Daphne POV

“The quiet after a kidnapping is louder than any scream.”

I don’t remember driving.

I don’t remember breathing.

I only remember the sound of my mother’s voice over the phone broken, shaking, repeating the same words like a prayer that wouldn’t save us.

“They took him, Daphne. They took Christian.”

By the time Xavier and I reached the cabin, dawn had barely started to bleed through the trees.

The headlights carved through fog and silence, the kind that presses ...