Page 46 of The Queen (Masterpiece Duet 2)
“She had schizophrenia,” he says softly. “At least that’s my best guess according to the records from the doctors. They had no idea what to do with her at the time. Mostly they just locked her up and tried every kind of barbaric treatment they could come up with.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
“Sometimes I think, can you even blame her for falling for Jonathan Scott? Her family had abandoned her. The doctors basically tortured her. He would have been the only man to show her any kindness.”
“God. I’m sorry.”
“And other times I think, maybe my father actually loved her back. They were both fucked up, both trapped. The asylum didn’t want it known that they had let a patient get pregnant, especially one who was sixteen, so they kept it quiet. Had them married in secret as if that could erase the fact that she couldn’t consent.”
“How old was your father?”
“Twenty five.”
About the same age difference between Damon and me. What a sad way for him to come into the world. My eyebrows press together. “Then what happened to you?”
“I stayed there,” he says simply.
“A child. In an asylum. With actual patients.”
He flashes me that signature smile, and I realize how much pain it hides. “Not exactly an idyllic childhood. They didn’t actually treat me that badly, even though I think all the doctors assumed I would be batshit insane.”
“That’s terrible,” I whisper.
God, no wonder he wouldn’t send anyone else into the asylum to die there. And no wonder he wouldn’t agree to blasting it to pieces, with the innocent patients inside. Patients like his mother. The only option was for him to come himself.
“I don’t have very many memories. Running down the hallway. Sleeping in the same room as my mother. She would sing songs at night, but during the day her condition got worse. She wouldn’t stop screaming. Wouldn’t stop fighting.”
We pull onto a paved road. A sign that’s clearly new and crisp proclaims that this is private property, no trespassers, violators will be prosecuted. We must be close. “What happened?”
“They tried this new treatment. All of the inmates got daily exercise in the pool. They thought her wildness was a choice, that they could punish her out of it.” He gives a laugh hoarse with grief. “They would hold her under longer and longer. Until she finally drowned.”
My eyes close in pain, but not before I see the trees lined up in a neat row on either side of the road. We’re about to go inside a building almost everyone would try to escape. And our only goal is to kill someone. Not just someone. One person in particular.
“That’s when my father really snapped. News of her death came out in the press, and the place was shut down. Maybe we could have had a normal life, but he completely lost it after that. He believed that everyone was out to get him. That we would only survive by fighting, by stealing. By killing. And the worst part is, I understood. Even that young I knew that my mother was gone, and I knew exactly why. God, I understood him back then. What’s sick is I understand it now.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The front of the building looks brand-new, a smooth white exterior that might have been built five years ago instead of a hundred. Maybe they tore out the entire prison and made something new. That’s my fervent hope as we speed along the smooth pavement.
Damon parks without any sense of fear or subterfuge.
I squint at the dark glass, where I can only barely make out a wide reception desk. “You aren’t worried he’s going to… shoot at us?”
Though even as I say the words, that doesn’t feel like Jonathan Scott’s style. There are many terrible words I could use to describe him. Monster. Sadist. But he isn’t a coward.
“Why would he do that? He could have come to Tanglewood if he wanted me dead.”
I glance at him, taken aback by how casually he discusses his death. “So he isn’t going to hurt you?”
His laugh is a cold sound. “Oh, he’ll hurt me. Pain only makes you stronger, don’t you know? But he won’t kill me. Not yet. He would have stopped anyone else from entering these doors, though. That’s why I couldn’t have brought the mercs, even if I wanted to.”
My footsteps falter. COME ALONE. “Will he stop me from entering?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I do.” Damon looks back at me, and his eyes soften. “I can’t swear to you that you’ll be safe here. I want you on the other side of the country. I want you on the other side of the world. On the moon. But I will do everything in my power to let you walk out of here unharmed.”
It comes to me as I watch him in the overbright sun, standing in front of a modern asylum, that all he knows is sacrifice. All he knows is running through the halls of a dangerous mental hospital or leaving people behind so they don’t get hurt. Even coming here is a form of sacrifice, searching for some way to save the inmates who are still here and still alive.
