Chapter 109: BROTHER GONE
ARIA
We search the estate first.
Not because we believe he is still here — the cleared room and the note make his absence unambiguous — but because searching is the thing we know how to do when the alternative is simply standing in a cleared room reading a note that says *trust me one more time* and understanding that trusting him means not following him, which is the specific instruction I am least equipped to obey.
Liam runs the perimeter cameras. Dominic checks the vehicle register. Ariana goes through Marcus's room with the particular focused grief of someone looking for something to hold onto, and I stand in the doorway watching her do it, and neither of us says anything about the similarity between this moment and the last time Marcus disappeared, because the similarity is too obvious to need naming and naming it would make it heavier than we can currently afford.
