PROLOGUE
DOMINIC
The man who has just been sentenced to life imprisonment trashes in the hands of the guards around him, yells and curses me, he also threatens me and swears that he will finish me, but I only limit myself to look at him with a cold and an expression totally devoid of emotion, because although his sentence is a small victory since it means ridding the world of his filth and cruel acts, it still cannot bring me joy because not only did he refuse to confess, but he also refused to give information about that son of a b***h, even when I had to swallow my pride and agree to the offer that the prosecutor in the case made him: immunity in exchange for information, it was a difficult decision, because I did not want that animal to return to the streets, but I knew that he would be my last chance to get information about my son.
I have spent the last twenty years looking for him, and I know that I would spend twenty more, or fifty, I do not care how long it takes but I will not stop looking for him , and for this , I have moved heaven and earth but I could not find an iota of accurate information, only false leads or irrelevant information, and although the first years I dedicated myself entirely to that search, I soon understood that I had to do something else and that is why I went back to work and take cases, especially those that had to do with child trafficking, which means that I am probably the person who knows best about it without being directly involved.
I have been in charge of dismantling the largest child trafficking gangs one by one, I have been internationally recognized and even condecorated by several countries, but that has not helped me, since it seems that I am getting further away from the possibility of finding my son, the only thing I have achieved is to win even more enemies than I already had before embarking on this journey, and that would not matter to me if it were not for the fact that this implies putting my family at risk, so I only act against someone when I have sufficient evidence and after I have made sure that this person cannot harm my family.
Alice, for her part, has been working tirelessly in the area of human rights, not only since the foundation that we started many years ago, called “Closer to home” that seeks to support families who are going through the same things as us, and It also created a network of people at a global level in charge of reporting any small incident that may be related to any of the missing children, and we can say with satisfaction that we have managed to reunite dozens of children and also adults with their real families.
At first, it was quite difficult since the aftermath of what happened was evident in Alice, so it took her several years to go back to law school to finish her degree; and our marriage, which we obviously decided not to end, had quite a few ups and downs, because we both felt too guilty to be really close like we were before all this hell, and it took us many years of therapy to get to a point where we could move on with our family, but without never forgetting our purpose to find our son, and it was only after five years since our baby disappeared, that we decided to have more children.
And that was probably the most difficult point in our relationship because although at first, it was I who suggested it, and Alice was so upset that she somehow interpreted it as an attempt on my part to replace our missing son, she finally understood that that was never my intention and ended up admitting that she too had wanted for a long time to have more children.
“Our son will have siblings when he returns, and I know he will like that,” she told me, staring blankly and surely thinking about how close she had become to her brother Aidan since the two of them had met.
But later, fear invaded me and I wanted to throw all our plans away, I was terrified to think that something could happen to her, considering the poor state of health in which she remained after having our first child, and it was not until the best doctors money could find ran all the important and not so important tests to make sure everything was going to be okay, that we finally decided to start trying, and that is how about a year after we started trying, that Victoria was born, a red-haired angel like her mother, but with her father's bad temper, intelligent and shrewd as only she can be, fully capable of changing disadvantageous situations so that they somehow favor her, but so sweet and generous that sometimes it is difficult to reconcile these two aspects of her personality.
Two years after Victoria arrived in our lives, Alex was born, who seems to be the opposite of his sister in almost everything except intelligence, because although he was diagnosed with a mild type of autism, which does not prevent him from leading a relatively normal life, his intelligence stands out for on top of anyone we have met before, but his social skills are not the best, even though his older sister has patiently taken it upon herself to teach him about all the social interactions a child his age can have, he has always preferred the comfort of loneliness, and both Alice and I have tried to understand this even if we don't like it very much.
They perfectly know the whole story about their older brother, whom we decided to call Ryan, after Alice's late father, of whom she only has blurred memories, but who, like us, fought until his last day to find his little daughter.
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As we leave the Arlington manor, we see Victoria talking to Connor, Lucy and Joshua's youngest son, who is only a year older than our daughter, while Edward, their oldest son, named after Joshua's father, as he promised before his father died, who is now seventeen years old, is discussing the advantages of red meat with his Uncle Ben, who just became the youngest doctor to win an award for being the leading oncologist in the state.
Lucy looks at them with pride, but Joshua is entertaining watching the interaction between Tom and my son Alex, who are talking about the latest technological developments of the company, and that is the only reason why Alex agrees to accompany us to an event at the Arlington’s manor, because he knows that Tom will be here and he will be able to talk with him about things that only the two of them understand, sometimes they even make me jealous that my son has long conversations with someone other than me, but still I appreciate the patience that Tom has to answer the thousand questions that arise from Alex as soon as they meet, and also for having developed his famous facial recognition software that has not only led the company to grow significantly, but that he actually created it to help me in the search for my son, and now this same software is being used by different organizations worldwide, including our foundation, to find missing people.
As we walk with Zara to the main entrance of the property, we see Abigail come in and she seems really pissed off, but we don't even have time to say hello, because she is heading straight for the manor and is not speaking to anyone, I see Tom and Zara exchange glances, and when Abby's personal bodyguard arrives just seconds later with an expression that indicates that she clearly tried to break the strict rules that her parents have imposed on her, there is no need to ask anything more and he simply nods his head and enters the manor as well.
"Maybe you should reconsider the matter of the rules," Lucy tells Zara in a soft voice, but with obvious concern.
"Not until we find that damn woman," Zara responds sharply, and after saying goodbye quickly to us, she enters the manor in search of her daughter.
"Haven’t you had luck with that psycho?" Alice asks Tom when he is about to say goodbye to us.
"No, and although we received the last threat a couple of years ago, Zara has refused to make things more flexible for Abby, she is terrified to think that she goes through the same thing that happened to ..." he starts to say but stops, and I complete his sentence: "The same as our son?" and he nods sadly.
"Don't feel bad for thinking about it, we understand it perfectly, sometimes we want to put Victoria and Alex in a bubble and never let them get out of our sight," Alice replies with a slight smile.
"If it weren't because that crazy woman is too smart and knows about technology almost as much as I do, we would have found her a long time ago, but she always seems to be one step ahead of us," Tom responds in a defeated tone, and Lucy walks over to put a hand on his shoulder and ask him to help her clean up the mess that was left in the house for Joshua's birthday that we just celebrated.
So, we say goodbye to everyone and head back home, Alice is driving because I had a couple of glasses of wine, and when we stop at a traffic light a couple of streets away from the manor, she stops so abruptly that we all freak out thinking that we have crashed into something.
"What is going on?" I ask her, but her eyes are fixed on a point on the left side of the street, and her mouth is slightly open.
"Sweetie?" I insist, however, she doesn't seem to be listening to me.
"Mom, the light is already green," Victoria tells her a little impatiently, and this seems to bring Alice back to reality.
"It was him," she says in a small voice.
"Who?" I ask confused.
"Our son, it was him, I saw him," she repeats pointing to the corner of the street, and I frown because there is no one on the street.
"There is no one there," Victoria responds.
"Honey, surely you are tired, it's already late," I try to calm her down, but she looks at me with annoyance and repeats:
" It was him, I am sure it was him, " she tells me with a hint of despair, and for a moment I begin to worry that the ravages of the search have begun to affect her just as her mother was affected by her disappearance.
"Yes, there was a man in the corner," Alex says without looking up from his phone and we all look at him in surprise, so he finally looks at us and says:
"He was outside Tom's house a while ago too, but he left after Abby came in," Alex exclaims with a shrug and my stomach flips, I look at Alice who is looking at me with such intensity that I am sure that she is able to read every last of my thoughts, and that only glance is enough for me to understand that she is not imagining things and it is likely that she has seen him.
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