The city was louder than ever, but Ethan hadn’t heard it in months.

He existed in silence now — not the kind that brought peace, but the kind that ate away at you from the inside. Days bled into nights. Meetings blurred into meaningless words. He’d built his life around noise, but without her, even chaos felt empty.

It had been almost a year since Amara disappeared. Twelve months of unanswered questions. Twelve months of pretending he didn’t still check every airport record, every anonymous photograph, every whisper of her name online.

His friends had stopped asking how he was. His mother had stopped pretending to care. And Ethan Blackwell...