“I don’t want to see that,” he said, panic slicing through his voice. “I need to go.”
“Please,” Julian said, standing too, every wall he had built over six years cracking open all at once. “I just want to help you.”
Evan paused at the door, shoulders hunched, and without turning around whispered, “No one can help me. People who try get hurt.”
That night, Julian made the call he had sworn never to make again, dialing Caleb Monroe, the private investigator who had led the original search for Liora, his voice breaking as he described the boy, the necklace, the resemblance, the fear, and Caleb was silent for a long time before saying something that sent a chill straight through Julian’s spine.
“There’s something I never told you,” Caleb said quietly. “Toward the end of the investigation, we uncovered evidence that suggested your daughter wasn’t taken randomly. Someone had been monitoring your family. And the group we suspected specialized in identity erasure. Children disappear not just physically, but psychologically. Sometimes they’re reassigned entire lives.”
