The Diver Who Faked His Death Chapter 1

I used to be a deep-sea recovery specialist. That was before I was convicted of murder—accused of cutting my dive partner’s oxygen line out of sheer greed—and handed a life sentence.

After rotting in a cell for eight years, I was granted early parole. Now, my entire world had shrunk to the size of a wet, foul-smelling stall at the local harbor market, where I spent my days gutting fish.

Until today.

My family tracked me down like a pack of rabid dogs. My parents fell to their knees right there on the concrete, indifferent to the blood and fish viscera soaking into their designer clothes.

"Carter," my mother sobbed, her voice echoing off the corrugated metal roof. "Your brother went diving in the sound two hours ago. He hasn't surfaced. Something’s wrong."

"You were the best commercial diver on the coast," my father demanded, his face red. "Get in the water and save him!"

Then came Yvonne. My ex-wife. She stepped forward, her hands trembling as she pulled out the diamond wedding band she’d kept all these years. She grabbed my calloused, scarred hand and forced the ring onto my finger.

"I promise you," she choked out, tears ruining her immaculate makeup. "If you go down there and bring Porter back, I will remarry you. We can start over."

I didn’t say a word. I just reached up, my fingers instinctively brushing the hard plastic of the hearing aid tucked behind my right ear.

Had they genuinely forgotten?

Eight years ago, we found a sunken wreck loaded with illicit gold bars. It was Porter—the golden boy, the adopted son—who fought with our crewmate underwater to keep the gold for himself.

When the dust settled and the police circled, Yvonne forced me to sign a confession to protect him. My father had sealed the deal by backhanding me so hard across the side of the head that he ruptured my eardrum, leaving me half-deaf.

With the state of my inner ear now, if I attempted a deep-sea dive, the barometric pressure would cause my cerebral blood vessels to burst. I would drop dead before I even reached the ocean floor.

...

* * *

"Don't be an ungrateful prick, Carter."

Bill, the market manager, stepped into my stall. His tone was venomous. He’d spent the last year treating me like dirt, but now he was practically bowing to Yvonne and my parents—the city’s top taxpayers. He turned his sneer on me.

"They’re handing you a fortune and a chance to clear your name. You think you're too good for it? You think this rotting fish stand is a palace?"

A crowd of onlookers had started to gather, their whispers carrying over the smell of brine and ice.

"What kind of monster just stands there?" a woman muttered. "That's his brother."

"Probably trying to extort them for more money," a man sneered.

"Looks decent enough, but he’s got a heart of stone."

Every word was a needle slipping beneath my skin.

I was the victim. I was the one who took the fall for Porter's greed. My entire life had been incinerated, yet here I was, nearly a decade later, still being painted as the villain.

I pulled the diamond ring off my finger and shoved it back into Yvonne’s chest. Then, I pointed to my hearing aid and shook my head.

"It’s not that I won't," I said, my voice hoarse from disuse. "My ear is ruined. If I go down there, the pressure will kill me."

My mother, Helen, froze. Then, with a theatrical wail, she threw herself onto the filthy, scale-covered ground, beating her fists against the wet concrete.

"Carter Pierce! Eight years in a cell and you're still a cold-blooded sociopath!" she screamed. "You’d curse yourself with a fake disability just to avoid taking responsibility? That is Porter! He is your brother!"

My father, Richard, pointed a trembling finger at my face. His eyes were wide with a sickening cocktail of disgust and fury. "How did I raise such an abomination? You’d watch him die and spin lies to justify it. You are garbage."

Yvonne’s eyes were bloodshot. She dug frantically into her pristine leather handbag, pulling out a sleek black debit card and shoving it into my apron pocket.

"Please, Carter," she begged, her voice cracking. "There’s five million dollars on that card. It’s enough for the rest of your life. Just bring him up. I'll give you whatever you want."

Hot tears spilled from her eyes and landed on the back of my hand. They burned.

In eight years of prison, she hadn't visited me once. Not a single letter. Now, we were finally face to face, and she was humiliating me with money, begging me to risk my life for the very man she’d chosen over me.

I was suffocating. I couldn't do this anymore. With shaking hands, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the folded, creased medical certificate detailing my severe tympanic membrane perforation.

But Yvonne didn't even look at it. She slapped the paper out of my hand.

"Are you seriously waving a piece of paper around right now?!" she shrieked hysterically. "Is this a negotiation? I gave you the money! Porter is running out of air!"

That was the cue for Bill. The market manager lunged forward, grabbing the edge of my folding table and flipping it. Ice, dead fish, and bloody water crashed over my boots.

"Get the hell out of here, you murderer!" Bill roared. "Don't bring your bad karma into my market! If you don't go save him, you’re never working on these docks again!"

The crowd surged, feeding off the hostility. An old man spat at my feet.

"Get out, killer!"

"Doesn't even deserve to breathe our air!"

I looked down at my medical records, now soaking in a puddle of bloody fish water. A quiet, hollow absurdity settled in my chest.

All I wanted was to be a ghost. To exist quietly in a dark corner of the world. Why was even that too much to ask? Did they really want me dead that badly?