Page 4 of Scarred By Sin

She rested her right hand against the curve of her stomach, a gesture that had become reflexive over the past several weeks, even though she still hadn’t fully adjusted to the reason behind it. There were moments when the reality of her situation caught her completely off guard.

The digital display above the doors counted upward in clean white numbers.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

She had never imagined herself as a mother. That wasn’t a dramatic declaration or a confession born from some pivotal moment of self-discovery. It was simply the truth, as plain as the fact that she preferred cheap Moscato or that she drove a Volvo.

Motherhood had never appeared in any version of the future she had constructed for herself. Not when she had been teaching psychology at the university. Not when the FBI had recruited her as a consultant profiler. And not when she had founded S&E Investigations with Graham, aiming to bring closure to the families of victims like those her brother left behind.

Graham had never pushed, either. That was the thing about him that she hadn’t expected and still hadn’t entirely reconciled. He’d helped her build an entire investigative firm from the ground up for the sole purpose of finding his daughter’s killer. His wife had taken her own life shortly after they’d lost their daughter, leaving Graham to carry the weight of two unbearable losses without visibly buckling under either one.

Brook understood what this child meant to him. She understood it the way she recognized most things about Graham, quietly and completely, without needing him to say it outright. He’d stood over two graves where there should have been none. And now there was this, a child neither of them had planned for, growing in the body of a woman who spent her professional hours examining individuals who craved sin.

Brook thought about the nursery he had already begun preparing at the estate. He hadn’t asked for her input on the room itself. He’d simply cleared it, painted it a soft neutral color, and then left the other decisions to her.

But she’d found the books on the nightstand on his side of the bed. Paperbacks on infant development and childhood attachment, and the specific challenges facing children of parents who have experienced significant emotional trauma. He had flagged pages with small yellow tabs, as though they were simply part of his nightly reading and not evidence of a man doing everything within his considerable capability to be ready.

Thirteen.

Fourteen.

Fifteen.

The fear hadn’t arrived all at once. It came in fragments, usually late at night when Graham was asleep, and the bedroom was quiet enough to hear the cool air coming through the vents. It had started with a simple question that her rational mind comprehended was reductive and unscientific, but that her body responded to as though it were an absolute fact.

What if evil was in the blood?

She had long ago accepted that her brother was proof of it. Jacob had murdered a young girl at summer camp when he was just eleven years old. He and Brook had been raised in the same household with the same parents in the same town. His desire to kill spoke to something beyond impulse, something wired deep into the architecture of who he was at his core.

Whatever combination of genetics had produced Jacob had also produced Brook.

And now she had created another life.

She understood the science. She had studied it extensively during college and again during her years as a profiler. There was no single gene for violence, no inherited marker that guaranteed a child would grow up to destroy. Environmental factors, attachment patterns, and early childhood experiences all played significant roles. Nature and nurture were not competing forces but intertwined ones, each shaping and being shaped by the other in ways that researchers were still working to fully understand. None of that knowledge stopped the intrusive thoughts or her belief that Jacob’s depravity had been there the day he’d been born.

“I’m sorry, little one,” Brook murmured as she gently rubbed her stomach in reassurance. “I’ll stop.”

She was so afraid that the baby could sense her fear.

Was it possible that the cortisol flooding her bloodstream during these episodes of anxiety was doing something, imprinting some trace of darkness onto cells that were still forming? She’d read the studies that stress hormones could cross the placental barrier. The idea that her own fears about the Walsh bloodline might be the very thing that caused harm was a cruel loop that her therapist had been helping her navigate for months.

Neil Swift had reminded her, more than once, that awareness was not the same as damage. The fact that she was asking these questions at all was evidence of a fundamental difference between her and Jacob. Her brother had never questioned himself. He had never lost a moment of sleep over what he was. Unfortunately, Brook had lost plenty.

Eighteen.

Nineteen.

Twenty.

She and Graham had discussed whether to learn the baby’s sex. He had been open to either option, deferring to her preference with the unobtrusive patience that characterized most of his approach to the pregnancy.

Brook had chosen not to find out.

At least, not yet.