Page 76 of Lesson In Forgiveness

They left her alone, leaving her to self-soothe when she cried, attending only to her basic needs at scheduled intervals, up until she was eighteen months old. The notes made references to video documentation, presumably surveillance tapes from baby Tabitha’s room.

At eighteen months, Rita began to pay more attention to the child, starting the developmental stage of forming a young brain. The cocktails changed incrementally day by day, adding some elements and removing others.

Proving to be creative and intelligent, even at such a young age, Rita expressed her satisfaction with Tabitha clearly in the file. She stepped up the lessons, the drug protocol, and made damn sure the toddler was kept in isolation until her presence was required in Rita’s lab.

Grit turned page after page, unable to stop reading about the foundation stones of Tabitha’s life. How she’d learned not to cry because even if she soothed herself, Rita punished her for the weakness. How one particular concoction of drugs almost killed her, stopping her heart for sixty-three seconds, while another sent a fucking four-year-old little girl into a rage so intense, Dominic had strapped her down to a table. Not for her safety, of course.

No, the fuckers had studied her until her tiny body burned the drugs from her system. Two hours, thirty-six minutes after the episode began, Rita had documented the physical reactions, injuries, and psychological effects her poison created.

It went on and on, a daily litany of torture, training, examinations and new drug trials. By the time she was five, there was a specific note in the file stating that P656 no longer sought affection or contact from either of her captors. Like a caged animal continuously poked through the bars of her prison with a cattle prod, she reacted hostilely toward anyone who approached before shutting down and entering a dissociative state.

Tabitha believed she’d learned that little trick later on, Grit remembered. She’d told him she taught herself how to do it during the rapes, but this contradicted her; it was a survival skill stemming back to a much earlier age.

Rita commented frequently on how fast Tabitha grew up—mentally, not physically. She’d been a highly intelligent student, absorbing information like a sponge thanks to her eidetic memory.

It hurt to read how his little tiger became less human day by day, week by week. He skimmed over months of impertinent data, paying attention to the details of her ‘trials’, like killing the rabbit. With every event Rita deemed a success in Tabitha’s training, he could feel the woman she’d become beginning to rise from the ashes of that young girl.

A phoenix, yes, but one with feathers of death and blood.

Much of Tabby’s weapons and combat lessons weren’t fully reported—they weren’t in Rita’s wheelhouse, so she didn’t spend time writing it all down. There were just more reference numbers, again likely surveillance tapes, and he made a mental note to ask Jasper if those tapes had been recovered.

The further he got through the papers, the more his stomach began to twist. There were only another couple of years’ worth of notes to read through before Tabitha reached twelve, which was probably why it came as such a shock when the notes described her first rape in minute detail—not at twelve as Tabitha thought, but at the monstrously young age of ten.

“Motherfucking, bastard, cocksucking son of a whore,” Grit said on a seething exhale. His fists clenched so tightly on the file, the papers were permanently wrinkled from the grip of his fingers. “They both wanted fucking hanging for this.”

He didn’t take a moment to calm himself down; he needed the fury to continue reading. How the hell he stomached the words, he didn’t know, but within a few sentences, he finally understood—deep down, soul-level understood—why his woman was as twisted up inside as she was.

Rita’s writing style changed subtly in this section of the notes. There was an almost gleeful undertone to the report, as though witnessing the degradation, beating, and subsequent rape of a child she’d raised was a source of entertainment she’d been waiting for since the beginning.

There was nothing scientific about what she wrote, nothing pertinent to a project ultimately designed for murder. What was even more horrifying was the reference number attached to the report.

The assholes had recorded the entire thing.

Too sickened to continue, Grit set the file aside, then bent and hung his head between his knees. How the fuck was he supposed to look Tabitha in the eyes now and pretend he wasn’t privy to one of the most devastating events in her life? Jesus, how could he touch her, take her past her fears, knowing exactly why she was terrified?

He rose, checking her IV, reassuring himself she was still asleep, safe and protected. He took a moment to stroke her cheek, brush his hand over her hair, before he left the room, standing beside the door as he yanked out his cell and made a call.

“Is she awake?” Jasper answered abruptly after two short rings.

Bypassing the question, Grit tapped his fist against the wall, barely resisting smashing his knuckles into the plaster. “Reference number P656 SI01.”

A heavy sigh. “You read fast.”

“What can I say, I’m killing time.” The growl in his own tone took him by surprise. “The number, it’s for CCTV footage, right?”

“No. Ashford dug into Dominic’s system and unearthed thousands of hours of footage. P656 SI01 through SI73 were not from CCTV cameras; they were recorded on professional grade equipment set up in the room.”

Something thudded heavily. Pain shot through his hand, up his arm. “They recorded seventy-three… every time he raped her, they recorded it?”

“They recorded everything, Grit. Maybe Rita got some scientific value from it, but I doubt that. She was as sick, if not sicker, than Dominic. Maybe she wished she had a dick so she could get in on the action herself, but her sadism evolved beyond that.”

Another thud, a flash of red on the pristine white wall. “Ashford deleted them, right? All the recordings, he deleted them?”

A long, weighty silence. Jasper huffed out a breath. “I advised him that would be for the best. He didn’t just find Tabitha’s tapes, Grit, there’s stuff from every child who grew up in the mansion. The older content—from my era—is gritty and shocking quality, but the younger generations like Tabitha and the guys’… the technology was far better, and Dominic had the money to buy the best.”

“Did he take your advice?” Grit demanded.

“No. Ashford believes every bit of data is valuable; he hordes it like an old lady stashes everything she’s ever owned. I’m not as up to date on technology as he is, although Archie has a better grasp on that shit, and he assures me it’s all locked down in the cloud or whatever the fuck.”

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