Natasha Preston Broken Silence Novels & Stories

Ethan's POV Some people break loudly—through shouting, slammed doors, reckless decisions. I wasn’t one of them. I broke quietly. In the pauses between conversations. In the moments I forced myself to smile. In the seconds she looked at me with trust I no longer felt worthy of holding. And sometimes, breaking quietly hurt more. Because silence gives you too much time to think. Too much time to replay everything. Too much time to understand exactly what you’re losing. And I knew what I was losing.

I made a note to tell him so. When they left, taking the intruder and their questions and the particular disrupted energy of strangers in the house with them, the silence they left behind was enormous. The three of us stood in it for a moment. "Right," Natasha said finally. "Nobody is sleeping." She was not wrong. I went back to my room. Not to sleep. The cold rage was still moving through me in slow, even circuits, the way a current moved through wiring, steady and purposeful and entirely without heat now.

" Boom— The thunder hit like it was aimed at me. Like something inside me just ripped apart. I wanted to vanish. To curl up somewhere no one could see me. But where? It was all rain. All thunder. All his voice, laughing. Then William called. "Joelle?" His voice was so calm, it cut through everything—the thunder, the rain, even the echo of Nathan's voice. "Are you crying?" I wanted to say no. Really tried. But nothing came out. And like my silence gave him the answer, the tears just broke loose. "Stay where you are," he said, steady as ever. "I'm coming to get you." *** Nathan was single again. A bunch of spoiled rich kids threw a "singles party" at the club, drowning in shots and laughs.

She mutilated Charles in his sleep and flushed his beyond-saving private parts down the toilet. When Margaret heard that, her health took a nosedive. It was another stroke. She went from bad to worse, then bedridden, her speech slurred and face twisted. Emily, cold to Charles' begging, terminated her pregnancy, cutting off the Wallace family tree. Finally, Olivia's eyes were on me. "Look at her, then at yourself. She knew when to cut ties, when to strike back. "You're not quite there yet." I lifted my wine glass and took a sip. "Why get my hands dirty with illegal stuff?"

Then everything stopped. They stood on a cracked stone path surrounded by nothingness. Above them, no stars—just a dome of shifting mist. Below, jagged tiles floated on air, forming a trail that zigzagged into the distance. The silence here wasn’t empty. It breathed. Watched. Waited. Selena exhaled slowly, her breath misting white, though the air was neither cold nor warm. “This doesn’t feel like a beginning,” she said quietly. “It feels like something that’s already broken.”

She collapsed and when she awoke she was before an even taller man who made a walk to where the rogue and she stood. "You won't need to hear anything for where we are going to" his evil smile broadened as they pulled out the only thing that could make her heart anything which concerned the world. Her heart broke even more as she saw them toss her hearing aids into the water behind her. Once again she tried just for the sake of it, to mindlink her parents but none responded. Nathalia was now alone. She only hoped her family where okay and would forgive her because she never got to the other pack to let them know they needed help.

{Third person's pov} The apartment was quiet, too quiet. Natasha had forgotten what silence sounded like, no footsteps outside her bedroom. No scent of coffee drifting upstairs because Ethan had woken before her. Just... Silence, she had returned to her apartment two nights ago, she hadn't cried and she hadn't slept much either. Her phone lay untouched on the coffee table, dozens of notifications covered the screen, emails, messages from photographers. Her manager asking about upcoming campaigns, a reminder from Ramos Media regarding a meeting she had requested leave from.

"Mum, dad let's leave them alone." Mr. Vance and Kate smiled at me as they existed the room and left us alone. Alexis didn't look at me as she continued staring outside. I walked over to her and just stood there in silence rocking back and forth on the heels of my boots. She was dressed in one of those ridiculous hospital gowns with a cloth wrapped around her head so people wouldn't see that she'd lost her hair. "I love you and I need you to know how much before I go into that operating room," she spoke, finally breaking the unbearable silence. "You don't have to say it back to me because I know you still love her."

Unable to look away. Unable to think. Unable to process. Clarissa's eyes filled with tears. "For years I remembered your death." The room remained silent. "I remembered losing you." I couldn't breathe. Because for the first time since this started, she sounded sincere. Completely sincere. No manipulation. No performance. Just pain. Raw pain. Then the video suddenly ended. The screen went black. Nobody spoke. Nobody knew what to say. The silence stretched endlessly. Then Nathaniel finally sat down. He looked like a man whose entire reality had collapsed.

Chapter 12 The silence did not feel normal. At first, Aria thought it would be easier. No messages. No control. No voice on her phone. Just peace. But it did not feel like peace. It felt empty. Too quiet. Too still. Like something was missing. She sat on her bed, staring at her phone again. Nothing. No new messages since last night. Since— “Now it is just you and me.” Her chest tightened. She dropped the phone on the bed as if it burned her hand. “This is good,” she whispered to herself. “This is what you wanted.”