Page 113 of Broken By Silence
The man who ruined me… the monster who stole my voice and fed on my fear looks broken. Like his sanity has been bleeding out of him for years, and whatever is left is barely human.
It should make me happy, but instead, it makes my skin crawl.
He takes a breath, forcing composure back into his posture, and smooths down his suit. “Well, we’re getting married tomorrow, but we can’t have you trying to escape the night before, can we?” He turns toward the door. “Besides, it’s bad luck for the groom to see thebride before the wedding.” My stomach turns. His hand rests on the doorknob, and then that smile stretches wider. “So, I brought you some company.”
He opens the door.
For a moment, my brain refuses to catch up. She looks the same as before—the same hair, the same burnt plastic smell that seems to cling to her, the same hollow eyes pretending to hold warmth.
“Hello, Scarlett,” she says with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.
Every nerve in my body goes taut. I don’t move. I just shift my gaze past her, scanning the room, the mirror, the curtains, the weird spot on the floor, anything but her face. But I keep her in my peripheral vision, I make sure of it, because Tracey is unpredictable when she wants something, and I know Lorenzo will have promised her a lot to hold me here.
“Are you not going to greet your mother?” she asks, tilting her head like I’m a petulant child.
A bitter laugh slips out before I can stop it. It’s sharp, humorless. “You stopped being my mother the moment yousoldme to erase your debt.”
Tracey rolls her eyes. “Always with the dramatics.”
For a moment, there’s silence. Even Lorenzo doesn’t speak, he just watches, the corner of his mouth twitching as if he’s enjoying this performance.
“Hardly. You traded your daughter for drugs. Youlet him and his frienddo whatever they wanted to me because it was easier than admitting what kind of mother you really were.” I meet their eyes now, fury burning through every drop of fear. “You can dress me up tomorrow in the pretty white dress. You can try to break me… but I’ll never be yours. Not again.”
He doesn’t respond, just closes the door behind him as he leaves, leaving me alone with Tracey.
She standsthere for a long moment after the door shuts, her arms crossed and face pinched with disdain.
She’s always looked like that, like she’s the one who was wronged, like she’s owed something for giving birth to me. I stay where I am, pressing my back against the wall even though the pain in my shoulder is sharp enough to make me feel nauseous.
“I see you haven’t changed,” she sneers. “Still so ungrateful. You should be thanking me, you know. You’re alive because of me.”
The laugh that slips out of me sounds foreign, bitter. “Alive? You callthisalive?” I gesture to the room, to the locked windows, and the familiar suffocating air. “You callthissaving me?”
She sighs dramatically, flopping down onto the bed, as if I’m the one being unreasonable. “You were a burden, Scarlett. I had debts.Iwas being threatened. Lorenzo offered me a way out. You were… a fair trade.”
The words hit like a slap, but I don’t let her see it. I don’t even blink. “You sold me for some crack, and a few months of pretending your life wasn’t falling apart while you racked up more debt. I wasn’t a fair trade. I was a sacrifice.”
Her nostrils flare, and I catch the faint flex of her hands before she stretches them out. “You don’t know what it’s like, whatIwent through?—”
“I—” The word catches in my throat, splintering under the weight of everything I’ve held in for years. My hands tremble, but the anger rising in me burns hotter than the fear ever did. “I don’t know what it’s like?” I repeat, my voice sharper, louder now.
I take a step forward and point to the bed. “That’s where the sofa used to be, the one they pinned me to.” My finger trembles, but I don’t stop. “Right there, Tracey. That’s where it started.”
I turn, pointing to the floor, the same patch of carpet I’ve seen a thousand times in my nightmares. “And there… that’s where I clawed at the ground, trying to get away. I can still see the marks if I look hard enough.” My voice cracks, but I force it steady. “That’s where they silenced me. That’s where I was raped by the men you sold me to. Men who thought my pain was a transaction. Where I realized shouting for help was useless and silence was safer.”
I point to the door next. “That’s where they dragged me out when they were done. Threw me in a car, bleeding and half-conscious, and dumped me back at our doorstep like garbage.”
Finally, I point at her. My hand doesn’t shake this time. “And you. You watched me walk through that door. Bruised, torn apart, and barely standing. Do you remember what you did?”
Her mouth opens, but I don’t give her the chance.
“Yousmiled.” The word rips out of me, all the hurt I felt back then rising. “You told me it’s what all girls go through. That I should begratefulbecause it meant I was pretty enough for men to want me.”
Tracey flinches, but I’m not done. I can’t stop. The dam’s broken.
“And Dad—” My throat tightens around his name. “He found out what you did. What your debt cost me. And do you know what it did to him?” My voice cracks, tears sting my eyes. “He drank himself half to death trying to forget it, because the guilt was eating him alive. You don’t know what surviving is, Tracey. You only know how to run from the things you cause. But I learned how to live with them. I learned how to turn what you, Lorenzo, and James did to me into something that couldn’t be used to hurt me anymore.”
I take a deep breath and look at her, really look, and I hate what I see. Her eyes glisten, but I don’t care. “I’m not the scared little girl you left in this room,” I finish, voice trembling. “You broke me. But I built myself back, piece by piece, and every single one of those pieces hates you for what you let happen.”
