Page 10 of Broken By Silence
I flinch. I don’t want them to look at me.
Not like this. Not withthatknowledge.
Elijah steps back like he knows Roman wants to hit him. “Wasn’t mine to tell.”
Roman doesn’t buy it. “Your dad assaulted her, Elijah, and you knew. You knew and didn’t tell us.”
Elijah shakes his head. “I didn’t know until after. The day I found out she was dead is the same day I found out. Why do you think I killed him?”
Crew’s face shatters—composure giving way to something I’ve never seen on him before.
His eyes snap to me.
His hands tremble. “Lottie… why didn’t you tell me?”
I open my mouth and then close it again.
Silence threatens to swallow me whole.
What can I say?
Because I didn’t want to ruin any of you?
Because I knew you would pick loyalty to them over me?
Because I was barely sixteen and terrified of my own shadow after everything?
Elijah narrows his eyes. “That’s not why you did this, though, is it?”
Roman shakes his head, then looks at me. For permission? I stare at him with wide eyes, pleading with him not to make this worse.
“He was there,” Roman says, filling the silence, but his words do nothing to stop the suffocating feeling that wraps around my throatlike a vice.
“Who?” Crew rasps.
Elijah looks to Roman, then me, then back to Roman. “Your dad?”
He sounds so broken that my hand jerks to reach out to him, but I hold myself back.Barely.
Roman doesn’t answer right away. His hand tightens on mine just enough to ground himself.
“Both of them,” he says.
Crew stumbles back a step, eyes wide, throat working like he’s trying to breathe through cement. Elijah closes his eyes. He knew. That’s written all over his face, and he’s told me as much about his dad, but hearing it again, hearing Roman say it… It’s different.
“No,” Crew whispers. “You’re saying… they both…”
His voice breaks like glass under pressure.
Roman doesn’t soften. “Lorenzo and James. They were both there. They both—” He chokes, swallows. “They hurt her.”
“They raped her,” Elijah snaps. “If you’re going to reveal her secrets as if they’re your own, Roman, then say the fucking words. They.Raped. Her.”
Crew is shaking his head before Elijah can finish the sentence, but it’s not denial. It’s devastation. His mouth opens like he wants to argue, like he needs this not to be true, but there’s nothing to say.
Silence is a curse that settles again, heavier this time. Crushing.
“I didn’t know,” Roman continues, his voice hoarse. “But then I’m towering over her, and she’s telling me that I look like him. Like the man who…” he chokes. “Like the man who raped her. I snapped. I went after him. I didn’t care if I walked out of there alive as long as he was dead.”
