Broken by Silence, page 14
It’s not that I think I deserve it—I know I don’t.
Not after everything I did. Not after everything my family carved into her life. But watching her give pieces of herself to them, while she won’t even look me in the eye half the time… it guts me.
I hate them.
Hate that they’re all here getting to be around her without her flinching or removing herself.
But mostly I hate myself.
Because the truth is, I’m not much better. I still hover. Still waiting for scraps. Still cling to whatever small moments she doesn’t shut me out completely.
I want to be the one she doesn’t shy away from. I want to be the one she lets touch her without fear. I want—fuck, I want so much it makes me sick.
But I’m not. I’m not the one she lets in. I’m the one she avoids. The one she sidesteps in hallways, the one whose voice makes her stiffen.
And maybe I deserve that. Maybe that’s all I’ll ever deserve.
My phone buzzes on the table beside me, snapping me out of the spiral. I glance down and see the name flash across the screen.
Pacheco
Shipment expected next week. Same port. You’ve got the product, yes?
Me
Shipment’s ready. Same crates, same schedule. You’ll have it.
And it’s not a lie. I learned years ago to be able to schedule everything from tapping away on my phone, while I couldn’t walk from a beating from my father. Now, I’m running an empire from Claire’s sofa—an empire I still need to be able to take my father down.
I shove the phone face down and rub my hands over my face, trying to chase the anger out of me before I explode.
“Roman?”
Her voice.
My spine stiffens instantly. I lower my hands, and there she is, standing in the doorway like she’s not sure she belongs in the same room as me.
Her hair’s messy, her sweater hanging loose off one shoulder. She looks small, fragile, but her eyes—they’re sharp, wary, watchful.
My throat goes dry. “Hey.”
She doesn’t move closer. Doesn’t smile. Just watches me, arms crossed over her chest like armor.
I should let her walk away. Shouldn’t ask for more than she’s willing to give. But the words spill out before I can stop them.
“Sit with me?”
Her brow furrows. “Why?”
“Because…” I swallow, forcing the lump down. “Because I need to talk to you.”
For a moment, I think she’ll bolt. Her weight shifts, her fingers twitch against her sleeves. But then—slowly—she crosses the room and lowers herself onto the far end of the sofa. Not close. Not even halfway. Just… there.
It’s more than I’ve had in months.
I take a breath that scrapes my throat raw. “Do you ever wonder why I—” I break off, jaw clenching. “Why I was such an asshole to you at school?”
Her eyes snap to mine, dark and sharp. “All the time.”
The words slice me open.
I nod, jaw tight. “It wasn’t just me. It wasn’t just because I hated you. It was because…” My chest constricts, but I force it out. “Because he made me.”
Her brow furrows. “I know all of this, Roman.”
“I know… but my dad,” I clarify. My voice is rough, low. “He told me to. He said if I didn’t break you, if I didn’t make your life hell, I’d pay for it. And I did. Every time I slipped, every time I hesitated—he beat the shit out of me. Some days were so bad I couldn’t even walk. Couldn’t sit in a chair at school without wincing from the lashes on my back from the belt, or if I was really lucky, a broken bone. Sometimes I couldn’t show up at all. That’s why. That’s why I—” My throat closes, but I force the words out. “I turned it on you. I made you the target because it meant I wasn’t the one bleeding.”
Her lips part, but no words come.
“I hated it,” I whisper. “I hated knowing I was hurting you, hated knowing I was becoming exactly what he wanted me to be. But the worst part? Sometimes… sometimes I liked it.”
Her eyes widen, pain flickering across her face, and I feel bile rise in my throat.
“I liked seeing you flinch. I liked knowing I could break something beautiful because he couldn’t break me that day. It was sick. Twisted. And every time it happened, I hated myself more. Because it didn’t make me strong, it didn’t make me powerful. It just made me like him.”
The words hang heavy between us, choking the air out of the room.
She whispers, voice trembling, “He liked me broken, too.”
It’s not a scream, just a fact, and it wrecks me. I nod slowly, eyes stinging. “I know.”
Her arms tighten around herself, and I want to reach out, want to touch her, want to beg—but I don’t. I don’t dare.
“I can’t undo it,” I say. “I can’t erase it. I can only tell you the truth now. Even if it makes you hate me more.”
She stares at me, silent, her breath uneven.
It’s safer to tell her the truth than to let her keep guessing. That’s what I tell myself, even though my voice comes out low, almost ashamed.
“I tried to refuse,” I say.
And I can see in her eyes that she doesn’t believe me.
I don’t blame her. Not after everything I’ve done. Not after everything she’s survived because of me. So I do the only thing I can. I move.
My fingers hook into the hem of my shirt. I strip it off with the same practiced ease I’ve used a thousand times in the mirror, but this time there’s no mirror…only her.
Lottie.
Her breath catches, and I know what she’s seeing isn’t just muscle. It’s a history carved into skin.
Raised scars. Jagged seams. Some faint as ghost trails, others still livid, purple-edged, refusing to fade. I’ve stopped counting them.
I turn my back to her, because if she’s going to know me, she needs to see all of it—the map of pain, the graveyard.
I feel her eyes catch on the welt under my shoulder blade. I almost flinch before she can even touch it. I lift my hand instead, fingers brushing it like a reflex. “This was the first,” I murmur. My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “I refused to hurt you… So he hurt me instead.”
Her voice is soft, tremoring. “With his belt?”
I wish it had been. At least then it would have been familiar. I shake my head, and a bitter smile drags at my mouth. “I wish.”
She says my name like it might anchor me. “Roman.” I hear the heartbreak in her voice.
I can’t look at her.
If I look, I’ll see pity. I’ll see fear. I’ll see everything I don’t deserve.
“I’m no saint,” I hear myself confess. “I enjoyed hurting you. Not because it was you. But because it meant I wasn’t alone in it… the pain.” My throat is dry. “But some of the things he wanted me to do to you… I couldn’t.”
Her fingers graze the scar along my shoulder, and for a heartbeat, my body is a live wire. I inhale sharply, then let it out like I’m bleeding air.
“Don’t make me say it,” I whisper. “I’m already a monster. If I say it, if I see it in your eyes… I won’t survive that.”
Her voice cuts through me, quiet but firm. “Try me.”
I don’t know why I do, maybe because she’s the only one who ever saw the boy underneath the monster, maybe because this is the only way to kill what’s left of me.
“He wanted me to take you,” I whisper, each word like glass. “To see if I would. It was a test. And God help me, for a moment… I considered it. Not because I wanted to break you—not like that. But because I thought maybe if you were mine, if I took you somewhere safe, somewhere far from him, I could keep you. Protect you.”
She stares at me, heart hammering, and I feel the walls inside me crumble. “And when you refused?” she asks.
Slowly, I turn and take her hand, moving it away from my back, because she can’t touch that word. I show her instead.
Carved into my skin.
Coward.
The letters are uneven, cruel. He carved it so deep I thought he might kill me.
Sometimes I think he did, and I’m just what’s left walking around.
“Please don’t touch that,” I whisper. “I can’t stand the thought of your hands on that word.”
“There’s no shame in any of this, Roman,” She says, her voice shaking. “You were a victim. We both were.”
She’s wrong. I shake my head. “No. I chose to stay. I chose to be a part of it. That makes me different from you.”
“That’s not true—”
“It is,” I cut in. My voice is rough, splintering at the seams. “Because no matter how many times I told myself I was better than him… part of me wasn’t. Part of me wanted to do it.”
She flinches, but she doesn’t pull away. That undoes me more than her words ever could. I step closer, hands trembling as I cup her face. She feels like the last good thing in the world.
“Don’t you get it, Reyes? I wanted to break you. Not violently, not all at once, but carefully. Lovingly. I wanted to shatter you slowly, until you thanked me for every piece I took. And now look at me—” My voice cracks, and I drop to my knees in front of her. For a second, I’m not the man who once held power over everything. I’m ruined. Hollow. “Now I’m the one broken. I’m the one kneeling in the wreckage, begging just to hear you say my name like it doesn’t make you sick.”
My voice cracks. The mask I’ve worn for years—the control, the arrogance. It all shatters at her feet. Silence stretches between us like a blade. I can feel her eyes on me, and it’s unbearable and holy all at once.
“You still want to hurt me?” she asks.
I shake my head slowly. “No. Not anymore. I never really wanted to hurt you. I just wanted to share my pain with someone.”
“Then what do you want now?”
For a moment, I can’t find the words. Then, hollowly, I say them. “I want forgiveness. I want to believe I’m capable of something more than destruction. I want to know there’s something left of me that’s worth saving.”
She should walk away. I deserve it. I deserve the emptiness, the silence, the closing of the door.
But instead, she steps forward.
It’s such a small thing. Barely a shift in the air. The sound of her feet against the floor is softer than breath. But for me, it’s an earthquake.
My chest tightens, a hard, burning knot. My first thought is that she’s coming closer to hit me, to spit in my face, to finish what I started all those years ago. I deserve that. Part of me wants it.
Pain, I understand.
Pain, I can take.
But she doesn’t hit me. She doesn’t recoil. She just moves toward me like I’m not poison. The air smells like her—warm and human and sharp, like soap and rain on concrete. My pulse is hammering so hard it shakes my ribs. I can hear the blood in my ears, the old reflexes screaming brace, brace, brace.
I don’t move.
I don’t breathe.
Her face is calm, but her eyes are full. Anger, grief, something I can’t name.
Something I’m too afraid to name.
She’s so close now I can see the little tremor at the corner of her mouth, the way her fingers twitch like she’s reaching for something she isn’t sure she should touch.
I think of my father’s hand, shoving me forward. Take what’s yours.
I think of the word carved into my back. Coward.
And for the first time in years, I feel… nothing. No rage. No armor. No mask. Just a hollow, shaking boy kneeling in front of someone he’s destroyed, waiting for a verdict.
I shut my eyes.
If she hits me, I’ll take it.
If she walks away, I’ll let her.
If she says she hates me, I’ll carve it into my skin next to the others, and it will be no less than what I deserve.
But then I feel warmth.
Her fingers brush mine, and the breath I’ve been holding collapses out of me. “You broke me, and seeing this can’t erase it all… but I do get it.”
I want to tell her she’s insane, that she should run, that nothing good lives in me. But the words won’t come. All I can do is stand there, trembling like a man who’s been handed something fragile and holy that he has no right to hold.
Her eyes don’t look like disgust. They look like defiance.
They look like a girl staring down the monster under her bed and refusing to be afraid anymore.
We sit back down, neither of us saying anything, and she’s distanced herself again. Like everything I’ve told her is pressing down on her more and more.
Finally, I break it with a whisper. “Will you drive me somewhere?”
Her head snaps up. “What?”
“My car’s totaled,” I remind her. “Crashed it when I was bleeding out trying to get to you. Haven’t replaced it yet. I just… I need you to take me somewhere.”
Her fingers dig into her sweater sleeves, knuckles white. Her voice is quiet, trembling, but sure. “That idea terrifies me.”
The words land harder than any bullet.
“Why?” I ask, even though I already know.
She doesn’t look away. “Because you still remind me of him.”
Her words slice me open.
Because you still remind me of him.
I sit there, swallowing the sting, and force myself not to flinch. I’ve taken bullets. I’ve taken beatings so bad I couldn’t walk straight for days. None of it compares to this.
“I’m not him,” I murmur. It comes out hoarse, broken. “Lottie, I’m not.”
She doesn’t answer. Just hugs herself tighter, her knees pulled up like a shield.
I could let it end here. Let her wall me out, keep the distance safe for her. But I can’t. I need something—anything—that isn’t just sitting here drowning in her silence.
“Please.”
She stares at me like I’ve grown another head. “Roman, are you out of your mind? You think I want to be stuck in a car with you?”
“I think,” I say carefully, “that it’s the only way I can prove I’m not him. You drive. You hold the keys. You decide when we stop, when we turn back. I won’t say a word unless you want me to. Just… give me this.”
Her jaw clenches. I see the flicker of fear there, the hesitation that burns hotter than any insult she could throw. I’m losing her again, so I push softer.
“Please let me prove I’m not him,” I whisper. “That’s all I’m asking.”
The silence stretches. My pulse pounds in my ears. Then—finally—she exhales through her nose, sharp. “Fine. But if you so much as—”
“I won’t.” I cut in, too fast, too desperate. I soften my tone. “I won’t, Lottie. I swear.”
We walk out together, but the space between us might as well be a mile. She keeps her distance, shoulders stiff, and I let her. I’ve earned that wall.
At the car, she slides into the driver’s seat, her hands immediately gripping the wheel like it’s a lifeline. I sink into the passenger seat and hand her my phone.
“Put the address in yours,” I tell her.
Suspicion flickers again. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
She doesn’t like that answer, I can tell, but she plugs it in anyway, the map lighting up between us. A blue line stretching out of the city.
The engine hums. She pulls out onto the road, and the silence wraps back around us like barbed wire.
We drive. Past neon signs, past neighborhoods that bleed into empty fields. I keep my gaze fixed on the window, on the blur of dark countryside rushing past.
Every now and then, I sneak a glance at her. The way her hair catches the passing light, the tight set of her jaw, the way her knuckles whiten around the wheel. She’s wound so tight she might snap. And it’s my fault.
I try not to speak, but the words grind out anyway. “Back then. When you stopped talking at school, you don’t know how much that killed me.”
Her eyes flick to me, sharp, but she doesn’t say anything.
“I thought it was about me,” I go on, voice low. “That you were punishing me. I’d call you names, shove you around, do everything I could to get a rise out of you. But when your eyes went dead? When you went silent? That cut deeper than any punch he gave me. I hated you for it. Because even when I hurt you, you used to fight back. And when you didn’t… I thought I was nothing to you.”
The tires hum against the road. Her face stays forward, unreadable.
“But I get it now,” I whisper. “It wasn’t about me. It was about surviving. About what he did. What Elijah’s dad did. And I hated you anyway, because I was too fucking selfish to see past myself.”
Her grip on the wheel trembles just slightly. She doesn’t look at me, but her throat works like she’s swallowing words she’ll never let me hear.
I lean back, pressing my head against the seat. “I don’t hate you anymore, Lottie. I don’t think I could if I tried.”
The GPS pings softly, telling her to turn. She follows it without question, though I can feel her curiosity prickling under the surface.
Ten minutes later, the lights of the town flicker ahead. She slows as the map directs her down a narrow street, until finally the car rolls to a stop outside a squat brick building. The sign above it glows in bold letters.
Voodoo Tattoo
She stares. Then turns on me, eyes sharp. “You dragged me all the way out here for this?”
I don’t flinch. “Yeah.”
“Roman—”
“I need it,” I cut in. My chest tightens, but I force the words out. “I need something permanent. Something I can’t drink away, or fight away, or pretend never happened. Something that reminds me, every single day, of what I’ve done and what I owe.”
Her eyes widen slightly, then narrow. “And you think a tattoo’s going to fix that?”
“No.” My voice cracks. “But I think it’s the only way for me to show you that I’m not him…”
The silence between us is heavier now, but it’s different than before. Not just fear. Not just hate. Something else, sharp and fragile, waiting to snap.
