Page 111 of Shattered Silence Duet

“Ah, yes, well, Mina, would you like the boys to leave the room so I can tell you in private? Some of it might be a bit sensitive.”

“Stay,” she whispers, making me smile as I move beside the doc and take her hand between mine.

“Okay. When we assessed your abdominal laceration, we found your uterus was nicked by the knife. We fixed the cut, but we won’t know if there are any repercussions until you try to have children. It’s hard to say now whether you will be able to or not.”

She nods, not showing any sign of being upset by that news, and asks, “what else?” Ben holds the straw up for her drink as the doc speaks.

“You suffered stab wounds in both shoulders. We’ve repaired the damage and they need time to heal. You might find your arms are quite weak now, which is to be expected. In a few weeks, we can determine if you need physical therapy.

“Your legs were covered in cuts, a few needed stitches, but they have all healed nicely now and eventually you shouldn’t have toomuch scarring. You had a nasty injury on your right arm that we’ve cleaned and removed the infection from. It’s finally healing now. You might have a small scar, just make sure to keep it clean until it completely heals over.

“As for the marks on your back, they are mostly healed now. They aren’t bothering you, are they?” I frown, not remembering anything mentioned before about marks on her back.

“No,” she whispers, shaking her head.

“Can I ask, who did those to you? They weren’t done at the same time as the other injuries. It wasn’t any of these boys, was it?”

Dom’s arms tighten around her, but she quickly shakes her head. “No… My mom,” she rasps out.

“I’m assuming you boys will make sure a police report is filled out for that, too?”

“What are you talking about? What marks on her back?” Dom asks through clenched teeth, sounding like he’s barely able to keep it together.

“Oh, I… You didn’t know?” he asks before looking at Mina. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to tell them something you didn’t want them to know.”

She uses the phone to answer him this time.“It’s fine. I would have told them, anyway.”

“Told us what?” Tucker asks.

She looks at the doc and nods. He sighs before speaking. “She has several marks across her back, possibly from a belt. There were a few that looked maybe a week or two old when she came in. But I saw scarring of healing ones that were probably from months before, and some even longer.”

“Your mother whipped you with a belt?” Jasper asks her sadly. She nods. “Recently?” She nods again.

“When?” I ask, needing to know. Praying it wasn’t after we met her.

She types her response.“I think it was the end of my second week at school.”

“Fuck, Sweetheart.” The thought of her being hurt like that,practically under our noses is like a punch to the gut. Not only did we not help prevent it, but we didn’t even know about it. How many times had I hugged her and caused her pain?

“You should have told us, we could have helped,” Jasper says softly. I can see him trying not to look disappointed, but if she had told us, what was going on, how bad it really was, we could have gotten her out of there before it got to this point.

“I’m s-sorry,” she whispers, using her shoulder to wipe away a tear.

She turns to the doctor as she rasps out, “when can I go home?”

“Do you have somewhere to go where you can recover?”

“Yes, she’ll be living with us,” Dom tells him firmly.

“Well then, I see no reason to keep you any longer. You are healing nicely and it’s clear you will be well taken care of at home. And I think having seven fewer bodies in this hall would be a good thing for the staff. It’s starting to get a little crowded.”

We all smile and thank the doctor and watch him leave, then I turn to Mina as I ask, “well, Sweetheart, you ready to go to your new home?”

Chapter 10

Mina

As soon as the doctor leaves my room, two police officers enter, one of them being the nice woman who questioned me about the incident with Brad. That feels like such a long time ago now.