When he returned to the penthouse that night, slightly intoxicated from celebration and applause, the silence felt… unusual.
“Olivia?” he called out, loosening his tie.
No answer.
He checked the bedroom.
Empty.
Her closet—half gone.
Her suitcase—missing.
That was when something unfamiliar crept into his chest.
Not guilt.
Not yet.
Just… irritation.
He grabbed his phone and dialed her number.
Once.
Twice.
Five times.
Straight to voicemail.
His jaw tightened.
“She’s being dramatic,” he muttered under his breath.
But Olivia wasn’t being dramatic.
She was gone.
Hours earlier, while the city was still asleep, Olivia had already left Manhattan.
No assistants.
No driver.
No goodbye note.
Just a single suitcase and a quiet resolve that had replaced the shattered pieces of her heart.
She sat by the window of a train heading north, her reflection faint against the glass. The early morning light softened her features, but her eyes no longer held the warmth they once did.
Her phone buzzed again.
Alexander.
She stared at the screen for a long moment.
Then she turned it off.
Back in New York, Alexander’s patience wore thin.
By the second day, irritation turned into something sharper.
Control slipping.
He contacted her friends.
No one had seen her.
He called her design clients.
Nothing.
He even reached out to her mother’s old contacts in Ohio.
Dead ends.
It didn’t make sense.
Olivia wasn’t impulsive. She wasn’t reckless.
She didn’t just disappear.
On the third day, the police were quietly involved.
Missing person.
