Page 56 of Scarred in Silence

“Search outside, I have the inside,” I say quietly to Dante.

I begin searching the house. I find no one upstairs. I rush down the stairs and see my little Siren. Broken. On the floor, staring at the door. Her hair is dark and cut short. She looks so different. So… sad.

The phone sits on the ground outside the door. The room is quiet now. What the fuck happened?

I rush up to her, and she turns to face me, holding a knife up at me. Her features soften when she realizes it’s me. She drops the knife and begins to sob.

I scoop her into my arms and carry her out to the car, meeting Dante outside.

“Is she good?” He rushes over.

“No.”

I slide her into my passenger seat, placing a delicate kiss on her forehead.

“I’ll be right back, baby. We have to handle him.”

She nods, she doesn’t speak, as tears roll down her cheeks.

I close her in the car, and we turn to go back to extract the fucking parasite.

Dante follows closely behind me as we make our way to the door. Dante holds his gun, and I have a knife. He stands in front of the door, aiming directly in. I unlock the door and swing it open.

Victor lies on the floor with a needle in his leg. He tried to kill himself. Fucking pathetic. Not on my watch.

I grab the cuffs from my back pocket and cuff him to the table. Then I call Dr. Marlowe.

“Hey, got a second?”

“For you, anything,” he says.

“Bring everything you need to stop an overdose. I’ll send you the address.”

I hang up. He always has my back.

Dante waits with Victor while I go out to tend to my little Siren. She has a lot of explaining to do, but that will have to wait until I torture the fuck out of Victor.

* * *

I dropped Astra off at my house. That way I can watch her on the cameras. She has just been floating in the tub for a while.

It took me twenty minutes to remove the fucking ankle monitor she had on. It is apparent that Victor has had a few runaways. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone through such extreme measures to track her.

Dante got Victor back to the compound, so now we have three people chained in one cell. It only felt fitting, since Varek can’t fucking keep a deal.

They are each chained into an X position on the walls of the cell, all on different walls, each facing the center. They look fucking pathetic.

I pull a metal chair into the center of the room, letting the metal scrape against the cement.

“Varek. You fucked up.”

“I didn’t. He fucking overpaid!” He snaps.

Victor hangs there, still coming out of his almost-overdose.

“What do you have to say about that, Victor?”

He stays silent.