Chapter 57: Chapter 57

Reno had spent the last week in a self-imposed prison of silence. He had turned his back on New York, his father, and the chaotic wreckage of his own life, hoping that the distance of an island hotel would act as a balm. But distance was a liar. At night, when the rest of the world fell into a hushed, easy slumber, Reno sat in the dark and cried until his chest felt hollowed out. The wound Lisette had left on his heart wasn't mending; it was festering. He had kept his phone switched off for seven days, leaving the hotel’s number for anyone who might have news about his sister, Rhyne. He had come here because this was where she worked, but he had arrived too late. She was gone, and the trail was cold.

The local staff told him she had left with a woman who claimed to be a cousin. Reno knew, with a certainty that burned like acid, that they had no cousins. His father, Dennis, was an only child, and Kono’s brother had been killed in a drug war years ago, leaving no heirs. The idea that Rhyne had found a new family—or worse, that someone had replaced him in her life—hurt more than he could express. He felt like a man losing his last anchor. He decided then that he had no choice but to retrace her steps, to find this mystery woman, and to learn if anyone else knew of their plans. Finding Rhyne was the only thing keeping him tethered to his own sanity.

Every evening, he returned to his hotel room, dreading the heavy, suffocating silence that greeted him. There was nothing to distract him from the mental imagery that haunted his waking hours: that night at the Waldorf. He saw Lisette in that bed, her curls spilled out, the look on Michael Mathews’ face, the feeling of his own world shattering into jagged, irreparable pieces. He needed to get the memories of that night out of his mind. He would have welcomed a lobotomy; anything was better than the relentless, stabbing pain that that single night had inflicted on his heart.

He spent hours flipping through the few messages he had received. He was surprised to find several from his father. He hadn’t told Dennis he had moved to this specific hotel, but he knew that a man of Dennis’s vast, dark resources could track anyone down anywhere in the world. Reno reached into his pocket and pulled out Rhyne’s old employment photograph. She had beautiful hazel eyes, just like Dennis, shining through her dark skin. Her hair was long and dark, a mirror of Kono’s. And that smile—that smile belonged only to her. He felt a bittersweet warmth seeing that the innocence in her expression remained intact, as if life hadn’t yet robbed her of it.

He finally reached for his phone, deciding that being missing in action for a week was long enough. He had to break out of this solitude and return to the brutal, real world that was New York. As soon as the phone powered on, it went wild. It buzzed and vibrated in his hand for minutes, announcing hundreds of notifications. He expected that ninety-nine percent of them would be from Lisette, a digital reminder of the woman he was trying so hard to hate. To his absolute surprise, the screen was filled with messages from AJ, and a persistent, frantic stream from his father. Reno stared at the phone, his mind racing. Should he read them all, or just call his father and get the direct, unfiltered version of whatever catastrophe was unfolding?

He hit call on his father’s number.

"Hallo!"

"Where the hell have you been?" Dennis’s voice was an explosion of panic, fury, and something else—fear.

Reno held the phone away from his ear, frowning at the uncharacteristic tone. Since when did Dennis think he could speak to him like that? "Well, hello to you too, Father."

"I told everyone you were in Hawaii, then the hotel staff said you hadn’t checked in. I was beginning to think you were in the car with Lisette after all. I’ve had the coast guard searching for your body for days! Why would you scare me like that? I’m your father, I love you."

The words hit Reno like a physical impact. He tried to stop the violent trembling of his hand, but his nerves were frayed to the breaking point. Something had to be horribly wrong if Dennis was actually admitting to love. Wait a minute—did he say Lisette’s car?

"What happened to Lisette’s car?" Reno’s voice dropped to a terrifying, quiet rasp.

"It’s wrecked," Dennis said, his voice straining with tension. "There isn't much of a car left. Hell, Reno... there isn't much of Lisette left either."

"What?"

The tremor began in his heart and flowed outward, surging through his blood until his legs began to quake and his teeth chattered against one another. There wasn’t much of Lisette left? What the hell did that mean? Reno felt his body give in to an unseen, crushing pressure. His shoulders slumped, his breath hitching, and he raked his fingers through his thick mane of hair, pulling at the roots as if to physically ground himself.

"Son," Dennis started, his voice cracking.

Oh, shit. The reality slammed into him harder than any punch he had ever thrown.

"Lisette was in an accident," Dennis continued, the words coming out as a forced confession.

"Is she dead?" Reno’s voice wasn't his own; it was a ghost of a sound, hollow and jagged.

"God, no! That girl isn’t likely to leave you without a fight. But you need to come back."

The pause in Dennis’s voice, the heavy, suffocating silence, spoke volumes. And the more silent his father was, the greater Reno’s fear grew, bloating into a monster that filled the entire room.

The pain in his heart, which only moments ago had been fueled by the agony of betrayal, was suddenly transformed. It was no longer about her infidelity or the humiliation of the Waldorf. It was the sharp, blinding realization that she was leaving him. Not through choice, but through the cruel, random intervention of fate. Lisette was dying.

A piece of his own heart died with that thought. The anger, the cold walls he had built, the hatred he had practiced—it all dissolved into nothingness. He realized then that he would have given anything—every cent he owned, every secret he kept, every year of his life—to have her back in that room, even if she were still with Michael, even if she had never loved him at all. He just wanted her to be alive.

"I’m on my way," Reno whispered, his eyes blurring with tears he hadn't realized he was shedding. "I am on my way. Tell her to hold on. Don't you dare let her go. Tell her... tell her I love her. I love her more than anything."

He hung up, the phone dropping from his numb fingers to the floor. The mission to find his sister, the search for Rhyne, the trauma of the past week—everything had been rendered meaningless.

He stood up, grabbed his jacket, and turned toward the door. He was a man running toward a funeral he refused to attend, praying to a God he hadn't spoken to in years that he could reach her before the light in her eyes was extinguished forever. He would get back to New York, and he would fight for her, even if he had to fight Death itself.