Chapter 30 #2
I poured every waking hour into the digital underbelly of the world. I taught myself to navigate the Dark Web before most people knew it existed. I bypassed the official investigators and the useless private eyes my father spent his life savings on.
What I learned was staggering. I saw the marketplaces where lives are traded like commodities. I saw the ghost networks that facilitate the disappearance of girls just like Isla. The tentacles of human trafficking spread far and wide.
I haven’t found my sister. Not yet. But I found the architecture of the monsters who took her. I’m certain of it. I can’t prove she was abducted as part of a human trafficking ring, but I’d bet my life on it.
That was the day Max the student died, and the version of me standing here was born. I vowed to do whatever it took to bring her back, dead or alive. And to use my skills to prevent anyone else from falling into a similar abyss.
My thoughts of long ago dissipate. Turning, I find my mother stroking an ornament, her lips moving in a silent prayer to a god who hasn’t listened in years.
“I’m still looking, Mom,” I say, my voice cracking. “I won’t give up.” It’s the only thing I can give her. A lifeline.
Even if it’s killing me.
“You’re a good brother, Max,” she whispers, looking at me with eyes that don’t see the man I’ve become.
A morally gray one who crosses legal lines and spends his time at The Devil’s Playground.
A safe haven for his work. Playing Robin Hood for those left in the dark by law enforcement and the legal system.
Transferring all of his rage into vigilante justice and meaningless encounters with forgettable women.
Until Cassidy.
The silence in this old family house isn’t empty.
It’s heavy, like a physical weight pressing against your lungs.
It’s the kind of silence that rings in your ears until you start to hear things.
The ghost of Isla’s laughter from the kitchen, the thud of a soccer ball against the garage door, the chime of a text message you’d give anything for her to send once more.
I traipse down the hall to my father’s study. The room is dark, the heavy mahogany desk covered in folders that likely haven’t been moved in years. He doesn’t sit. He just stands by the window, looking out toward the Hudson, his back to me.
This is the man who taught me how to throw a curveball, how to build a workstation, how to be a man of my word. Now, he’s just a statue in a museum of lost things.
“Any word from the contacts in Willemstad?” he asks. His voice is a low rasp, stripped of the authority it once carried.
“No. Everything’s the same,” I reply. The words feel like lead stuck in my throat. “That trail is cold, Dad. Azure Crest have scrubbed everything. It’s like the ship she boarded never even existed.”
He doesn’t flinch. He just continues to stare at the water. “Your mother thinks she’s at the door every time the wind catches the porch swing. She’s spent each and every day waiting for a girl who isn’t coming back.”
“We don’t know that,” I snap, my defensive reflex kicking in. It’s the lie that keeps me going. The one I’ve coded into the very foundation of my life.
“Don’t we?” He finally turns, and the look in his eyes is worse than the grief. It’s resignation. “Look at us, Max. Look at this house. We’re ghosts, son. We died in Curacao too. We just haven’t had the decency to lie down.”
“We have no way of knowing she’s dead. And until someone can show me a body… proof that she’s gone, I refuse to believe it.”
I should be excited to tell my family about Cassidy. That I met a girl with pink hair and a broken heart who makes the noise stop. I want to tell him that for the first time in ten years, I felt a spark of something that wasn’t anger, fear, or heartbreak.
But how can I bring a girl like her here? One who has fought so hard to find a sense of safety into this darkness? How do I explain to her that I am tethered to a ten-foot Christmas tree in a house where time stands still?
“I’m going to find her, Dad,” I say, but for the first time, the vow sounds hollow.
Heading back to the living room, I find my mother sitting on the sofa now, staring at the lights on the tree. She doesn’t look up when I pass. She’s already gone back to that night long ago, waiting for the phone to ring.
I walk out onto the wrap-around porch, and the cold Jersey air hits me like a slap to the face.
I stand there for a long time, looking out over the Palisades.
I feel that familiar emotional spiral pulling me in, the familiar darkness of my own personal dark web threatening to swallow the peace I found with Cassidy.
Reaching into my pocket, I feel my phone. I want to call her. I want to hear her voice just to remind myself that I’m part of the present. That I’m still alive.
But I don’t.
I just stand there in the silence of Alpine, a man trapped between a past he can’t fix and a future he’s too terrified to consider.
I can’t stay here. The grief is ever-present. I’m suffocating in it. My mind flashes to Cassidy. To her scars, her resilience, and the way she looked at me.
She’s the only person who knows what it’s like to wake up and find the world has moved on without the person you love most. I want to get back to her grounding presence.
To the stillness she possesses. However, I know what’s coming.
It’s predictable now. That crushing downward spiral that always follows these trips down memory lane.
And I’m no good to anyone when that happens.
My family, my friends, my employees, and least of all her.