Out Of Silence: Reclaiming My Life

I had been deaf for ten years after a cartel fire took my parents' lives. My fiancé, Alessandro, the Mafia Underboss they died to save, swore a blood oath to be my permanent refuge.

Two weeks before our wedding, my hearing miraculously returned. But the first thing I heard wasn't his loving voice—it was the sickening sound of him sleeping with his mistress, Sophia.

I stood frozen outside his office door as the man who promised to protect me groaned her name.

"This forced Family duty is a sickness to me. You are the only one I wish to take to wife."

When he came home, he smiled gently and used sign language to ask if I was okay. Yet, right in front of my face, he recorded explicit voice notes to her, detailing what they would do in bed that night.

He thought I was still a deaf liability, a crippled burden he could easily manipulate. He paraded his betrayal right before my eyes, confident I was trapped in a silent shell, completely oblivious to his mockery.

But I could hear every single dirty word.

Instead of crying, I calmly pressed the record button on my phone, booked a one-way flight to London on the morning of our wedding, and prepared to strip the Underboss of his entire empire.

Chapter 1

Elena POV

Two weeks before the date fixed for my union, the world of sound returned to me. I had been entombed in silence for ten years, and its sudden retreat was a violent, unwelcome thing. The fever broke, and with it, the city's ambient hum pressed in-a dull, metallic drone that vibrated behind my eyes. I thought it a phantom of a dream, until my own telephone began to ring.

It was a call from my fiancé, Alessandro, and through the receiver, I heard not his voice, but the wet, rhythmic slap of skin against skin.

The man who had sworn to be my sanctuary was with his mistress. My newly-healed eardrums, acutely sensitive to this damp, percussive intimacy, sent a tremor through the muscles of my jaw, causing them to spasm. A chill leached the warmth, bit by bit, from my fingertips.

I had rushed to the corporate headquarters of the Vitale Family to share the miracle.

Alessandro Vitale was the Underboss, a man whose name was a currency of fear in New York's dark passages, a man whose ledger was tallied in splintered bone.

Ten years ago, my parents had perished in the fire set by a rival cartel, their last act to pull him from the flames.

As the structure gave way, a collapsing wooden beam had struck me, and the impact severed all my connections to the world of sound. My perception was forever trapped in a shell that could only feel the vibration of the floorboards.

Before his father, the Don, Alessandro had knelt and sworn a blood oath under the code of Omertà.

He had promised to be my ears, my permanent refuge.

Now, I stood before the heavy mahogany of his executive office door.

A female voice, which I knew to be Sophia Rossi's, drifted through the wood.

Then came the sounds.

I heard him groan her name.

He told her he was done with my moral blackmail. He said this forced Family duty was a sickness to him, that she was the only one he wished to take to wife.

My telephone vibrated in my pocket.

I drew it out and saw Alessandro's burner number upon the screen.

My thumb, slick with a sudden sweat, slid across the glass to answer.

Sophia had dialed my number. A deliberate cruelty.

Heavy, illicit breath flooded the receiver. I pressed the record function on the screen, my finger moving with a steadiness that did not feel my own.

I captured every syllable.

I took a step back, and my shoulder struck the heavy glass of the lobby entrance. The thud of it was a low, resonant note that traveled the length of the hall.

The noises inside the office ceased.

I held my breath, knowing his lethal instincts were stirring in that quiet.

A few seconds later, the disgusting sounds of their congress violently resumed.

I turned and walked out of the building, a strange vacancy in my head and in my limbs.

I did not see the shattered bottle upon the pavement until I was halfway home.

The shards embedded themselves in the thin soles of my shoes; with each step, I left a tacky, dark-red semicircle upon the Italian white oak floors, which the maids waxed three times a day.

A dull, physical pressure built behind my ribs.

I lay upon the sofa.

I wept while the drone of the city confirmed this nightmare was my new reality.

The front door opened some hours later, and Alessandro walked in.

He saw the marks on the floor at once.

He dropped to his knees before the sofa and took my bleeding feet into his large hands.

He carefully pulled the slivers of glass from my skin.

While he worked, he muttered aloud.

He said a deaf liability like me should not be wandering the streets alone.

He sneered that he dreaded being shackled to a cripple.

My throat constricted until I could not swallow.

I remembered the boy who had fought rival soldiers to protect me. That boy was gone.

Alessandro looked up at me and switched to sign language.

He asked if I was in pain, his features arranged into a mask of gentle concern.

I stared at his lying eyes.

He pulled out his own telephone and played a voice note.

It was Sophia, her words dripping with promises for the night to come.

Alessandro smiled.

He recorded a reply, telling her in low, guttural detail how he would tear her apart in his bed.

He looked at me while he sent the audio.

He signed that he was handling some urgent Family business.

I pulled my feet from his grasp.

I stood, walked into my bedchamber, and locked the door.

I took the framed photograph of my deceased parents from the nightstand.

I crawled under the covers and clutched the frame to my chest.

Through the heavy oak of the door, I could hear the muffled cadence of his voice as he paced, the sound of his shameless flirtations with Sophia a dull, persistent poison.