Hours ago.
Too many hours ago.
I sit there waiting for her to return.
She doesn’t.
The recording keeps going. Minutes stretch to hours and still there’s nothing. Just that same hollow stillness swallowing the rooms she should be filling.
The pressure in my chest turns into something sharp.
Something lethal.
“Come on, sweetheart,” I coax the empty feed. “Where the hell are you?”
I check the time. She’s been gone too long. It’s past reasonable, past normal, past every threshold of explainability.
Her phone goes straight to voicemail when I call. By the fifth time, it feels like the dial tone is a blade. A cold, jagged sound that cuts into me over and over as the robotic voice informs me to leave a voicemail. As if a fucking voicemail will do her any good.
My vision blurs at the edges, not with panic, but with the kind of dread that feels ancient. Familiar. The kind I haven’t felt since the first time I realised losing her would ruin me.
I try every rational thought I can reach:
Maybe her battery died.
Maybe she stayed out with friends.
Maybe she fell asleep at someone else’s place.
Maybe, maybe—
But all of them collapse under the same brutal truth:
Lily didn’t come home.
I slam onto the edge of the sofa, elbows braced on my knees, staring at the flat as if it could tell me where she is. But it’s empty and silent. Every blank corner screams her absence. My chestfolds in on itself, sharp and relentless, and I don’t even realise I’ve whispered her name until it leaves me like a prayer I’ve never learned.
“Lily… where are you?”
The echoing silence shatters something inside me, a jagged, irreparable fracture cutting through every nerve, leaving fire in its wake. My hands curl into fists so tight my nails bite into my palms. The room tilts and my heart hammers, echoing in my teeth, ricocheting off the walls, filling the hollow spaces she left behind.
I’ve seen this before, from the sidelines—when Angus took Cora—and Owen was forced to watch helplessly while she was taken from right under his nose. How did he breathe? How did he think clearly? I can’t evenseestraight as a tsunami of rage crashes through me, blurring the edges of my vision.
Urgency bites at my heels, screaming at me to get the fuck up and find Lily. I need to get to her before she vanishes without a trace. Before Helen’s story gets repeated. Every cell in my body rebels against the mere idea of waiting, of hesitation. Every nerve screams. My breath is stolen in ragged gasps, my vision flickers, and the world tilts violently, as if it too knows something vital has been ripped away.
I snatch my phone, hands trembling so violently I nearly drop it. Owen. Jonathan. Anyone. I need her. I need to know she’s alive. I need to get to her. And if I have to tear the city apart with my own two hands to do it, then so be it.
Because no one touches a single hair on Lily’s head without paying for it.
My fingers fumble over the screen as I ring Owen. The line clicks, and his voice comes through, confusion laced with worry bleeding down the line.
“Matt?”
“She’s gone,” I blurt. The words tearing out of me before I can think. “Lily’s missing.”
For what feels like forever, he says nothing, a loaded silence hanging between us. For all his teasing about me falling for my stepsister, I doubt he ever imagined he’d see the day I out right admit I’m still caught up in her web.
“How do you know?” he asks hesitantly.
