Page 148 of Inflict

Oh, shite.

Shite, feckin’ shod, foolish arse.

He turned to find his sleepy, beautiful wife standing at the bottom of the staircase, staring at him with confused eyes. She wrapped her arms around her waist, making her silk robe tighten to her curves as she frowned at him.

“What are you holding, Connor?”

He glanced down at the unmoving bundle wrapped in a stained sheet in his arms, and then back to his wife. “Uh …”

Evelyn stepped forward. “Connor.”

“I got a call,” he said, his voice fainter than he wanted it to be.

“Yeah, you woke me up before you left. A problem, you said.”

He nodded. “At that feckin’ whorehouse I hate.”

“Okay. And?”

Why couldn’t he talk properly?

Why was his throat so feckin’ tight?

“The guy that runs the place called my guy who owns the building saying one of the girls was … uh, something happened.”

“Connor,” Evelyn said louder, drawing his gaze to hers. “Stop rambling.”

She was close enough that he could pass the bundle in his arms over to her, so he did just that, hoping to all hell it would explain what he couldn’t manage to. As soon as Evelyn had the bundle of stained sheets in her arms, he headed for the kitchen.

The blood was still on his hands, and his jacket was ruined.

He needed to get it off.

Connor turned the water on as hot as it could go, and stripped off his coat, shoving it into the nearby rubbish bin. The water stung his skin, but he couldn’t find a part of him that cared or felt it all that much. He scrubbed away, watching red lighten to pink as he dug dried blood out from beneath his fingernails, and washed every bit of blood out of the creases of his knuckles.

Before long, Evelyn had come to stand behind him.

“You’re going to need to explain this baby to me,” she whispered softly.

Yeah.

Yeah, he knew that.

“It’s a boy,” Connor said.

“Okay, but that doesn’t—”

“By the time I got there, he’d nearly beaten her to death, she was choking on her blood and her bed was soaked in it. Not just blood, but the water, you know. The water, Evelyn.”

“Oh.”

“She hid it or something, the pregnancy, but somebody figured it out tonight and let the guy who looks after the girls know. He thought he could beat the feckin’ baby out of her, or maybe he just didn’t give a shite. One of the girls got ahold of the phone and called the guy who owns the place—my guy, I guess he’s a regular for her there—and he called me, because he’s a feck up. Didn’t want to deal with it, didn’t think to let me know what I was walking into. She was—”

“He’s very small,” Evelyn said quietly, “and he’s not making a lot of noise.”

“Big night for him,” Connor mumbled, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Getting cut from his mother because she stopped breathing and all. Didn’t even know if he was going to be alive or not, or if he was ready, but she asked before … I didn’t know what to do. Obviously, she’d made a great effort to keep the baby secret, to protect him.”

Evelyn made a sound that tore his heart apart.