Read Online Tortured by Caragh M. O'brien - Free Book Online Page A

bleakly at the floor between his boots. “I don’t know where the ledgers are.” He’d said it a hundred times in the last few days.
    “You must see it’s a matter of the utmost importance,” Genevieve said. “Those records could guide birth parents outside the wall to the families inside who are raising their advanced children. It would cause widespread panic if parents in the Enclave believed that their children could be identified. They’d be afraid their kids could be stolen.”
    “Like you’d have cared if my birth parents came for me?” he asked.
    “Leon,” Genevieve said. “Of course. You’re my son no matter what’s happened.”
    Wincing, he tightened the fabric around his injured hand, even though it was doing little to staunch the blood. The tip of his ring finger had been severed from the knuckle up, and his efforts to arrest the blood flow when he’d been chained had not succeeded. Only the combination of his hand being raised high and his wrist shackle restricting his circulation had prevented him from losing more blood.
    “I wish you’d just cooperated with him from the start,” Genevieve said. “Do you know where Gaia is now?”
    “No.”
    “Or where she’s gone? Didn’t she tell you anything?”
    He glanced up grimly. “You think I’d tell you if she did? Now that they’ve found Emily, my resistance didn’t make much of a difference anyway,” he said. “That’s why the Protectorat is letting me go now, isn’t it? He’s done with me. Why doesn’t he just kill me?”
    She put a hand on his arm, and he went still at her touch.
    “Don’t, Mom,” he said.
    “Your father’s never known how to handle you,” she said quietly, releasing him. “But this is the worst of all.”
    He didn’t want to hear it. The man had ceased being any decent kind of father long before he’d ordered Leon’s torture. What Leon didn’t understand was why Genevieve was still with the Protectorat. How could any woman stay with a man who hurt his own son? She must not love him as a son, either. That’s what it felt like to Leon, no matter what she said about protecting him. Her lies only added to the betrayal.
    He didn’t need this. He had to get out of here. He took a deep breath as the noise of footsteps descending came down the staircase and he shifted. A compact, strong man in a white chef’s apron preceded Myrna past Leon.
    “What’s this?” Mabrother Cho said with false levity. “In trouble again?”
    Leon looked up to see the cook scowling at his back.
    “You don’t seem surprised,” Leon said. “Give me a hand?”
    Mabrother Cho stooped instead, and hauled Leon over his shoulder, careful not to touch his ripped back. He carried him up the rest of the stairs into the kitchen, where he gently deposited him on the long wooden table. Leon shifted heavily over the edge to sit on one of the stools instead.
    “If I lie down, I’ll pass out,” Leon said, and glanced up at the doctor. “See what you can do, Masister.”
    He held out his hand first. The doctor took it tenderly between her hands, turning it carefully, and unwrapped the torn, blood-soaked fabric. “A bowl of water,” Myrna said. “And more so I can wash his back. And towels. This is ridiculous working like this. At least get me better light.”
    “I’ll get the lamp,” Genevieve said.
    Myrna opened her black satchel and began laying out medical supplies, including a metal scalpel that she propped over a candle flame. She readied another syringe.
    “What’s that?” Leon asked.
    “Another dose of morphine. It’s going to hurt, what I’m about to do for you.”
    He shook his head. “I can’t have it. I have to be able to think.”
    Myrna regarded him soberly for a second, then set the syringe and the little bottle of morphine aside. “I’ll send it with you. When you reach the point you need it, you can take it.”
    Mabrother Cho returned with a metal bowl of clean water. Genevieve had an extra lamp, which