I tasted blood where my teeth sank into my lip. My vision blurred, tears burning hot and unwelcome, a humiliation I didn’t care to hide.
Six long, hollow months. Completely mute. And I... I had caused it.
I had stolen her voice along with her freedom.
I turned back to Elena, my chest caving in as the truth settled like a coffin lid. She hadn’t been silent by choice. Silence had been all that survived.
I reached for her—stopped myself an inch away, terrified of what my touch might do.
How could I ever atone for this?
How could a man who had taken everything ask for forgiveness?
My stomach lurched violently, acid scorching my throat as fear and grief tore through me in equal measure.
I had known—God help me, I had known—about her speech difficulty. She had told me once. Just once. One of those rare, fragile moments when the walls between us thinned enough for truth to slip through.
When she grew too anxious, too afraid, the words would snag in her throat like barbed wire.
Sometimes she would force them anyway, pushing until blood flecked her lips from the strain.
I remembered how she’d tried to hide it, wiping her mouth quickly, embarrassed, as if pain were a personal failing.
Her voice had been quiet. Fragile. But it carried weight.
Even when she stuttered, even when the words came broken and uneven, the melody of it had wrapped around my anger like silk around a blade. It had calmed me in ways I hadn’t earned. In ways I didn’t understand.
And now it was gone.
Not damaged.
Not weakened.
Gone.
Stolen.
And I was the thief.
I was the monster who had silenced her forever.
Petros’s voice cut through the roaring in my ears, hesitant, burdened, as though he hated himself for being the one to finish the execution. “And... the baby,” he said quietly. “It’s gone, sir. They’re calling it an accident.”
The world snapped sideways.
I turned on him so fast the ground blurred beneath my feet. “What baby?” The words came out strangled, barely audible over the thunder of blood in my ears.
Petros swallowed hard. He still wouldn’t meet my gaze. “She was pregnant. About three weeks along when she was taken in.”
I couldn’t breathe.
My gaze snapped back to Elena.
She stood motionless before me, small and terribly still against the massive gray wall of the prison.
Her expression hadn’t changed—still that empty, distant stare—but now I saw what I had refused to see before.
The unnatural pallor beneath the bruises. The way her free hand hovered near her abdomen, not protectively anymore, but instinctively, as if her body hadn’t yet learned the loss.
