eight hours now, and every minute feels like watching him slip through my fingers into somewhere I can't reach.
The drive takes forty minutes through the outskirts of the city. Sofia fills the silence with small talk I can't absorb — hospital gossip, the hotel extending our booking "just in case", a text from my mother I haven't answered.
I just kept stare out the window and watched the city blur past, trying not to think about Ethan bound somewhere, bleeding, wondering why I haven't found him yet.
Trying not to think about the other possibility.
The one where I'm already too late.
Ethan's building is quiet mid-afternoon as we take the elevator to the third floor and I pull his key from my bag. He presented it on a keychain shaped like a tiny cactus — deadpan, holding it out like a man surrendering a national secret.
"Most commitment I've ever shown to a living thing," he said, and I laughed until I cried.
The memory lodges in my throat now, sharp-edged and impossible to swallow around.
The apartment is exactly as he left it. IKEA shelves organized by color. Simple couch with throw pillows at perfect right angles. His laptop closed on the desk, dark and accusatory.
"What are we looking for?" Sofia asks, hovering near the doorway.
"Anything." I move to the bookshelf, fingers already trailing along the baseboard. "Anything that explains this."
I start systematically. Far wall working inward, each book pulled out, flipped, spine checked for hidden compartments. Desk drawers next. Then the couch. Kitchen cabinets. Inside the oven, behind the refrigerator.
My hands are shaking. I'm crouched beside the bed, arm swept between mattress and box spring, when Sofia's voice cuts through the apartment like a scalpel. "Where did you learn to do that?"
My hand stills. "Do what?"
"That." She gestures at the chaos around us—overturned furniture, removed drawer faces, the laptop battery panel sitting open on the desk. "You're searching this place like a cop. Like someone who's done this before."
Her voice is careful, but there's something sharp underneath. Something that's been building for years.
I stand, brushing dust from my knees. "I've watched a lot of crime TV."
"Don't do that. Don't lie to me, not now. You owe me better than crime TV."
The exhaustion in her voice hits harder than anger would. This isn't just about today. This is years of unanswered questions. Years of smooth redirection and subjects changed so seamlessly she almost didn't notice.
Almost.
"You never let me meet Dante," she says, and his name in her mouth sounds foreign. "Two years together, and I never saw his face. Never knew his last name. You introduced me to every person in your life except the one you were sleeping beside."
She crosses her arms and I don’t like the expression on her beautiful heart-shaped face.
"You kept him completely separate from me, from everyone, like he was some kind of... I don't know. Secret."
Well, she's not wrong.
"And now your fiancé is missing and you're tossing his apartment. So I'm asking you — as your best friend, the woman who pinned your hem and held you through that breakup — what are you not telling me?"
I lean against Ethan's desk considering the answer.
I could deflect, I learned from a master. I could hand Sofia a crumb dressed as a meal, and she'd take it because that's what people do when they love you — they accept insufficient answers rather than lose you entirely.
But I'm so tired of insufficient answers. So tired of carrying this alone.
"I kept you away from Dante to keep you safe," I say finally. "He wasn't the kind of man you introduce to your friends."
"Safe from what?" Her voice has gone smaller.
"From his world. From everything that came with him." I look at my hands, the scar across my left palm catches the afternoon light. "I spent eighteen months inside a life where crime scenes were context. Background. Tuesday."
Sofia lowers herself onto the edge of Ethan's couch like gravity just doubled. "Ari. Was he…" She swallows hard. "Was Dante in the mafia?"
The word hangs in the air. So mundane, so completely insufficient for what Dante Serratore actually is. I don't answer directly, but the silence confirms everything.
"Jesus Christ." Sofia's hand covers her mouth. "You dated a mobster. For two years. And you never…" She stops, recalibrating. Then, almost like she's testing how absurd it sounds: "So what, you think he kidnapped Ethan? Like some jealous ex-boyfriend?"
She says it like a joke, like the premise is so ridiculous it couldn't possibly be real. But the second the words leave her mouth, something clicks into place in my chest.
What if it's not so ridiculous?
"Ari?" Sofia's watching my face. "I was kidding. You don't actually think…"
"I don't know." Honesty catches us both. "I don't think so, and I don't want to."
My scarred palm presses flat against the desk, my mind is already racing through possibilities I've been trying to avoid.
"But I don't know. When I left Dante, it wasn't... clean."
"What does that mean?"
"It means he didn't want me to leave." The admission tastes like copper. "It means that for six months after I left, I'd wake up at 3 AM convinced he was standing in my room."
Sofia's eyes widened. "Ari…"
The memories flood back—ones I've worked so hard to bury.
Dante's hand on the back of my neck at charity galas, possessive and gentle and unmovable. The way he'd watch me across rooms like I was the only person who existed. The way he'd say my name like it was a threat and a promise all at once.
"He wasn't violent," I continued, and Sofia's eyebrows shot up. "He never hurt me, but he was... consuming. Like being loved by him meant being swallowed whole."
"That sounds…"
"Obsessive," I finished. "Yeah, it was. On both sides." The admission costs me something. "I was addicted to him, Sof. To the intensity, the danger, the way he looked at me like nothing else in the world mattered. We'd fight until we broke things, then fuck until we forgot why we were angry. And then we'd do it all over again."
Sofia is very still, processing. "That doesn't sound healthy."
"It wasn't." I press my palms against my face. "But God, it felt alive. Every moment with him was either ecstasy or agony, and there was nothing in between. No quiet, no peace, just... him."
She stares at me like I'm a stranger. Maybe I am. Maybe the woman she thought she knew was always just a performance.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she asks quietly.
"Because the less you knew, the safer you were. Because…" My voice breaks. "Because I was ashamed."
The admission hangs between us. Sofia opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. "We need to tell the police. If you think he might be involved…"
"And tell them what? That my ex-boyfriend might be connected to organized crime and might have kidnapped my fiancé out of jealousy? They already think I'm hysterical. This will just confirm it."
"But if he's dangerous—"
"He's more than dangerous, Sof. He's untouchable."
I move through the apartment one more time, checking places I've already checked, because the alternative is accepting there's nothing here.
No hidden letters. No second phone. No clues.
Ethan Cole's apartment is exactly what it should be—the home of a quiet, man with no enemies and no secrets worth killing for.
The defeat settles across my shoulders like a weighted blanket.
I lock the door behind us and walk down the corridor toward the elevator, Sofia trailing behind me in stunned silence. Halfway there, I stop. A small black dome sits mounted in the ceiling above the elevator bank.
A security camera, red indicator light blinking in slow, patient intervals.
My heart kicks into a different rhythm.
"What?" Sofia asks.
I'm already moving back toward Ethan's apartment, toward the camera, calculating angles and sightlines. "If this building has cameras..."
Understanding dawns on Sofia's face. "The hotel has cameras."
"The hotel has cameras," I repeat, and for the first time in thirty-six hours, something sharp and bright cuts through the despair.