Nathan stood frozen, his breath trapped in his throat. The romantic warmth of the master bedroom suddenly felt like it was suffocating him. He had prepared himself for stretch marks. He had prepared himself for the soft, changed body of a mother who had carried three children.
But there were no stretch marks.
Instead, across Emily’s pale, trembling skin was a patchwork of horrifying, violent history. Deep, jagged surgical scars ran like jagged lightning across her abdomen and chest. On her left shoulder, there was a distinctive, faded burn mark shaped like a broken crest—a brand. But what made Nathan’s heart completely stop was the massive, violent scar directly over her right kidney area, and another matching one near her chest. These weren’t the marks of childbirth. These were the marks of a survivor of a brutal, clinical butchery.
And most shocking of all? Her stomach was perfectly flat, completely devoid of the physiological changes that come with carrying three full-term pregnancies.
“Emily…” Nathan breathed, his voice cracking as his hands hovered over her skin, terrified that even a gentle touch might shatter her. “What… what happened to you? Who did this?”
