Chapter 15. Knox
The silence fell at once.
Me: Good morning. Don't forget your appointment with the academic advisor. Let me know how it goes.
By noon, there was no reply.
I felt a prickle of irritation. Florian was disorganized, yes, but he had been glued to his phone for weeks now.
I told myself he was sleeping off a late study session, or perhaps he had forgotten to charge his device, a careless habit I intended to correct.
I sat through a lunch with a potential investor, nodding at the appropriate times, but my hand kept drifting to my pocket, touching the cold metal casing, waiting for the haptic pulse that never came.
By evening, the irritation had soured into a heavy, dull unease. I sent another message.
Me: Florian?
The message sat there. Delivered. Not read. The tiny checkmarks mocked me from the glowing screen.
Wednesday arrived with a gray, suffocating sky. I checked the phone before my eyes had fully adjusted to the morning light. Nothing. No bratty excuses, no late-night confessions, no pictures of his breakfast. Just the white void of the chat window, ending abruptly with my own bubble.
I went to the office, but I wasn't really there. My body went through the motions, signing papers, nodding at reports, drinking coffee that tasted like ash, but my mind was miles away, tearing through scenarios.
Had I pushed too hard? He was young, so terribly young, and damaged. Perhaps the reality of calling a man twice his age Daddy had curdled in his stomach. The thought was a sharp twist of nausea that made me loosen my tie.
I called him at 2:00 PM. It went straight to voicemail.
"Florian," I said to the recording, hating the slight tremor of urgency in my own voice. "Call me back. Immediately. I am not angry, but I need to know you are safe."
Thursday bled into Friday. My temper became frayed. I snapped at a junior analyst for a formatting error. I dismissed the room, slamming the door, and stood alone in the center of the room, breathing hard, my hands shaking. It wasn’t about them, and I’d have to apologize later.
It was about the void. It was about the terrifying realization that my control, my wealth, my influence, my discipline, my love, meant absolutely nothing if he chose not to answer.
By late afternoon on Friday, the fourth day of silence, I stood at the window, staring down at the rivers of headlights flowing endlessly through the city. Somewhere down there was my boy.
Was he hurt?
The thought crystallized, icy and sharp. Maybe it wasn't that he was ghosting me. I knew him now. Florian was loyal. That was one of his main traits. He wouldn't just vanish. I knew him, and I was sure of it. It wasn't a desperate delusion: he wouldn't do this. Not unless he couldn't answer.
And if he couldn't answer...
I thought of his father. Finn. The man who texted him for booze money. The Leech, as he called him. I thought of the precariousness of Florian's life, the thin line he walked between survival and disaster, even after I’d insisted that he used my card.
I looked at my reflection in the darkened glass. The man staring back wasn't the composed CEO who built empires. His eyes were dark, hollowed out by sleeplessness, but burning. The tie was gone, unknotted and thrown onto the desk hours ago. The top button of his shirt was undone.
I was done waiting. I was done respecting boundaries that might be getting him hurt. I turned from the window and pressed the intercom button on my desk.
"Find my car," I said. My voice was low and dark.
"Sir?" Sarah’s voice crackled through the speaker, hesitant. "You have the gala at seven..."
"Cancel it," I ordered. "Cancel everything. And bring the car around. Now."
I released the button before she could argue. I grabbed my coat, not bothering to check my phone again. I was going to find him, and if anyone stood in my way, if anyone had touched a hair on his head, I would burn their world to the ground.