“You would willingly take me back there?” The horror is etched into my features, and I can feel my lip bobbing with sadness. I’m sixteen with nowhere else to turn, stuck in a town run by adults that take whatever they want without permission.
“Silas will have my badge and my throat if I don’t,” she mumbles sadly. Even the law she’s sworn to uphold can’t help her here.
Silas Turner, Police Chief and all-around fucking douchebag, was my foster father’s brother; both men don’t deserve to still be breathing air right now. I had fantasised so many times what life might be like without the Turner men here to ruin it, the whole lineage is a fucked-up mess.
A knock at Rosa’s office and I’m being hauled into the tiny supply cupboard; with the look of fear etched into her expression, she presses a finger to her lips in warning and goes to close the door. Her office door flies open suddenly, and her hand snaps away from the cupboard handle, leaving it ajar so a sliver of light bleeds into the small space.
I creep forward for a better view of the room when his booming voice rings out. “We need to put a search out for Ebony Voselle. Check in with Emanuel; she might be with the twins.”
“On it, sir,” Rosa says dutifully, trying her damnedest not to look my way when Silas rounds her desk and pulls her up against his chest, one hand gripping her arse and squeezing until her face scrunches in pain, the other looped around her throat to hold her in place. It’s hard to miss the flash of fear that permeates Rosa’s wide brown gaze.
So that’s why she’s loyal to that dog? Fear is a great incentive for a manipulator like him.
Nothing about their exchange looks consensual, and my heart plummets for Rosa. I’m not naive though; I have no doubt that if it came down to it, and it was her over me, she wouldn’t think twice about outing me to detective Silas. Self-preservation and the understanding that finding me in this office would likely earn her a beating too, is what is keeping Rosa’s lips tightly sealed as to my whereabouts.
The intercom buzzes to life as the young boy, only a couple of years older than me and still growing into his uniform, speaks. “Dad, there’s a phone call for you.” The youngest in the Turner family is just as sick and twisted as his elders; thankfully he hasn’t been invited to play since I almost gutted him with a plastic unicorn. I take great pride in the fact he needed stitches. He soon learned I didn’t like to be touched without permission, and Ilearned that a concussion and a broken arm was the standard recourse for not letting him play out his sick depravities.
I still see it as a win. I don’t think the fucker will ever look at a unicorn the same again.
“Take a message,” Silas grunts out, coiling a length of Rosa’s hair around his stubby finger as he dips down to drink in her scent with a greedy inhale as spittle hits her cheek. I see her smother the disgust she’s feeling behind pinched lips.
“It’s Uncle Nate,” the boy adds tersely, and Silas’s mood shifts.
Rosa is tossed aside, her back connecting with a thump against the wall behind her. The office chair creeks under Silas’s considerable weight, his wide shoulders perfect for his earlier years on the college football team. Silas was a beast, and he knew how to use his size to his advantage.
He clicks a button on the desk phone, and the blood runs cold in my body when my foster father begins to yell through the speaker.
“Where the fuck is she, Silas? You said you’d have her by now.”
“We’re searching, brother. If you hadn’t let her get—” He’s cut off before he can finish his sentence, much to his annoyance, seething silently as Nathaniel continues.
“I want all three of them hauled in and strung up, Silas.”
It’s with those words that I realise it isn’t just me in the firing line; he wants Caleb and Cooper too. I stumble against the shelf, thankful that my foster father’s hollering masks the sound.
“Rosa, make yourself useful and go out and grab me some coffee; I might be here a while.” The affection in his voice doesn’t match the twisted desire heating his gaze as he looks up and down Rosa’s body like she’s a tasty slab of freshly BBQ’d meat.
“I’ll get my coat.” She hurries towards me as Silas switches the call off speaker and turns in Rosa’s chair. Opening the door, she pushesme back, dropping a key into my palm and tightening my hand into a fist around it.
“The key opens that door,” she whispers and gestures behind me at a metal shelving unit stacked with evidence boxes and old case files. I squint and search for the lock. “It leads out into the alleyway. I’ll go and temporarily shut off the cameras. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help, Ebony, I truly am.”
Before she exits, I see the yellowing bruising highlighted on her neck as the light from the room catches her tan skin at an angle. As though she’s noticed, she loops her long black braid over her shoulder to hide it, offering me a small tense smile before she grabs her coat off the hook and exits.
“Mrs. Knox mentioned at the farmers market earlier that the boys wouldn’t be back in town until tomorrow night.” It’s the final thing Rosa says as she approaches her door. A small white lie that might buy Caleb and Cooper some time.
I feel the guilt sloshing around in my belly at my earlier assumption of her. Seems we’re all just trying to survive out here under the rule of a deranged hierarchy. Her office door is pulled shut softly so as not to disturb Silas, and then she’s gone. Even without knowing I’m here, being in the same room as Detective Silas Turner has all the hairs on the back of my neck standing to attention.
Everything in the small darkened room sounds mega loud as I try to pull aside the shelving unit just enough that I can slip in behind it. The door looks to open outwards, so all I need is enough space to get the key in. It’s what Silas says next that stops me as I twist the key in the lock.
“If I get to them first, I’ll make sure it looks like an accident. Some farm-related tragedy. You’d be amazed at the destruction of a body fed through a wood chipper.” The fucker laughs heartily,slapping his knee like he’s fucking Santa and someone’s just offered him a freshly baked mince pie.“You can count on me, brother.” It’s the last thing I hear Silas say before I slip outside into the back alley. Taking off down the lane lined with dumpsters, panic gnaws at my insides, and my heart pounds in my chest. The tears flow too easily and distort my vision as the sun makes its descent behind the hills. The world around me darkens, as I reach the edge of the woods, the desire to run too strong to ignore.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
EBONY
Still anchored to the dream world, I wake still bundled up in the brothers’ embraces—Caleb’s chin resting on my head, Coop’s arm slung around my waist, my legs intertwined with theirs.
At first glance the brothers are identical, same deep green eyes, same swept back black hair, same irresistable pouty lips. The only main difference between them, apart from what they have going on in the underwear department, is the formation of the artwork inked onto their skin. Caleb’s is dark and consistent in flow as though it is weaving the same narrative, Cooper’s is more erratic in vibes where he favours lines of script to fill in the areas between each piece. They are similiar enough at a distance you could mistake them for being the same person, but being this upclose and personal, it’s like looking in the pages of their journals. Discovering a side of them that no-one else gets to witness.
