Sin of Silence
Sinner’s Empire Book 1
Nikita Slater
Copyright © 2020 Nikita Slater Writing Services Ltd.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is dedicated to the nonverbal community.
Contents
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
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About the Author
Author’s Note
Dear readers,
Sin of Silence is the first book in the Sinner’s Empire trilogy, which follows the romance of Shaun and Jozef. The second book will release on February 27th, 2021, and the third book will release in Spring 2021.
In Sin of Silence there is a character who is non-verbal and uses sign language to communicate. Over the course of a year, I researched methods of non-verbal communication, specifically sign languages. As sign language doesn’t mirror spoken language, my intent was to be as authentic as possible. However, I quickly discovered that translating sign language onto the page is very difficult, especially for someone without a background in signing. The word order can be confusing, and the grammar is different from spoken language. I made the decision to go with flow over a straight translation, which is why the signed conversations in this book resemble spoken conversations.
There are many wonderful aspects to sign language that I would love to share with you, but that would be an entire book in itself (and probably is!). Instead, I will leave you with this; there are different sign languages throughout the world, and many are incomprehensible to each other. Our heroine, Shaun, is from Quebec, Canada where Quebec Sign Language, known in French as Langue dis signes québécoise (LSQ), is the predominant sign language used in francophone Canada. Jozef, our hero/antihero, lives in the Czech Republic where French Sign Language (FSL) is the official sign language. LSQ is related to FSL, so Shaun and Jozef would be able to understand one another. For ease of storytelling I refer mainly to FSL.
I hope you enjoy Sin of Silence!
Sincerely,
Nikita Slater
Chapter One
Jozef marked the woman for pickup, pointing to where she stood. Alone, vulnerable, and fragile against a backdrop of ruined concrete and military tents.
Havel’s eyes followed. Once he caught sight of her, a frown wrinkled his thick brows. He wasn’t comfortable with what they were about to do. It bothered him. Though it shouldn’t. He’d snatched plenty of people in his time, cut them up too, and shot some of them. Why this one woman should bother him was beyond Jozef.
“You sure?” Havel asked quietly, his eyes following her as she finished her break, stood up and stretched, arching her back and tipping her head from side to side, loosening tight muscles. Then she reentered the tent building she’d exited ten minutes before.
Jozef grunted an affirmative.
He wanted to follow her, to watch her while she worked. Those elegant fingers, touching her patients, healing them. She was a goddess. Striking and beautiful in a sea of ugly. Amidst the ruins of what used to be a permanent hospital, now a bombed-out shell, she was a thing of true beauty. Since the area was still considered central to the war efforts, the military had decided they would rebuild a makeshift hospital on top of the old one. She was foreign, she didn’t belong in Ukraine. She was providing medical assistance to those caught up in the war. It was almost a shame to mark her.
She was the best he could find. Unlikely to have family or friends in the area, no one to miss her. She would disappear as quietly as she arrived. Others would assume she went home, back to wherever she came from. Her family back home would believe she’d keen killed here. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it would work for as long as they needed her.
Jozef would force her to help them, to heal the man who had information about his uncle’s abduction. Jozef’s uncle, Krystoff Koba, head of the Czech Koba crime family, had been taken from his vehicle in downtown Kiev by armed mobsters while visiting a family friend. The kidnappers were demanding a token ransom, but Jozef suspected deeper motives. His uncle ran a vast and complex crime syndicate; he was king of his empire. A hard man to deal with for everyone except his close family members. Once out of favour, always out of favour, and the man who took Krystoff had fallen from favour years ago. The war in Ukraine further complicated an already strained relationship.
Revenge was not the motive or Krystoff would’ve been killed in the street in a brutal and bloody statement of might. No, the person responsible for Krystoff’s abduction wanted something else, something valuable. Jozef needed to know the motive, needed to play the game carefully. He didn’t need the kidnapper getting jumpy and murdering his uncle. He also didn’t want the other Vory finding out. Jozef needed to get his uncle back and figure out what the fuck was going on, especially since the only person who could possibly gain from Krystoff’s death was Jozef, and Jozef sure as fuck hadn’t taken the old man.
While Jozef and his team made plans to infiltrate their enemy’s territory, Jozef’s brutally intelligent aunt, Krystoff’s wife, was distracting the kidnappers with promises of wealth and trade deals. Dasha would dangle them on the line until Jozef was ready to make his move. With any other woman, Jozef might worry about her giving away the game. But not Aunt Dasha. She would hold onto her icy poise even as the rival family mailed pieces of her husband’s body to her.
So far, they had only mailed a finger, the small one, cut at the knuckle. It was a clean cut and had obviously bled, indicating Krystoff was alive when the finger was removed. After a brief discussion with his aunt, Jozef had made his way into Ukraine, close to the front lines of the war on the Russian border. He hunted until he found the weasel who’d sent the package to Aunt Dasha; a shopkeeper by the name of Gustav, who had a good side hustle mailing objects of a sensitive nature.
Unfortunately, Gustav had collapsed under interrogation before
giving up any information he might have had on the person who hired him to send the finger. Now the man was in a basement, in an abandoned village outside the city of Luhansk. Terek was with him, making sure he wouldn’t slip away while Jozef and Havel picked up a doctor. The man was refusing to speak. If he died, they would lose their only lead to finding Krystoff.
Jozef stared at the door she went through. He needed a doctor. A woman would be easier to capture. No family on that continent, easier to get rid of when they were done with her. She was the one Jozef wanted.
Chapter Two
“Mom, I’m fine, really.”
Shaun took a long thirsty gulp of water before hurriedly wiping her mouth and putting the bottle back in the fridge. She flexed her shoulder blades, wincing a little at the crackling sound and the tight, pinched feeling in her neck. She was on day three of a four-day twelve-hour rotation. She shook her head. It wasn't like she stuck to her working hours. She worked when there was work to be done, and she went back to her tiny boarding room when she could no longer stand up and keep her eyes open.
“I read in the news that there was a bombing close to the hospital last night. Did you hear it?” Fatima asked anxiously over the phone.
Shaun frowned in concentration. She tried to get her tired brain to remember if anything had happened the evening before. Usually after long shifts she would go home and eat a quick, cold meal, take a lukewarm shower with appalling water pressure then pass out until her next shift began.
Still, she had to reassure her mother. It was the only way to keep Fatima sane while her daughter willingly ventured into the hearts of war zones. “No, Mom, it was nowhere near here. Trust me, I’d have noticed if a bomb went off near the hospital. We’re not all that close to the front lines, and the town is no longer being targeted.”
Shaun was telling the truth. Partly. It was true that the hospital wasn’t a target, but it was located closer to the front lines than Shaun knew her mother would be comfortable with. Luhansk, or Luhansk People’s Republic, was rebel-held, which automatically made the area more dangerous. The government couldn’t step in to provide law and order in the now lawless, rebel-held no-man’s-land.
“I hate that you aren’t safe at home.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, but this is what I need to be doing.” They’d had the same conversation dozens of times, almost without deviation. It was pointless, but Shaun understood her mother’s need to express her fear. “How’s your garden doing? Are the sunflowers taller than you yet?”
Fatima perked up and chatted about her garden for a few minutes, giving Shaun a chance to eat her snack of almonds and fruit before she got back to her rounds.
Doctors were scarce in that part of Ukraine, having been killed in the fighting or fleeing to safer areas as the war advanced, taking down entire cities in the process. Doctors Without Borders came in to help manage the humanitarian crisis on the front lines. Shaun, a neurosurgeon, had been called in from her home city of Montréal, Quebec, Canada, along with two American nurses and a Brazilian radiologist. They worked alongside the skeleton crew of hospital staff who had elected to stay behind.
The hours were long, the accommodations were awful, and the future was uncertain, but being part of the Doctors Without Borders team was one of the most fulfilling things Shaun had done with her life. She’d put herself through med school, she’d put her time in at the bottom of the pond in order to pay off student loans, and now she was free to pursue her passion: providing medical care to people in need ‒ people in desperate situations. Additionally, Doctors Without Borders was a chance to immerse herself in another country, culture and language. It was fulfilling on so many levels.
Shaun listened to her mother for a few more minutes, most of the conversation happening on Fatima’s side.
“Mom, I have to get back to work. Give Fitzy a kiss for me.”
Fatima laughed. “Only if I want my throat cut. That cat lives for you alone.”
Shaun smiled as she thought of her giant ornery orange tabby.
“Thanks for taking him for me.” Shaun blinked away tears as a wave of homesickness hit her. “Love you both.”
“Love you too,” Fatima said before hanging up.
Shaun had barely tucked her phone away when the door flung open. She jumped and turned as it banged into the wall.
“Doctor Patterson, oh thank goodness.” A harassed looking Janet, an American nurse, rushed into the break room. Her blond hair, which had been in a tight ponytail that morning, was now frizzing around her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed from fatigue. She’d only been in the camp for a few weeks, but she would get used to the long brutal hours. Shaun was on her fourth month.
Shaun straightened her shoulders, shaking off her exhaustion and putting on her professional face. “What do you need?”
“Asthma attack in emergency, bed four. 10-year-old male presenting with shallow breathing, coughing and wheezing. He’s not getting enough oxygen. He’s starting to turn blue.”
Shaun strode out of the room, Janet running to keep up with her.
“How long has the attack been going on for?” Shaun asked.
“It started about an hour before he arrived, according to his mother. It’s been 20 minutes since he was first examined.”
“Where is Doctor Zelensky?” One of the local doctors was supposed to be covering emergency.
Janet shrugged and pressed her arm against a door, flipping it open so they could walk through. “Yolanda thinks he went to do a house call. Someone who can’t be moved.”
“Okay,” Shaun said. “I’ll have a quick look, but we may have to intubate. Is the mother calm?”
“No.” Janet shook her head. “Almost as hysterical as I felt when I couldn’t find you.”
Shaun smiled grimly. “I’ll need you to get her out of the exam room and have someone join me for the procedure. Danilo is on desk, so send him in. The patient may need to be held, depending on his level of alertness.”
It turned out the child was no longer responsive when they arrived. Janet rushed the mother out of the room and Danilo, one of the local nurses, stayed to help. Shaun carefully intubated the boy and then gradually filled his lungs with air, essentially breathing for him through a plastic tube.
“Pulse returning to normal,” Danilo said from where he stood across from her.
She nodded and began to relax. The boy would live. His mother should move him out of the city. Too much dust and debris floating in the air from the bombings. This wasn’t the only case of acute and severe asthma Shaun had seen. In fact, it was becoming more and more common for people to wander in complaining of breathing problems, whether they were asthmatic or not.
“Please get a box of the Prednisone,” she told Danilo. “I’ll watch him for a few minutes, then we can invite his mom to come back in and show her how to administer the steroid.”
He nodded and left while Shaun turned back to the table. Scared blue eyes looked up at her, surprisingly sharp considering the ordeal he'd gone through. He must be utterly exhausted. She smiled big for him, forcing her lips to stretch into a grin. Even if she wasn’t feeling it on the inside, she would pretend for his sake. He deserved a smile until he could see his mom again.
“You’re doing great… kiddo,” she said in stumbling Ukrainian, realizing she had no idea what his name was. Usually the nurse told her when giving her a rundown of the symptoms. They'd forgotten in their rush to get him breathing again.
The boy blinked up at her.
She continued to smile and dropped her hand to squeeze his shoulder.
Then his eyes moved past her to settle on something behind her.
Shaun turned her head slowly, intuition lifting the hairs on her neck, telling her to drop to the ground, to run, to scream. Something in the child’s expression told Shaun that there was a threat standing right behind her.
Sure enough, when she turned her head, she found herself staring down the barrel of a gun. A loud gasp flew from her lip
s. Her eyes followed the length of the gun to the gloved hand holding it. A man’s hand, a leather glove. Pale skin, tattoos between the edge of his glove and the cuff of his leather jacket. They reappeared from beneath the collar of his shirt and wound their way up his neck. They were both barbaric and beautiful, completely out of place in the hospital.
The man had dark hair, cut close to his scalp. He wore sunglasses so she couldn’t see his eyes, but the set of his face told her everything. Prominent cheekbones, sharp wide jawline, and thin, cruel lips with a scar slashing right through the middle, as though someone had tried to cut his mouth.
She was going to die.
She closed her eyes, deciding to take a moment to come to peace with her destiny. She was okay with dying, even expected it to some extent, given the places she chose to work, but she was sad about the child. Wished she could shield him, from both the danger of a gunman in the hospital and the trauma of seeing her killed.
Pain burst through her cheek and her eyes flew open, her hand automatically coming up to touch her face where he hit her with the gun. She winced. It hurt, but nothing was broken and there was no blood. Tears filled her eyes and she stared at the man who was threatening her. The gun was still trained on her, the sunglasses staring blankly down at her. He was tall. So was Shaun, at almost six feet, she could stand toe to toe with most men. Not this this guy; he was three or four inches taller.
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