Sitting there in the shadows and staring at me was Ami. She was in her nightgown and slippers.

"What are you doing here?" I asked in a loud whisper.

"I heard your screams earlier and came," she said. "Fortunately, Wade is dead to the world. He heard nothing. He needs sleep. He's been going full steam and didn't come home until very late."

"You heard my screams?"

"Yes."

Then I didn't imagine it, I thought. I didn't imagine any of it.

"Ami," I said. "I think. . . I think I've been raped."

"I know," she said. "I didn't like doing it this way, but he thought it was best at the start."

"At the start? At the start of what?"

"Of your ovulation," she said. "I'm sorry about what you've gone through, but you've got to do this for both of us, for you and for me," she said with desperation.

I shook my head. Was I still dreaming? Was she really sitting there, and was I really talking to her? "What do I have to do for both of us?"

"You've got to have an Emerson baby," she said. "I can't. I have trouble with all of it."

She was the one who sounded as if she was talking in her sleep now, not me. Her eyes were dark. Even in the subdued light, they looked empty, glazed. She sat stiffly, clutching her hands against her breasts.

"Trouble with all of it?"

"That's really why I'm in therapy now. Wade's been patient with me for a number of reasons, but Basil . . . Basil thinks his time is limited, and he wants to see his grandchild, his Emerson child."

"But why would you . . .

how can he make anyone do such a thing?"

"I haven't told you everything about my family, about my marriage. I'm ashamed of it, if you want to know the truth. My parents got themselves into very deep debt. My father was a terrible businessman, and my mother thought economy was a dirty word. They spent way beyond their means, and we were going to lose everything about the time I met Wade.

"Basil was impatient with him as well. I didn't exaggerate about his not having any real girlfriends before me, and you can see from the little time you've been with us--and the little contact you've had with Wade that he isn't exactly a ladies' man. If you want to know the truth, I think he has problems with sex as well, male-female sex. I have my suspicions now because of how infrequently he has even attempted it, and at times Basil practically admits it."

"Admits what?"

I was having such trouble making sense of all this. My mind was still full of globs of murky clouds.

"Wade's lack of interest in women. The embarrassment to Basil of having such a son is too much for him to face. He takes it personally, an attack on his own virility.

"Anyway, he bailed out my parents and offered me this wonderful rich life." She laughed a short, thin, mad laugh. "The truth is, Celeste, Basil proposed to me first, but not to be his wife. To be Wade's. Then Wade proposed, at Basil's urging, I'm sure. Basil was in charge of everything in those days. He even had our prenuptial written. I promised to give him a grandchild within five years. When it became obvious that it wouldn't happen within that time, I became desperate. I came up with this idea, and Basil went along with it."

"What was your idea?" I asked, my heart starting to pound so hard, I thought I would lose consciousness again.

"I scouted you out. Oh, not you in particular. For some time I looked for someone like you. I almost chose a girl from a different orphanage, but when I did my research, I found out she was quite

promiscuous. I couldn't take the chance with her, you see. What if she got pregnant before . . . before Basil could have his grandchild? It would have all been a waste. That's why I was so upset about your rendezvous with Trevor Foley.

"When I learned about you, saw you, I knew I had found the perfect young woman. You were virginal and beautiful and intelligent. You would produce a wonderful child if I could protect you."

"You mean you brought me here right from the start to do this, to drug me so I would be a surrogate mother?"

"Would you have agreed to be a surrogate mother?"

"No," I said sharply. "Never."

Tags: V.C. Andrews Gemini Horror
Source: readsnovelonline.net