Avery and Grayson find Zara in the greenhouse and approach her with questions. Zara immediately senses that they want something, and Grayson tells Zara plainly that Toby has been abducted. When Zara asks Oren whether Toby is all right, Oren can only confirm that Toby is alive.

Avery explains that the kidnapper may have a family connection to Toby, and Grayson asks Zara about her first husband, Christopher. Because the latest clue points to the story of the prodigal son, Avery and Grayson are looking for someone who saw Tobias Hawthorne as a father figure and believed he was treated unfairly.

Zara describes Christopher as wealthy, politically connected, charming, and exactly the kind of husband expected of her. When Zara filed for divorce, Christopher appealed to Tobias as a dutiful son, expecting Tobias to force Zara to reconsider, but Zara implies that Tobias instead helped end Christopher's influence. She then reveals that Christopher died in a boating accident soon after the divorce and that Christopher had no surviving parents or siblings.

The Christopher theory collapses, and Avery pushes for another possibility: a secret son of Tobias Hawthorne. Zara dismisses the idea as unlikely, because any overlooked heir would have emerged once the inheritance was at stake. Instead, Zara offers one of Tobias's lessons: Hawthornes must identify their hidden assumptions and negate them.

Grayson recognizes the lesson, and Avery reconsiders their interpretation of the prodigal son clue. Avery realizes they assumed Toby was the prodigal son and Tobias was the father, but the kidnapper called himself an old man, and the riddle may work differently. Avery proposes removing Toby from the story and asks whether Tobias himself could be one of the sons, shifting the investigation toward Tobias's own family and the possibility of an unknown older figure behind everything.