Silence
“Take your pants off.”
“Take your pants off,” Xavier snaps back, and I glare at him as I sit on the coffee table in front of him and pull on latex gloves.
“I need to look at the wound. Pants. Off.”
Dropping his head back against the couch cushions, Xavier wets his lips and tugs off his T-shirt, his tattooed body shining with sweat and blood.
Finally, he unbuttons his jeans, pushing them down, but nowhere near enough.
Yale appears with a first aid kit and places it beside me.
Zayden is standing by the fireplace, arms folded, expression dark.
“You need to push them further down,” I say.
“That’s all you’re getting. Just sew me up so I can go home.”
I scowl. “You’ll let a stranger see your dick behind a McDonald’s, but you won’t take your pants off for a medical professional?”
His head snaps up. “How the fuck do you know that?” His gaze shifts to Yale. “You fucker!”
Yale winces but waves him off. “She’s my best friend. I tell her everything.”
“So she knows about the time you stopped at a diner for food, forgot your wallet, and paid for it by fucking the waitress, and then it turned out she didn’t even work there?”
Yale and I nod. “Yep.”
I tear open an antiseptic wipe and clean up some of the blood.
My wrist twinges, and my knuckles are already bruised.
I try to focus on Xavier, but my body is in bits.
I’m gonna feel tonight for at least a week.
All I want to do is help him, then sink into the hottest bath I can handle, but judging by Zayden’s demeanor, tonight is far from over.
He didn’t say a word on the drive home but kept inspecting my bruises.
His expression warred between anger and guilt, and I need to get him alone and tell him in no uncertain terms that tonight was not his fault. Not even close.
“How does it look?” Yale asks.
I frown. “I really don’t know. We should go to a hospital; he could have internal bleeding.”
Xavier rests his head back on the pillow. “Nah, I’ve had that before. I know what it feels like.”
“That’s not how internal bleeding works!” I cry, exasperated. “Xavier, you could die.”
“Then fix me.” He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he takes steady breaths through the pain.
This is ridiculous. I know we’d have to file a police report if we go to the hospital, but if the alternative is Xavier bleeding out or dying of an infection, surely it’s better he lives?
I glance at Zayden and hate that I do. He’s the one Xavier and Yale turn to, and I know how heavy that burden is on him, but I don’t know what to do. He gives me a small nod, and I sigh.
Yale gets me a needle and thread, and I sanitize as best I can with alcohol. I’ve never done this outside of the hospital before. I don’t have the right tools, and I’m shaking like a leaf and sweating through my dress.
Wiping my forehead with the back of my arm, I lean closer. “This is going to hurt.”
“No shit,” Xavier whispers.
Yale says, “Want me to hold your hand?”
“Fuck you. Silence, just do it.” I pierce his skin and he grits his teeth, squeezing his eyes closed as I pull the thread. “Fuck. Someone talk.”
“Yes, talk,” I say, praying for my hands to quit shaking. “What happened tonight?”
Zayden clears his throat. “Someone has been following you.”
I pause my work, and Xavier hisses, “Do not stop!”
“Sorry,” I whisper, continuing. “Following me? Why?”
“To get to us, probably,” Zayden says. “I need to find out who the hell Ryker Blake is, track him down, and kill him.”
This time when I pause, Xavier only breathes through the interruption.
I’ve never heard Zayden talk like this. I know what he does, but I make a point of burying it deep in the back of my psyche along with all the other fucked-up shit in my life. My husband being a killer isn’t something I need to revisit on the daily.
I continue sewing Xavier up, and Zayden speaks again. “I’ll have Cleo find out everything she can.”
“Why was he in Silence’s room?” Yale asks. “He got a key somehow?”
My cheeks warm and I grab the scissors, cutting the thread. “This is going to burn. Stay still.” I pour alcohol over the wound, vodka spilling over blood and thread, soaking into his jeans and my couch.
“Mary Kate and Ashley, what the fucking fuck!” Xavier bites his knuckles. “I hate you, Silence Silver, I swear to every god there is.”
“You’re welcome,” I say, handing him the vodka bottle. He swallows several large mouthfuls. “Sit forward, I need to check your back.”
The second knife wound isn’t as bad. It’s far shallower but still requires stitching, so I sew it up, cover it, and Xavier continues drinking. “I can’t fucking believe you told her about McDonald’s.”
Yale chuckles. “Please, you were a little proud of it.”
“Asshole,” he grumbles, and I laugh softly, patting his back to indicate I’m done. “What are you laughing at, Q? I bet you’ve got secrets.”
I focus on tidying away the packaging from the bandages, gauze, and antiseptic, ignoring him. For a moment, I wonder if he’ll bring up how he saw me defend myself. I may be rusty, but I clearly know more about self-defense than I’ve let on.
“Anyone wanna know what Silence said in the bathroom an hour before she married Z?”
I whirl and stare down at Xavier. “What did you just say?”
He grins up at me lazily, placing the vodka bottle on the coffee table and stretching his arms above his head, abs and biceps flexing, the ink shifting on his skin. “Uh-oh. Good-girl Silence is scared.”
My cheeks and neck heat. “I don’t even know what you’re—”
“I could fuck all of them,” he says, imitating my voice. “I bet that’d be fun.”
I draw in a gasp. “How did you hear that!” Yale barks out a laugh, and even Zayden is smirking. I throw balled up packaging at Xavier. “I was drunk!”
“And horny, apparently,” Xavier cackles, and I’d kick him if he wasn’t already hurt. “Look how much she’s blushing. Nothing wrong with liking group sex, little Q.”
“Oh, shut up,” I mumble, snapping the first aid kit closed.
I pause and face him. “Actually, fuck you. You’re right.
I like sex. I especially like sex with attractive men who look like my husband.
You two losers”—I wave my hand between a cackling Xavier and Yale—“just so happen to fall into that category. But I was also drunk and might’ve married a chair that night if given the chance. ”
Zayden blinks. “Wow.”
“Oh shush. I love you, and it all worked out,” I snap, storming toward the kitchen and tossing the first aid kit on the breakfast table.
When I return, Xavier is frowning at me. “Hold on.” He sits up with little difficulty, so I’m guessing the vodka is kicking in. “Ryker was from the bar, and he was staring at you—”
My eyes cut to Zayden, and he quickly adds, “She was his target. It makes sense that he was watching her—”
Xavier holds his hand up to silence his brother. “The moment you heard who it was, you told me to go to Silence’s room. You knew he was up there.” I twist my fingers together, frantically trying to come up with an explanation. Xavier looks between Zayden and me. “Do you fuck other people?”
Zayden pinches the bridge of his nose. “We’ve got more important things to worry about than our sex life.”
We do, but the way Yale is looking at me is hurting my heart. We really do tell each other everything, but this was something I couldn’t share. Zayden and I weren’t even sure what we wanted; how was I supposed to voice that to his brother and my best friend?
“We need to find out who this guy is,” Zayden says. “Cleo is looking into it, but if he managed to get past our background check, we might not find anything.”
“Let’s ask Grant.” Xavier winces as he sits up.
My heart climbs around my rib cage. “Oh God, I can’t believe I didn’t even ask about Grant. Is he okay?” Tension seeps into the room, Xavier and Yale avoiding my eye. Zayden locks his gaze on me, though. “No. He … he isn’t—”
“He’s alive,” Zayden says gently. “But he’s the reason Ryker found us in the first place.”
The words float between us, and my lips twitch into a smile as I wait for a punchline. “No. Not Grant. He wouldn’t …” I look to Yale. “Surely not? It must be a mistake.”
“He admitted it, Q,” Yale says, brows pulled together in sympathy. “He was following you and reporting back to Ryker.”
The betrayal is like a knife twisted in my gut. I perch on the edge of an armchair, worried I might fall over if I don’t.
Grant has been in our lives for years. He’s known the brothers even longer. We double-date with him and Monica.
“Where is he?” I force the question out, but I almost choke on each word.
No one speaks.
Xavier tuts. “He’s in the trunk. Why are you shielding her from this shit?”
“Because she shouldn’t have to know,” Yale bites back. “She specifically asked that we tell her as little as possible.”
He’s right. I did. The moment their secret was revealed, I stewed for weeks. Eventually, the long conversation I meant to have with my husband was glossed over, and we fell back into our routine. Then one day, the words slipped out over dinner.
“Let’s pretend I don’t know,” I’d said. “I don’t want to hear anything about it.”
Probably not the healthiest way to deal with the fact you married a killer, but the alternative was digging up my past, and I already have enough dirt under my fingernails.
“This is different. You think she’s not gonna notice Grant is gone? Pretty sure Monica will tell her,” Xavier rightfully points out.
“What are you going to do to him?” I ask.
Zayden remains quiet. So does Yale. So, for the first time since I’ve known him, I look to Xavier for answers.
“We’ll kill him.”
My stomach bottoms out, an acidic feeling pooling there, and I turn away.
The smell of blood, the red-dotted clothing that never seemed to ever truly come out no matter how much bleach I used … it all comes screaming back to me.
“They’ll come for us, Silence. They all will.”
“Silence?”
Rubbing my arms, I face the brothers again. “You can’t kill him. There has to be another way.”
Xavier snorts. “Sure. We’ll make him pinky promise not to run back to Ryker.”
“Don’t be a dick, X,” Yale snaps. “This is new to her.”
If only that were true.
Xavier slides his green gaze to me, a smirk twitching his lips. “Right. I forgot she’s totally innocent.”
My neck heats, and I hope my glare relays the pain he’ll be in he if brings up my self-defense show in the hotel. “He’s your friend. He made a mistake.”
“If we hadn’t figured out what he’d done, Q, you’d be dead or taken,” Zayden says, his tone clear—this isn’t a discussion. “I don’t care who he is. He put you in danger, and he doesn’t get to walk away.”
My heart is torn between honor at his fierce defense and wanting to scream at him, at all of them. Murder isn’t the answer. It can’t be. Even when that was drip -fed to me, forced into my psyche, my entire being told me it was wrong.
“Zayden—”
“He bruised you. He made you fear for your life,” Zayden states, his expression stony. “He dies, Silence. No other punishment will ever be enough for putting the woman I love through that.”