Chapter 4

A few days later, the cramps started.

Low at first, a dull ache. Then sharper, twisting.

I was in our room, trying to read, trying to ignore the growing dread.

The tea Rex gave me. Was it that?

The pain intensified, stealing my breath.

I doubled over, a cry escaping my lips.

Rex was out, a club run to another town. Not due back for hours.

Clare. I needed Clare.

I stumbled to the door, calling her name.

The pain hit again, a vicious clench. I felt a sickening warmth between my legs.

Blood.

No. Oh God, no.

Clare found me on the floor, half-conscious, a pool of red spreading on the wooden boards.

Her scream brought others running.

The next hours were a blur of pain, fear, and the frantic, hushed voices of the club women.

They got me to a doctor in a nearby town, one loyal to the Brigade.

He was grim. Efficient.

When it was over, the emptiness inside me was a vast, cold chasm.

My baby was gone.

Rex' s baby.

Clare stayed with me, her hand gripping mine, her face a mask of grief and fury.

Rex returned late that night.

I was back in our room, hollowed out, staring at the ceiling.

He came in, smelling of road dust and exhaust.

Clare was sitting by my bed. She stood up when he entered, her eyes like chips of ice.

"What happened?" Rex asked, his voice carefully neutral.

"She lost the baby," Clare said, her voice flat, accusatory.

Rex looked at me. His expression was hard to read. Was it shock? Regret?

Or something else?

"An accident," he said, more a statement than a question.

"The doctor said it happens sometimes," I whispered, the words feeling like ash in my mouth.

He came closer, sat on the edge of the bed. He didn't touch me.

"You were 'soiled' by that ambush, Amy," he said, his voice low, almost a caress. "Maybe this was for the best. A clean slate."

Soiled.

The word hit me like a slap.

The ambush he orchestrated. The trauma he inflicted.

And now he was using it as an excuse.

He didn' t want a child with me, his "soiled" old lady.

The tea. That goddamn tea.

He' d done this. Subtly. Cruelly.

Claiming I was "soiled" by the ambush he himself staged.

He' d poisoned me. He' d killed our child.

He reached out, as if to touch my hair. I flinched.

His eyes narrowed.

"I have to go," he said, standing up. "Silas' s cat is sick. She' s real upset. Needs me."

Silas. Her cat.

More important than me. More important than the child he' d just murdered.

He walked out without another word.

The door clicked shut behind him, a sound of finality.

Clare rushed to my side, her arms around me as the sobs finally broke free.

Despair, black and suffocating, consumed me.

He hadn' t just betrayed me. He' d destroyed a part of me.

And he' d done it with a smile, under the guise of care.

The monster was real. And he was more depraved than I could have ever imagined.