The Cage (Book 2) ✔️

Silence Where Their Names Should Be

Silence Where Their Names Should Be

Schneider's P.O.V

I'd suspected something was wrong about ten seconds into our ambush. And when I'd felt a stone sink in my gut, I'd just known we'd made a mistake somewhere. A terrible mistake.

Now, the silence was abrasive, too loud, bearing on me from all sides.

Wrong, in the way a heartbeat goes silent before a body drops. In the way birds vanish from a forest moments before a storm breaks its spine across the treetops.

It echoed through the stone chapel we'd just torn through -me, Schneizel, Cade, and the rest of our men. The fight had been too clean. Too clinical. We'd barely incurred any scratches. Our boots were wet with the blood of men who fought like they'd already been paid to die. Mercenaries, not believers. Pawns, not zealots. The cathedral reeked of damp rock and stale firelight, but not of Nathan.

He was never here.

And deep down, I think I knew that the second I stepped into the hollowed sanctuary, the candlelight guttering in the broken stained-glass windows. I was a fool to ignore the ancestral warning slithering up my spine. But I'd wanted it too badly. Wanted his blood. Wanted to see him kneel and beg and break.

Now... I was the one splintering.

I was a damn fool!

Cade's voice cracked over the radio, clipped and flat with disbelief.

"He's not here. No signs of a retreat. No heat signatures. He was never in this building."

"Then who was that you said you saw?" I growled viciously, dread curling my gut into a knot. I wanted to lay the blame on Cade, but I knew I had no one to blame but myself and my own damn arrogance.

"Some fucking decoy made to look like him." Cade confessed, sounding equally ashamed and distressed he'd been so easily fooled.

I looked to my twin brother in desperation.

A terrible stillness passed over Schneizel's face. I saw neither surprise nor rage, but stunned silence. The kind that dropped like a blade through air. His eyes, that strange shade of electric blue sky, went distant and hard as flint. No tremble in his hands. No outburst. He just stood there for a moment, frozen in the rubble of what was supposed to be Nathan's final stand, and breathed once. Shallow. Through his nose.

Then he turned and walked away.

I was already running.

Boots scraping on stone, breath catching sharp in my throat as I tore through the ruins and back into the suffocating fog of the valley. My legs ached from the hours of combat, but I pushed them harder. Faster. The wind clawed at my skin. The taste of iron on my tongue was no longer from the fight; it was fear, strong and primal and rising up my throat like bile to choke me.

Julian.

Aiden.

God. Oh God.

I reached the G-Wagon with blood pounding behind my eyes. Schneizel slid into the seat beside me without a word. His movements were too smooth and mechanical, like his body was moving on behalf of a soul that had already stepped out into fire.

Neither of us spoke as I threw the car into gear and shot down the narrow dirt road like a bullet. My fingers clenched the wheel so tightly it felt like it might snap under my grip.

I couldn't stop thinking about Julian's face -what he looked like the last time I saw him. Disheveled, bruised, but damn proud. Still pushing my buttons and shaking my resolve, wanting to come along into battle just to be by my side.

In hindsight, I should have let him.

I'd left him behind with one of my own men, but I knew now one man alone wouldn't be enough to stop what was coming their way. Nathan's plan had always been this.

We crested the final hill, and the farmhouse came into view -just a blur through the mist, a silhouette I'd come to know like the back of my own hand.

The porch light wasn't steady anymore. It was flickering.

And the door... the door was open; it hinges crooked, swaying slightly in the wind.

I slammed the brakes before the engine even stopped and threw myself out of the car. My boots hit gravel. Schneizel was beside me, silent as a ghost, his rifle already drawn and low against his thigh.

Neither of us uttered a word.

The bodies on the porch told us everything we needed to know. Stark fear bound my soul in barbed wire.

We walked past the bodies into the gaping house.

My man lay dead in the doorway. He was laid out like a warning. His eyes were still open, staring into nothing, the blood beneath him a lake slowly soaking into the wood. His sidearm was gone. His fingers curled like he'd tried to crawl back inside, toward the sound of something he couldn't protect.

Schneizel crouched beside him, reached out, and gently closed our man's eyes.

The house had been gutted by violence, the kind that wasn't wild or messy, but strategic. Swift. Calculated. The living room was overturned, couch cushions slashed, gunshots in the walls.

The kitchen floor was smeared with coffee, broken porcelain, something darker. Faint blood trails, already drying.

Signs of a struggle.

I stepped over shattered glass into the hallway, my heart stumbling in my chest.

Their names echoed in my throat but didn't pass my lips.

No point in screaming.

They weren't here.

Schneizel emerged from the back room a moment later, confirming my worst fear.

They were taken.

My brother's jaw flexed, just once, betraying emotion.

He didn't speak. Didn't rage. He just looked at me with that eerie stillness still blooming in his eyes; like the world had gone cold and quiet inside him, and something far older and darker was standing in its place.

Seeing a milder, softer version of him these few days almost made me believe he'd lost his edge, but I could see I would have been wrong if I had assumed such a thing. Standing before me was Schneizel the Mafia Boss, the King. Any softness I might have seen before was gone from him now. He was all hard edges now.

"I'll rip his heart from his chest and eat it," I promised darkly, voice low, a growl more felt than heard.

"We'll have to find him first," Schneizel murmured, his jaw clenched, eyes flat and cold. "Before he makes an example out of them."

The thought of Julian hurt—of his body broken, his spirit crushed—made my vision blur, my chest cinch tight. My fists curled until my knuckles cracked.

"We'll find them if we have to go to the ends of the Earth."

"But why take them?"

I hesitated, a nauseating suspicion already blooming in mind. Knowing Nathan, I wouldn't put it past him. With a frustrated growl, I said, "To force us to bring Kasian to him."

Schneizel made a sharp, joyless sound. Almost a laugh. "And he thinks we can do that?"

Neither of us had any influence on our older brother. Kasian didn't answer to anyone.

"We might have to."

Our eyes met, and something dark and familiar stirred between us.

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

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