Page 4 of Silent as Sin
Because once, a long time ago, I’d missed the signs. I’d looked away when I should’ve fought. A girl I could’ve saved hadn’t made it. Her screams had been swallowed by walls I never broke through.
Not again.
I tightened my grip on the bars, the engine’s roar drowning out the ghosts. I didn’t know this woman’s name, didn’t know her story, but I knew the lock that had kept her in, and I knew the weight of walking away.
So I wouldn’t.
Not this time.
The road stretched out ahead, twilight swallowing the horizon. She clung to me, silent as sin, and I carried her into the night.
CHAPTER TWO
THE DARK WASsafer.
That was the first lesson I learned after Venom locked me away.
If I stayed still, stayed quiet, I wasn’t worth notice. If I didn’t speak, maybe he’d forget I was there. And being forgotten was always better than being remembered.
So I folded paper instead.
Torn scraps from magazines, food wrappers, the corner of a receipt, whatever I could find. Crease, smooth, fold. The sound was small, soft, mine. It gave me something to count besides the endless days, something to control when everything else hadbeen taken. My flock of silent birds was the only proof I still existed.
I was folding one when the noise began.
At first, I thought it was only in my head. The walls always whispered if I pressed my ear close enough. But this was louder. Real.
Shouting. Boots pounding the floors above. A man’s voice I didn’t recognize barked orders, fast and furious.
Then the gunfire started.
It cracked like thunder, rattling through the boards, each shot a jagged punch of sound. My stomach dropped. My ears rang. I curled tighter in the corner of the crawlspace, hands pressed hard over my ears. The paper slipped from my fingers. Dust rained down as the house shook with rage and violence.
I knew that sound. Knew what it meant when men shouted and bullets sang.
Venom’s voice rose above it all—raw, furious. I couldn’t hear the words, but I knew the tone. The world was ending for someone. Hopefully him.
Another gunshot. Then another. Screams, curses, the pounding of boots, until suddenly, nothing.
The silence that followed was worse than the fight.
Because silence meant it was over, and I didn’t know if “over” meant freedom or death.
I didn’t know how long I stayed like that. Time didn’t matter when you had no sun, no clock. Hunger gnawed at me, thirst heavier than the air. I licked condensation from the vent when the desert cooled at night. I pressed my ear to the wall, desperate for footsteps, for anything.
But no one came.
I thought I’d die there. Buried alive with my paper birds. A ghost no one would ever find.
So when the scrape came, the sound of metal twisting, a lock breaking, I didn’t scream. I never screamed. Screaming had only ever made things worse.
The panel shifted. Light poured in, stabbing into my eyes.
Two men stood there, flashlights cutting through the dark like knives.
One had broad shoulders, a grim set to his jaw. The other—taller, rougher—both wore leather stitched with patches. Their cuts creaked when they crouched, faces shadowed by the light.
But it was the one man’s eyes—his eyes undid me.
