Chapter 188

Lauren's POV

Today felt like a crushing, endless failure. The whole day had slipped through our fingers and with it any hope of finding Aria. Ethan was nowhere to be found. Aria was nowhere. I lay flat across the backseat of the car as if it were my bed, the leather cool beneath my cheek. The tears I had been holding so tightly all day began to leak out anyway, slow and relentless. There was nothing I could do to stop it.

The pain sat in my chest like a weight I hadn’t felt since Elena died. That grief had been a raw, jagged thing — a bright, unbearable wound and today that old ache came back, ugly and familiar. Only now it was mixed with a fear so sharp I could hardly breathe, what if Aria wasn’t alive? The thought looped through my mind, relentless. He could have taken her somewhere and killed her, then disappeared. The silence of the last few hours did nothing to soothe that fear; if Ethan wanted to get back at me, I expected a call by now, a ransom d