Page 52 of Broken By Silence
“Who’s going with you?”Oscar asks me, and for a moment, I forgot that we would need someone to tag along. A voice from behind me has me spinning around.
“I am,” Claire says, arms crossed, eyes narrowed dangerously on Elijah.
For a second, nobody breathes. Elijah blinks at her, caught off guard. I see the flicker of panic in his eyes, panic that she’ll never let him near me, panic that she’s about to gut him in front of everyone.
He’s not wrong to be afraid.
“Mom.” Archer starts, but she silences him with a single raised hand.
“You’ll do as she says, Elijah,” Claire continues, her voice colder than I’ve ever heard it. “You don’t touch her unless she tells you to. You don’t raise your voice, you don’t so much as breathe wrong. If you do, I’ll bury you myself, and no one in this room will stop me. Do you understand me?”
Elijah swallows hard, his voice a rasp. “I understand.”
Claire doesn’t look satisfied. She steps forward until she’s a hair’s breadth from him and drops her voice so only we can hear. “One wrong move, and I won’t give you fingers to count regrets, and I’ll make sure you beg for the mercy my husband never gives. Capisce?”
I swallow hard, look from Claire’s steel to Oscar’s steadiness to Archer’s fire. “One hour,” I say at last. My voice is steadier than I expect. “Coffee. That’s it. No more.”
Claire’s expression softens for just a heartbeat as she steps closer and cups my cheek in her palm. “Then one hour it is. But if I don’t like what I see, Lottie, I’ll make good on my promise. No hesitation.”
Chapter 20
Elijah
The car is too small for all of us.
She sits beside me, her head turned to the window, her profile lit in quick flashes by the orange wash of passing streetlights. Her face is pale, her body tight with exhaustion, but her silence is louder than any scream.
I grip the wheel harder than I should, not because I need control of the car but because I need control of myself. Every instinct inside me begs to reach across the space, to catch her hand, to prove she’s still flesh and bone and not the ghost I thought I married.
But I don’t.
I can’t.
Not yet.
Claire’s presence in the backseat is a blade pressed to the base of my skull. I don’t need to look at her to feel it.
The wife of a man who’s buried more enemies than I’ve prayed for forgiveness. Her silence is deliberate, a scare tactic—one wrong move, and I won’t see tomorrow… and it’s working.
But I also don’t care. If the price of sitting in this car with Lottie ismy looming death if I even so much as breathe near her wrong, I’ll carry it gladly.
The city thins, buildings bleeding into the coastline, and the air sharpens with salt. The moon is low over the water, and I remember every fragment of her that was shaped by the ocean. She used to tell me the waves made her feel small in the best way. Insignificant, but safe, like the world was vast enough to hold all her hurt.
That’s why I turn the wheel toward the shore.
I don’t ask if she wants to come with me. If she says no, I’ll drive to the ends of the earth in silence.
The café sits squatand tired against the sand, neon buzzing weakly above its windows. I kill the engine.
For a moment, I don’t move. My hands stay glued to the wheel, my chest locked, until I risk a glance at her.
She hasn’t run.
“Come on,” I say softly, opening my door.
She hesitates, but when I step out into the night, I hear hers open too. The slam of it is quiet, but my heart still stutters.
Claire follows, her heels sharp against the asphalt, her presence reminding me this is not a date.
