The scent of another woman’s vanilla perfume was still clinging to Gabriel Costa’s collar when he pushed open the front door at 5:15 in the morning.

Three days of relentless tracking through the freezing Canadian wilderness finally led Gabriel’s team to a cluster of abandoned logging cabins near the Saint Lawrence River. The blizzard had cleared, leaving behind a blinding white landscape of pine trees heavy with snow.

Luca held up a hand, signaling the armed men to halt behind a ridge. "Boss, footprints in the snow. Fresh ones. Heading toward the second cabin."

Gabriel didn't wait for orders. He sprinted through the knee-deep drifts, his boots crunching violently against the crust. He reached the cabin door, threw it open, and stepped inside.

The room was freezing. The fireplace was cold, its ashes gray.

In the center of the wooden floor stood two empty wooden bassinets.

And beside them, resting on a rough pine table, was a folded white envelope with his name written in Norah’s neat, elegant handwriting.

Gabriel’s hands shook as he picked up the letter. He unfolded the heavy parchment and began to read by the pale winter light filtering through the frost-covered window:

“Gabriel,

If you are reading this, it means your obsession finally outlasted my distance. You wanted to find me, so you found me. But you are too late to reclaim anything that matters.

You spent years treating our marriage like a convenient arrangement, a backdrop for your power, while you gave your real self to someone else. I stayed as long as I thought my silence could heal you. I stayed until I realized that a man who loves fear more than warmth will eventually freeze everyone around him.

I have taken the children to a place where your name carries no weight, where your money cannot buy compliance, and where no one will ever teach them to measure their worth by how many people they can terrify.

Do not chase us. If you force your way into our lives, you will only destroy what little innocence they have left. Let us go, Gabriel. Let us live.

— Norah.”

Gabriel dropped the letter. It fluttered down onto the dusty floorboards like a fallen leaf.

"Search the perimeter!" Gabriel screamed, his voice cracking with a terrifying, primal anguish that echoed through the empty cabin. "Find her! She can't be far!"

Luca and the men searched for hours, combing the frozen woods, questioning the local fishermen, tracking every set of tracks leading toward the river. But the trail ended abruptly at the edge of the frozen dock, where a small rowboat had been pushed out into the current and left to drift downstream.