Page 13 of Silent as Sin
And after enough years of swallowing every sound, of screaming only inside my head, I wasn’t sure if anything real would come out if I tried.
What if I opened my mouth and nothing happened?
What if I proved him right, that he’d stolen even that from me?
My hands curled into fists at my sides, nails biting my palms. My throat worked once, dry, but no sound followed. So I stayed quiet.
Because silence still kept me alive.
Because silence still kept me in control.
Ashen’s gaze caught mine, those green eyes searching, and unrelenting. For a heartbeat, I wanted to try—for him. Just to see what would happen, but my lips pressed tight, the words choking back down. But I owed them something.
My name pressed at the edges of my mind, splintered as shattered bone. I hadn’t said it in years, not out loud. Venom hadtried to strip it from me, replace it with something cruel, with shame. But it was mine. Still mine.
I looked around the kitchen. A pen sat on the counter beside a stack of receipts, a notepad smudged with grease and handwriting.
Slowly, I reached for it. The pen felt heavy, clumsy in my hand, but the letters came anyway. Curved and careful, shaky but legible.
Wren.
I slid the pad across the table. Jewel’s breath caught. Ashen leaned forward, his green eyes locking on the word like it was something holy.
“Wren,” Jewel whispered, smiling soft. “That’s a beautiful name, baby.”
Ashen’s jaw tightened, but not with anger. With something else, something that made my chest ache to see.
For the first time in years, I was Wren again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE COMMON ROOMhummed low with the soundsof night. Pool balls cracked across green felt. Someone laughed rough at a joke by the bar. Smoke curled in lazy ribbons under the neon glow. It was a normal night—except for her.
Wren sat on the far end of the couch, stiff-backed, perched like she might bolt if the wrong shadow moved. She didn’t melt into the cushions like the sweet butts did, didn’t sprawl careless the way Elara sometimes had before her belly grew. No—she sat balanced on the edge, hands in her lap, a stray hair trailing dark against her cheek.
Her eyes never stopped moving, her hands making those birds out of paper without even looking.
She didn’t stare at the men who stared at her. Instead, she watched the edges of the room. The doorways. The hall that led to the back rooms. The bar. The table stacked with helmets. Every exit, every angle, she catalogued them all, focused and silent.
That’s what survivors did. They remembered everything.
A bowl sat empty on the table in front of her, steam long gone. She hadn’t eaten much, just enough to quiet the growl in her stomach, but she’d done it without a word, spoon barely clinking against the bowl like she was afraid of making noise. Even clean, even fed, she moved like silence was a blanket.
Maul leaned on the pool table, chalking his cue, eyes flicking to me. “We talking about this tonight?”
Scyth tapped the edge of his stick on the floor. “We should. She came out of Venom’s place. You don’t keep a secret like that around unless there’s a reason.”
Rex snorted from the bar, downing a swallow of beer. “She may bring shit to our door.”
My jaw tightened. “She stays.” The words came out certain, no heat, no need to raise my voice. But the weight in the room shifted all the same.
Throttle leaned back in his chair, his eyes troubled. He didn’t smirk this time, not really. Just watched her, like she was some puzzle he was half-inclined to solve. I didn’t like his interest in her, not when I already considered her mine.
Wren’s chin tipped down, but her eyes flicked quick to him, then back to her hands, then to the door again. Cataloguing. Always cataloguing.
“She’s a liability,” Scyth said, voice cold, cutting. “If she knows something—”
“Then it’s our job to make sure it doesn’t land in the wrong ears,” I cut him off. My voice stayed even, but I felt the burn in my chest. “She’s under our roof now. That makes her ours. Anyone got a problem with that, they bring it to the war room.”
