PART 5
The little boy on the basement camera could not have been real.
But he was.
His tiny fingers curled around the rusted crib bars as he stared directly into the hidden lens with hollow, exhausted eyes.
“Mom…” he whispered again.
Then the feed cut to black.
My entire body went numb.
Matthew was screaming in Rosa’s arms now, terrified by the tension flooding the nursery. Spencer lunged toward Rosa, but I stepped between them before he could touch her.
“Don’t you dare,” I hissed.
For the first time in our marriage, my husband looked afraid of me.
Eleanor recovered faster than he did.
“You shouldn’t have seen that,” my mother-in-law said coldly.
I turned toward her slowly. “Who is that child?”
She smiled again, but this time there was something unstable behind it. Something almost proud.
“The first successful one.”
Rosa gasped.
Spencer snapped, “Mother, stop talking.”
“No,” Eleanor said sharply. “She deserves to know now.”
I looked at my husband. “Know what?”
His silence answered me before his mouth ever could.
The doctor suddenly grabbed his medical bag. “I’m leaving. I was told the mother had already signed consent forms.”
“I NEVER signed anything!”
He looked shaken now. Truly shaken.
Eleanor scoffed. “You would have.”
Then she looked directly at me.
May you like
“After the psychiatric facility.”
The room tilted around me.
