The Untouchable Damien Royce

Chapter 11

The Ghost of Mercy

The hallway was filled with the smell of cleaning chemicals and a silence that felt heavy enough to choke on. Damien stood near the doors, his eyes fixed on nothing in particular.

He looked down at his hands, and for a second, he couldn't breathe.

They were covered in red.

It was thick, sticky, and starting to dry into a dark color under his fingernails; this was Chloe’s blood.

It was the blood of the woman who had stood by and watched him get dragged to prison, the woman who had replaced him the moment he was out of sight.

He didn't feel sad. He didn't feel the crushing weight of grief he expected to feel for a lost life. Instead, he felt a deep, oily sense of disgust. It was a mess he hadn't asked for, a tragedy that had stained his clothes and his skin.

"Damien?"

He turned his head slowly. Daniel was standing a few feet away, his face tight, eyebrows drawn together. Daniel looked at Damien’s shirt, then at the blood on his knuckles.

"The doctors are in there now," Daniel said, his voice low so the nurses wouldn't hear. "Nicholas and Eleanor are in the waiting room. It’s bad, Damien. They’re saying she lost it."

Damien didn't respond.

He just stared at his hands again.

"I need to wash this off."

He walked toward the restroom at the end of the hall. Each step felt like he was moving through water. He pushed the door open and walked to the sink. The light was bright and humming, making his head ache.

Damien turned the tap on, watching the cold water splash against the sink. He shoved his hands under the stream. The water turned pink, then dark red, swirling down the drain. He scrubbed hard, using the soap until his skin turned raw.

As he looked up into the mirror, he didn't recognize the man staring back. He saw the face of a man who owned empires, a man who could buy and sell everyone in this hospital. But behind those eyes was the scrawny kid who had once stolen food just to keep Chloe fed.

Suddenly, his hands began to shake so slowly that he couldn't stop. He gripped the edge of the sink, his knuckles turning white.

"Get it together," he hissed at his reflection. "She chose this, she chose Nicholas."

Grabbing a paper towel, he wiped his hands dry, and then crumpled it into a ball, and immediately slammed it into the bin. With one last look at his reflection, Damien straightened his back, fixed his collar, and walked back out.

The waiting room was a scene of pure chaos. Eleanor was slumped in a chair, wailing loudly, her makeup running down her face.

"My grandchild! My poor, sweet grandchild!" she screamed, clutching a wet tissue. She looked up, and as she saw Damien her face contorted into a mask of pure hate.

"You! This is your fault! You came into our home and brought your curse with you!"

Damien didn't even blink. He didn't give her the satisfaction of a response. He looked over at Nicholas, who was sitting on a bench, his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking as if he were sobbing.

But Damien noticed something, Nicholas wasn't looking at Eleanor or the floor. He was cutting his eyes toward the security camera in the corner of the ceiling. He was adjusting his posture, making sure he looked like the perfect, broken-hearted father for the footage.

"You're a real piece of work, Nicholas," Damien spoke, his voice cold and dry.

Nicholas looked up, his eyes watery but sharp.

"You did this, Damien. You came to evict us, to hurt us. I'll make sure the whole world knows that you killed my son."

"Your son?" Damien stepped closer, looming over him. "You don't care about that baby. You only care about the headlines. You’re already thinking about how to sue me, aren't you?"

"How can you be so heartless?" Eleanor shrieked, standing up to point a shaking finger at him. "The girl is in there dying, and you're talking about money? You really are just trash from the streets!"

Damien huffed and snapped his head to gape at her.

"I'm the one who paid for her surgery just now, Eleanor," Damien reminded her.

"I'm the one who carried her to the car while Nicholas was busy shaking with fear. If it were up to you two, she’d still be bleeding on that floor."

The doors to the emergency room opened, and a doctor stepped out, sweat mapping his forehead, while he tried cleaning it off, his eyes weary. Nicholas rushed over, his face instantly shifting back into a mask of grief.

"Doctor, please! Tell me my baby is okay!" Nicholas cried out, loud enough for everyone in the hall to hear.

The doctor sighed and lowered his head.

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Pierce. We did everything we could, but the trauma was too much. Mrs. Pierce is stable, but the pregnancy is over."

Nicholas let out a loud, dramatic groan and fell back into the chair. Eleanor started wailing again, even louder than before.

Damien watched them for a long moment. He felt a strange chill in his chest. He looked at the door to Chloe's room. He could hear her thin, weak voice calling out for him of all people through the walls.

"Damien... Damien, please..."

It was a pathetic sound. It was the sound of a woman who had realized her world of lies had finally collapsed.

"Let's go, Daniel," Damien said, turning his back on the room.

"You're just going to leave?" Daniel asked, following him toward the exit.

"Don't you want to hear what the police have to say? They're going to ask questions about the eviction."

"My lawyers will handle the police," Damien said as they pushed through the glass doors of the hospital.

He reached into his pocket and felt the crinkle of the ultrasound picture he had taken from the house, and then remembered the words in the journal.

Our little miracle.

If the baby Chloe just lost was Nicholas', then who was the miracle she wrote about four years ago? The one she said she had to do something?

His phone buzzed in his hand. He looked down and saw a message from a number he didn't know.

‘You did a good thing tonight, Damien. But the blood on your hands is older than you think. Ask the old woman where she took the boy.’

Damien felt the world tilt. His breath hitched in his throat. He looked back at the hospital, at the window where Eleanor was likely still crying her fake tears.

"Daniel," Damien said, his voice barely a whisper.

"Yeah?"

"We're not going home. We're going to find out exactly what Eleanor Sterling was doing the week I was sent to prison."

He got into the back of the car and shut the door. As the engine hummed to life, he looked at his hands. They were clean now, but he could still feel the heat of the blood.