Page 1 of Silent Betrayal

Chapter one

Would I be able to get away with kidnapping her? I’d have to keep her hidden from everyone until she’s eighteen. Maybe even my own family. But it’d be worth it.She’sworth it.

My hands tighten on my steering wheel as I pull into our driveway. She should be here. I hate that I had to take her home after what happened today. She was assaulted by that asshole, Brad, at school and even if he has been arrested, she needs time to process what happened. And that should be with the people who will take care of her and protect her, help her feel safe.

Even though I’ve never met her mother personally, I have a feeling Helen wouldn’t be the one to help her through this. I begged her to stay, but she was adamant she had to get home. As usual, I dropped her a few houses down so her mother wouldn’t see my car, and I tried again to get her to stay a little longer. She just hugged me and gave me a sad smile goodbye.

I slam my car door shut and head into the house, tossing my keys in the bowl by the door and stomping into the living room.

“Drop off go okay, Atlas?” Gideon asks as I plop down on the couch beside him.

“Fine,” I grumble, still considering how I can get away with kidnapping her. If I could only get all my brothers on board…

“We’ve got movement!” Ben calls, running into the living room with Dom hot on his heels.

Everyone else moves into the room and takes a seat as Ben makes quick work of pulling up the feed from the camera pointed at the front of Mina’s house on our living room tv.

“It’s two minutes delayed out here,” Ben says as he flips the input to the right feed.

I lean forward as I watch a car pull into her driveway. A man gets out and heads for the front door. He’s wearing a baseball cap pulled low and a jacket hiding his neck and face.

“Is that Jeff?” Max asks.

“I can’t tell,” I say, straining my eyes to see more.

“Alright, Atlas and Tucker, get over there and watch,” Dom tells us.

I nod as the twins pipe up. “No way!”

“We’re coming too!”

“We were all needed last time a man was there,” Gideon adds.

Dom looks around at everyone. “Fine, we’re all going. Three vehicles: Atlas and Tucker out front, the second car a few houses down,and the third, my car, a few houses back from that. We’ll regroup on specific assignments when we get there.”

Everyone scrambles to get their shoes on, then we quickly pile into our vehicles and head to Mina’s house.

I shuffle in my seat, feeling a growing sense of restlessness, like an itch under my skin that I can’t scratch. The closer we get to her house, the worse it gets, even though I was just here, dropping her off.

Tucker’s voice startles me, I’d somehow forgotten he was in the car with me, too focused on my growing worry to notice. “Atlas, I don’t know if I can wait outside. I can’t risk something happening to her again. The wound on her arm…” He trails off, but we’re thinking the same thing, that the terrible injury on her arm was not from a fall like she claimed. No, someone did that to her.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I say with a big sigh. “Let’s assess the situation, then we’ll convince Dom to let us sneak in somehow, or at least look through the windows.”

“We need cameras inside the house,” he says, sounding as frustrated as I feel. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him rake his fingers through his hair in agitation.

His phone rings, and he scrambles to pull it out of his pocket and put it on speaker. “Ben?” he asks.

“Yeah, I’ve got everyone on the call. There’s more movement—her mom just left. She got in her car and drove off by herself, she was moving quickly like she had to get somewhere important.”

“Fuck, I’m going in there,” I say with a growl. They all start talking at once as we pull onto her street. My phone buzzes in my pocket, so I pull it out. My eyes widen when I see her name.

“Quiet! Mina’s calling me!” I yell, and everyone shuts up instantly. I quickly answer and put it on speaker phone.

“Malishka?”

The heart-wrenching sound of her heavy sobs shatters me.

“What is it? Are you okay? Tap for me, Malishka,” I beg, praying she’s okay. But my worry only grows when she coughs, and it sounds like she’s struggling to breathe.

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