Chapter 475

The lights at Symphony Heights suddenly went dark.

A burst of static crackled through Isabella Valentine's walkie-talkie. "Mr. Sullivan hasn't arrived!"

"What?" She shot to her feet, nails digging into her palms.

The proposal team erupted into chaos.

Julian Langley was the first to pull out his phone, fingers trembling as he dialed. A robotic female voice answered: "The number you have dialed is currently unavailable..."

"Impossible!" Oliver Valentine snatched the phone. "He said he had a surprise for Evelyn this afternoon."

The pianist's hands hovered over the keys, eyes darting toward the entrance.

"Keep playing," Isabella ordered through gritted teeth. "Buy us time."

At the end of the rose-petal carpet, the elevator doors slid open.

Evelyn Laurent stepped into the scattered light, her heels crushing petals. She glanced around and smirked. "Someone's getting proposed to today?"

"Y-yes," Lillian Rothschild forced a smile as she approached. "Rumor says a trust fund kid rented the place."

The chandelier blazed to life.

Evelyn squinted at the half-hidden proposal sign—"Marry Me" flickering in the shadows.

"You..." Her gaze swept over their frozen expressions. "Waiting for someone?"

Lillian's champagne flute tilted, spilling crimson across the white tablecloth.

"Where's Ethan Sullivan?" Evelyn's voice turned glacial.

In the surveillance room, Harrison Whitmore stared at the monitors, face ashen. The last footage showed Ethan's car vanishing on the East Overpass, GPS signal lost.

"Pull all traffic cams along that route," Julian slammed the console. "I want him found—alive or dead."

The piano melody played on, its cheerfulness now grotesque.

Evelyn stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, her phone screen lighting up with the seventeenth unanswered call before going dark again. The reflection showed her eyes like shards of ice.

"Keep searching." Her gown sent tableware crashing as she turned. "Tear this city apart if you have to."

Outside, police lights sliced through the night. No one noticed the security camera on the rooftop stairwell had been turned to face the wall—sometime before the chaos began.