As the whispers of Victor Newman’s alliances and Aristotle Dumas’s shadows swept through Genoa City, Tara grew more certain. Harrison’s future was not safe — not here, not now. And so she planned. Quietly. Painstakingly. A tutor who doubled as an informant. A security guard at Milan International with a weakness for high-yield tips. A burner phone with only one message programmed in: “He’s safe. But only for now.”

At ten minutes before midnight, she slipped through the side gate like a ghost. Harrison looked up, surprised but smiling, and whispered “Mama.” In a moment that shattered every rule, she scooped him into her arms. She left no trace but a handwritten letter, folded neatly and left in the mailbox. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way… You’ve been good parents, but I can’t watch our son be raised by ambition and fear. I will return him when you’ve learned to put his well-being first. I love him more.”

The nanny barely had time to call out before Tara vanished into the night. By the time the first Amber Alert went live, she and Harrison were aboard a small plane flying toward Tuscany.

In a villa nestled among rolling hills and olive groves, she began a new life. Harrison played with blocks by the window. Tara made pasta, read bedtime stories, tucked him in. She told him they were on vacation. That it was just the two of them for now. But the fear never left her eyes. And every night, she kissed his forehead and whispered a promise: “One day, we’ll come home.”

Back in Genoa City, Kyle was falling apart. He ran to the police with shaking hands, then to Summer, who collapsed in the doorway when she heard the news. The media descended like vultures. Rumors spread faster than facts. Some said Tara had fled out of love. Others whispered that she’d been manipulated by dark forces seeking to strike at the Newman-Chancellor alliance through Harrison. Kyle, hollow-eyed and furious, didn’t care about theories. He wanted his son.

But Tara had disappeared too cleanly. No flight records. No hotel check-ins. No credit trail. Every clue turned to smoke. Some even believed she hadn’t acted alone — that someone was helping her hide. Summer flooded social media with pleas for Tara’s return. Clare launched an online campaign. But Tara remained silent, unreachable, unknowable.

In Tuscany, Tara watched her son grow calmer, then confused, then hopeful again. She told herself she was protecting him. Shielding him from the chaos back home. But every time he asked, “When can I see Daddy?” her heart broke a little more.

Back in Genoa, Kyle’s company lost funding. Summer’s career was eclipsed by scandal. Their once-perfect world was unraveling, thread by thread. And still, no word from Tara.

Was she a criminal — or a mother desperate to do what the law wouldn’t? Had she stolen her child — or saved him?

No one in Genoa City knows for sure. The only evidence is the note. The empty room. And the ache in Kyle’s voice when he says his son’s name.

And so the city waits.

Because whoever holds Harrison… holds the truth.