Page 19 of Silenced

Still, it’s too late to care.

I allow the tears to fall.

My shoulders heave with emotion, and I’m lost in the whirlwind of fear and self-disgust and shame, so it’s only luck that has me hearing the creaking of the leather.

Pain sends lightning bolts across my skull as I jerk in surprise when I realize I’m not alone. Immediately, I lower my hands to check out the rest of the car.

This time, it registers that I’m in a limo.

Before I left the upper East Coast to run from Harvey, I had savings and a functioning business and was affluent enough to support us. Even so, I’d never been able to afford a limo outside of on the night of my bachelorette party, where women Harvey was jealous of attended, women I no longer speak to.

The isolation is… horrifying.

I feel it now. Clawing at me.

No one cares if you live or die, Cassie. No one. And it’s all your fault.

Staring around the luxurious vehicle, trying not to trigger a panic attack, keeping my head as immobile as possible, I rasp, “Who’s there?”

Silence.

The leather creaks again, and that’s when I realize my still-aching eyes are failing me in the dark cocoon of the backseat—but, that smell… I recognize it first before, finally, I see him.

The fallen angel who never delivered me to Hell.

“You,” I whisper, aware that it’s an accusation.

He doesn’t respond, but he’s not ignoring me because the next thing I know is that I’m being lifted.

Scrabbling against the inexorable hold, I find myself on his lap anyway.

It’s as if it doesn’t register that I’m fighting him—his hand settles on the back of my head and just as I fear he’s about to force me to do something I’m in no state to handle, I’m stunned when he presses my face to his throat.

It takes me a beat to understand what’s happening.

He’s trying to comfort me.

My mouth works with questions I need the answers to, but I don’t voice them.

I can’t.

I have no idea who he is, how I’m here, or why he’s trying to soothe me, and right now, I don’t particularly care.

Instead, I let the tears fall into the vast wasteland of despair that I didn’t know I needed to shed in a stranger’s arms.

I let loose my sorrow and grief and fear.

As I cry on a stranger’s lap, into his throat, in a limo that I have no idea how I ended up in, on the road to someplace I don’t know, I’ve never been in a more precarious position.

So why do I feel safe?

7

NIKOLAI

Baby - Elvis Drew, Avivian

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