Page 80 of No Asylum Here

The voice went quiet when my attention slipped to Barbara’s belly, still heavy with child.

What I saw chilled me to my marrow.

Dark green veins covered her belly, spreading out from what was obviously an injection site. Not just any injection.

There was a raised, blackened pockmark—the telling sign that the patient had received an injection of my father’s Treatment.

I clenched my fists as I processed this new information.

Bunny hadn’t died from childbirth.

She’d died from the fucking Treatment. The stress of it must have sent her into early labor, and her body couldn’t handle it.

There weren’t words to describe the unadulterated fury that consumed me. Like a hurricane sweeping through me and leaving nothing but the wreckage of the man I once was in its wake.

Malcolm Rook II wasn’t a man anymore. He was a monster, worse than the one whispering violent promises in my ear.

“Now, can he die?”

“Yes.”

It was as if my cruel thoughts about my father summoned the wretch. The surgery doors opened, and I knew it was him without having to turn around.

“You did this,” I muttered in a husky voice I barely recognized.

“Women die in childbirth all the time, Son.”

My fingers twisted in the sheet covering her. “There’s no depth you won’t sink to, is there? You’d think you would have stopped at raping and impregnating an eighteen-year-old SA survivor, but then you had to go and inject her with that fucking drug, after you swore not to touch her or any other patient again.

“But you couldn’t resist, could you? You had to give her the injection. You wanted to see its effects on a pregnant woman.”

“Technically speaking, I gave the injection to the fetus. I wanted your new brother or sister to be strong.”

I ripped off the sheet, throwing it to the floor so he could stare his sin in the face. “Strong? Does this look strong to you?”

“It doesn’t work on weak subjects.”

I whipped around, seething. “What made you think that a six-month fetus was strong enough to handle it?”

He shrugged. “I thought he might. And if he died, then good riddance. I don’t need another weak child spoiling the bloodline.”

I took a step toward him with every intention of finishing what I couldn’t before.

Rook’s eyes widened, and his face drained of blood. This time, I’d spare no compassion. “Mal, the baby.”

“Is dead because of you.”

“No, look!” He pointed, and I snapped my attention back to Barbara’s belly.

It was moving.

Big bulges appeared all over, like something was pressing against her from the inside. A bump in the impression of a tiny foot thrust out so far, so quickly, I thought her skin might snap.

Bunny’s eyes fluttered open.

I found myself staring at a woman who was very much alive, even though moments ago I’d confirmed she was gone.

“Get the surgery team in here!” I roared. “We need to perform a C-section, now!”