Page 111 of Broken By Silence
He’s alive, is what I have to tell myself as I see the way his legs are already starting to bruise from being pinned by the car. Thankfully, it’s nothing serious like a break or nerve damage.
Will’s pacing outside the door, phone clutched tight in his hand, jaw clenched hard enough to crack his teeth. When he looks back through the door, I can see it all. Rage, fear… guilt—all knotted into something dangerous.
I turn back to my best friend, and his eyes can’t meet mine.“They said you got lucky,”I sign.“No breaks, only a few cuts and bruises. Should be able to leave tomorrow since they want to keep an eye out for any delayed issues and nerve damage.”
Roman appears just as I finish talking, Elijah and Crew right behind him. Roman looks like death incarnate, eyes like black glass. Elijah’s quieter, hollowed like he’s holding his fury back by a thread, but also like he doesn’t know how to exist without being in Lottie’s shadow anymore. Crew’s giving me nothing, it’s like he’s completely shut down. The only thing that tells me he’s losing it is the way his hands are shaking, like he’s desperate for a fix to numb out everything he’s feeling now she’s gone.
“They took her,”Archer’s hands move along with his lips.“They took her, and I couldn’t stop them. I’m not lucky, Oscar. This is every nightmare I’ve ever had all come to life.”
“Archer—”
“They ran us off the road. I tried to get out, to get to her, but I was pinned. I watched them drag her out of the car. Watched helplessly as they broke something… She screamed my name, Oscar. I couldn’t move.”His hands shake, and I see how broken he looks.
“It wasn’t your fault. This is what my dad does, Archer. He was never going to stop until he had her or he was dead, but we’ll get her back… I swear it,”Roman promises.
Crew steps closer, sad eyes tracing over Archer.“Is she really gone?”I watch as his lips move, see the pain twist his face, the disbelief that she’s gone. It’s the look in his eyes that breaks me—the quiet, aching certainty that she is… that we let him take her.
“I’m sorry.”It’s all Archer can manage to say, and I know the guilt will be eating him from the inside out.
Archer looks smaller in the hospital bed, shoulders hunched, jaw clenched, hands gripping the hospital sheets like he could claw the guilt out if he just tried hard enough.
“Nothing to be sorry for,”I sign, even though everything inside me feels like it’s unraveling.
“We’ll get her back,”Elijah says.
Archer’s head lifts, and the same look he used to get in his eyes when he talked about Lottie is there.“Your dad signed his death warrant, Roman.”
“I know,”Roman replies.
Fifteen minutes later,Will’s on the phone with Pacheco, barking orders and calling in favors.“Your father’s having a wedding tomorrow. Pacheco confirmed it.”
Roman’s jaw ticks, his fists flexing at his sides. Will nods once, like he gets it.“Tomorrow morning, at his estate.”
Crew’s pacing near the window.“He’s not seriously going to go ahead with this…”
“He is,”Will signs.“And it gets worse.”He looks at Roman.“Pacheco says he’s been bragging about it. Said he’s finally found someone worth the trouble.”
Roman’s expression hardens, but his eyes flicker with something dangerous.“He’s dead.”
No one says anything else. They don’t have to. The silence says enough.
Then Roman pulls his phone from his pocket, the screen lit up with an unknown number. He answers, placing it on speakerphone, Archer signs for me.“What?”
“That’s no way to greet your father, son.”
Roman’s hand tightens around the phone.“I stopped being your son when you shot me and kidnapped the woman I—”he pauses, realising what he was about to say.
“Nonsense. I thought I’d call you with some good news.”
“If you lay a hand on her?—”
“Ah,”Lorenzo interrupts.“So you already know about my fiancée.”
“You’re a sick bastard. Let her go.”
“She’s beautiful,”Lorenzo continues, ignoring Roman.“Brave. Trembling in the very same room she became mine in. You’d like the way her eyes are glaring at me right now. Such a perfect little bird to break.”
I see it all happen at once. The way Roman’s face twists with fury. The rage that nearly got him killed before… that made him reckless, takes over.“If you hurt her, I swear to God?—”
