CHAPTER 4. MISSING.

DORIAN'S POV

The first thing I noticed was the door slightly ajar.

My ears perked up and I frowned slightly. Ezra was usually very careful about his privacy and his door was always shut. Always.

The first thought that blared in my head was that something had happened to him.

So, I knocked gently, waiting for a response, even a slight whiff of his scent. Nothing.

With a sigh, I pushed the door open and strolled inside, prepared for anything.

Anything except the sight that greeted me.

The window was open, air whooshing into the empty room.

My gaze drifted around the small space, taking in the sight.

The room was immaculate. Bed made with the kind of look that suggested it hadn't been slept in. His desk was cleared and his wardrobe closed. Everything that belonged to the house like the furniture, the fittings, the books from Caelan's library were untouched and in their correct places.

But everything that belonged to Ezra — gone.

I stood in the doorway for a long moment. Nothing was out of place. That was the thing that kept snagging, there was no evidence of hurry, no evidence of distress, no indication that this was anything other than a deliberate and thoroughly considered decision executed with irritating precision. Even the bed. Even the desk.

Ezra never left.

Where did he go?

I checked the wardrobe. It was almost empty.

Fuck.

I pulled out my phone and placed it to my ear.

Lucien picked up on the second ring which meant he hadn't been sleeping, which was its own separate issue. "What?”

"Come to Ezra's room."

A pause followed. "Why?”

"Because I'm asking you to."

Another pause but this time longer, then the line went dead.

I called Caius next and he answered almost immediately. "Ezra's room. Now."

"Is something–"

"Now, Caius."

I didn't call Riven. Riven would hear the movement in the corridor and come on his own, which he did, appearing in the doorway forty seconds after Lucien, who had arrived, taken one look at the empty room and gone very quiet in a way that mirrored ours.

Caius arrived last, phone still in hand and stopped just inside the door. His eyes moved across the room the way we did as he opened his mouth.

"Don't," Lucien said

"I was going to say–"

"I know what you were going to say. Don't."

Caius closed his mouth and just sighed.

The four of us stood in Ezra's empty room in the early morning quiet and nobody said anything for a moment that stretched longer than it should have.

"When do you think?" I said finally.

"Some time last night," Caius said, because Caius would have clocked the last confirmed sighting whether he meant to or not. "He was at dinner. After that–" he gestured at the room.

Lucien moved past me to the wardrobe, pulled it open, looked at the false panel. Something crossed his face that he shut down immediately then he turned around. "He had a bag packed. I remember peeping at it."

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"I don't know yet.”

"How do you not–"

"Lucien." My voice came out flat and he stopped. We looked at each other for a moment but he looked away first, jaw tight, and that told me everything about where his head was.

Riven hadn't moved from the doorway. He was looking at the desk but he said nothing. His expression said nothing either. With Riven it was always the stillness that communicated but I told myself I would come back to that later.

"I'll inform Caelan," I said. "In the meantime I want financial tracking on every account we have on file for him. Surveillance footage from last night pulled and reviewed. I want to know what time he left, which route he took, and where he went."

"And if the footage doesn't show anything?" Caius said carefully.

"Then that tells us something too."

I left them in the room and went down the corridor to Caelan's study, knocked once, and entered. Caelan was already at his desk as always, he kept hours that made the concept of sleep feel theoretical and he looked up when I came in.

My arms were folded across my frame, lips moving as I explained and Caelan listened without interrupting. His expression didn't do very much, which was normal, but there was a specific quality to his stillness as I spoke that I catalogued and set aside. When I finished, he was quiet for a moment..

"And your assessment?” he said.

“I'm not sure…”

Caelan nodded slowly and he looked at the window, then back at me. "Find him," he said.

I almost rolled my eyes.

"I intend to."

"Quietly, Dorian." Caelan warned.

Non negotiable.

"Of course."

I went back to my office and I deployed every resource I had methodically and without urgency because urgency was a form of panic and panic was a form of admitting that the situation was beyond management, which it wasn't. This was simply a problem that required the correct application of the correct tools.

My phone rang for a bit and I sighed before picking.

The person I had hired to trace Ezra. There better be news.

"The financial trail doesn't go cold," he said when I picked up. "It was erased professionally. Whoever helped him knew your operation from the inside."

I was quiet for a moment. "No one helped him," I said.

"Dorian–"

"He did this himself." I said it with more certainty than I had a minute ago, because the longer I sat with the evidence of the last twelve hours the more obvious it became that I was wasting time.

The truth settled deep inside me and fear gripped me.

Ezra was… missing.

And I had one day to find him.