Mac Sequoia - pictures dissapeard strangely

I'm a photographer and I had a shooting today. I tether shoot on my MacBook M1 Pro. I came to the office and I wanted to download the photos on my Mac mini m4. Because the folder was pretty big and I didn't have a free ssd available to transfer the pictures, I tried Airdrop. It failed 2 times because of network something. So I shared the Pictures folder on the network and access it on my Mac mini. I tried to copy the photos but the speed was very slow (2hours). I canceled the process and I asked a colleague for an ssd. After I canceled, the other computer saved 10 pictures. When I plugged the ssd and tried to select the folder to copy it, the folder on my laptop was gone unexpectedly without any trace. I tried the following: - hidden folders - restart - safe mode - search / reindexing - stellar data recovery software - first aid for the ssd Nothing worked. That folder is gone somehow. I didn't check at the start of the shooting the remaining space on the ssd and now I cannot check if something modified after this incident. I also talked with apple support but they didn't have any idea what happend. They escalated the ticket. Do you have any solutions for me? Those pictures are pretty important.