Chapter 61The Silence of a Severed Tongue
The Silence of a Severed Tongue
Dominik
They dragged me out of the car as soon as we crossed the river.
Not even city anymore, just open wasteland, broken concrete, rusted chain-link fences yawning like broken teeth in the dark. The air stank of oil, iron, old death, thick enough to choke on. Somewhere behind the cracked warehouses, the river whispered and hissed against the banks like it was hungry.
They didn’t even bother pretending this was business. Four of them, faceless, masked, gloves tight. Hands bruised into my arms, into my ribs. I fought them anyway. Elbows, knees, fists—wild, vicious, because it was the only thing left to do.
A bat caught me in the back of the knees. I dropped. Hard. Gravel tore into my palms. The breath left my lungs in a wet gasp, and then the boots started. Rib, jaw, spine. I tasted blood first. Then gravel. Then nothing but heat, rage, and the buzzing between my ears.
But I stayed quiet.
And that? That made them angrier.
Good.
They ripped the bag off my head, and the floodlights seared into my skull.
For a second, all I could see were shapes, shadows against the raw glare.
Then their faces came into focus: not soldiers.
Not capos. Outsourced muscle. Paid trash.
Hitmen who didn’t care about honor, only the paycheck at the end of the night.
I spat blood at their boots and smiled through the red.
‘‘Hope you took out life insurance,’’ I rasped.
The steel-toed kick to my ribs almost made me black out, but I kept laughing, low and feral. The taste of blood was warm and real and human. It meant I was still alive. It meant they hadn’t broken me yet.
They didn’t ask questions. They weren’t here for answers.
They were here for punishment.
Because a month ago, I shattered the spine of one of their golden boys, a Gambino lieutenant, when he tried to put a knife in my brother’s back. Aslanov had barely stumbled away from that night breathing. I made sure they remembered the price.
Now? They were here to collect.
Not with a bullet. That would be mercy.
No. They wanted something slower. Something that would linger.
One of them stepped forward. Rocco ‘Two Cuts’ Benevetto. I knew the name. I knew the stories.
He didn’t kill you.
He carved you.
Rocco knelt in front of me like we were old friends meeting over drinks. Smiled a small, sweet smile. And from inside his coat, he pulled out something that gleamed.
A straight razor.
Sharp enough to split a thought in half.
‘‘You’re a mouthy little fuck, aren’t you,’’ Rocco murmured, almost affectionate. His breath reeked of cheap wine and decay. ‘‘We’re going to fix that.’’
I didn’t flinch.
I stared at him. I made him see me, bloodied, bruised, unbroken.
‘‘You’ll have to kill me,’’ I said, voice rough but steady. ‘‘Or I’ll find you. I’ll make you beg for death. I’ll make you crawl.’’
The men behind him laughed, ugly and loud.
Rocco just sighed, almost regretful.
‘‘Good lungs,’’ he said. ‘‘Shame about what’s coming.’’
I fought when they pried my mouth open, fought like a rabid fucking animal. Bit at fingers, snapped my head forward, tasted blood that wasn’t mine. But they pinned me down; one knee crushing my throat, another on my chest. My ribs screamed. My vision tunneled.
I remember the cold brush of the blade against my tongue.
The moment before.
The horror wasn’t in the pain. Not yet.
It was in the knowing.
The moment of silence before the scream that would never come.
Rocco leaned closer, breath hot against my ear.
‘‘I hope you remember this forever,’’ he said.
And then he cut .
The world exploded, white-hot agony, splinters of sound and light shredding through me. The razor carved through flesh and nerve and soul. Blood poured down my chin in thick ropes. I tried to scream—I think I did—but it came out wet, broken, useless.
It wasn’t just pain.
It was erasure.
It was being unmade.
I convulsed, choking, the world spinning so fast it felt like falling through space.
I thought I would die there, drowning in my own blood, in the stink of their laughter.
But then, gunfire.
Sharp. Ruthless.
Like the gates of Hell kicking open.
Bullets tore through the night, ripping bodies apart mid-laugh. Men dropped like ragdolls, blood spraying the gravel, slicking the concrete.
Through the chaos, through the red haze blinding my vision, I saw him.
Aslanov.
His face was carved from rage and grief. His eyes burned like two suns about to collapse. He moved like death itself, a storm of fists and steel, a gun in each hand.
He killed them all.
Without mercy. Without hesitation.
By the time he reached me, there was nothing left but the stink of gunpowder, the twitch of dying bodies, and the river singing somewhere in the dark.
He dropped to his knees beside me. His hands, rough, shaking, found my shoulders, my back, my blood-soaked face.
I tried to speak, instinct, but all that came out was a wet, guttural noise. A sound that didn’t belong to anything human.
His face broke when he heard it. I saw it. I felt it.
But he didn’t flinch.
He didn’t recoil.
He pulled me into his arms, blood and brokenness and all. He held me like a brother, like an oath. Like something sacred.
He pressed his forehead to mine and breathed, and for the first time in my life, I understood that survival wasn’t living.
It was carrying the weight of what they’d taken.
It was becoming something they couldn’t break again.
I bled out into the night. I lived.
But the boy I had been, the voice I had been, died under those floodlights.
That was the last day I ever spoke.
The last breath that carried words.
Now when I rage—
I rage in silence.
When I love—
I love in silence.
When I kill—
I kill in silence.
And my silence?
It screams louder than any words ever could.