Ares had been locked in a closed-door meeting for one hour.
Exactly sixty minutes.
The same hour Shay disappeared.
The timing was too precise to be a coincidence. Too clean. Too deliberate.
It felt engineered.
As if an unseen hand had moved the pieces across a chessboard… or worse, like some master gamer had selected Shay and Ares as characters and was now playing with their lives for sport.
In that one hour, a lot had happened.
By the time Ares got the call, the trail was already dead.
No Shay. No Lara. No witnesses.
"I want Xander at the penthouse. Now."
His voice was low, controlled — the kind of calm that frightened people more than shouting.
His eyes slid to Jack, cold and cutting.
"And you ... you said there were no blind spots."
Jack stiffened. That was the report he got.
Besides, the initial footages he reviewed showed Shay or someone who looked like her, treasure hunting with the rest of her classmates.
