Page 7 of Silent Betrayal

“She’s really okay?” Max asks the nurse in disbelief.

She nods with a small smile. “She is for now. But since she’s only seventeen, only her parents or guardians can see her and speak to her doctor at this time,” she explains.Bloody hell!This isn’t fair. We don’t even know where her mother is.Weare the ones that are here. We’re her real family now, anyway.

“I’m her husband,” Ben speaks up, making my head whip to him in surprise.

“Oh… But she’s only seventeen.” She looks at him like she doesn’t believe it.

“You can get married at seventeen,” Dom states without pause, like Ben’s statement doesn’t even phase him.

“Yes, alright. Well, you can come with me…”

“Ben,” he tells her as he follows.

“Ben.” She nods, leading him down the hall.

As they leave the room, Dom lets out a bark of laughter, surprising all of us. “I wonder how long he’s been sitting on that plan.”

The tension fades out of me as we all smile. At least one of us can be with her right now, and she’s okay, she’s made it out of surgery and she’s stable. I can finally breathe again.

Chapter four

Somehow, I thought death would be quieter. Strange noises surround me, mangling together, in a cacophony of sound. There’s a weird smell here I don’t recognize. I try to look around, but everything is black.Are my eyes closed?I try to open them, but nothing happens.

I start to notice my body hurting… everywhere. At first it’s mild discomfort, but the more I notice it, the faster it grows into a deep throbbing pain, as if I’ve been hit by a truck. I didn’t think you were supposed to feel pain in death. Unless you went to hell, then maybe you would. My mother did tell me that’s where I belong, have I finally died and gone to hell?

Memories flash through my head. My mother.The knife. It all comes flooding back, and one of the noises around me grows louder.

It starts to separate from the others, drowning out all other noise as I focus on it. It’s a high pitched beeping sound, and it’s slowly getting faster and faster.

I flash back to the nightmare of being attacked by my mother again and pain ripples through my body.

The stabs to my shoulders.Beep.

The gash up my abdomen.Beep.

The cuts on my legs.Beep.

My finger.Beep. Beep. Beep.

My eyes grow damp, even though they won’t open.

“What’s happening?” a scared voice asks.I know that voice.

“Her heart rate is picking up,” another familiar voice answers.

Someone squeezes my right hand.

“But why?”

Max.I recognize his voice now. If I have their voices with me in death, maybe it won’t be so bad here. I try to squeeze his hand back as my breathing steadies, and the beeping starts to slow down.

More noises start to penetrate my mind. Somewhere, a door opens, followed by an unfamiliar voice. “Dom, it’s time. CPA is here.”

“I told you no!” Dom’s voice is sharp with anger, making my hand squeeze the person holding mine a little harder.Why is he so mad?Is he mad at me?

“Look, I’ve held them off as long as I can, but she’s seventeen, and there’s no sign of her mother,” the other man says. If I was dead, this was a very strange conversation I was listening to.

“I don’t care. I’ll marry her, then she’ll be under my care.”

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