She kept her expression amused, didn’t deviate an iota from how she watched them, though inside she stilled at the name. Catarina? Who the fuck was Catarina?
“That was the idea,” she answered. “If knowledge that I was still alive reached the Genetics Council, then I wouldn’t have been alive long.”
General Roberts shook his head. “So many years. You contacted us but not your parents? They still grieve terribly, despite the fact that they believe you died as a baby.”
Everything in Cat was freezing. She was amazed she was still breathing. She had been told she had no parents. That her mother had died from her refusal to treat the AIDS she’d contracted and had passed the disease to her daughter. She’d been told that the woman had sold her child to Brandenmore for enough money to ensure she was buried properly rather than cremated as hospital property.
And Graeme had never told her any different.
Yet, she knew General Roberts wouldn’t lie, and he would never speak of something he wasn’t certain of.
“Tell me about them.” She finally managed to force words past her lips. “I never learned who they were.”
General Roberts shook his head as his wife’s eyes filled with tears.
“They are our dearest friends,” Annette Roberts whispered, tears filling her eyes as she stared at Cat in amazement. “Your mother, Helena, has been my closest friend since I was three. My God, you’re the image of her, though I can see your father’s stubborn jawline.” A trembling smile pulled at her pale lips. “Helena still cries for you each year on your birthday and Kenneth still adds a single piece of furniture to the dollhouse he made for you before you were born.”
Oh God.
They were killing her. Cat could feel her soul being shredded as it never had been before. It was being ripped from her one small piece at a time. She had parents? She belonged? And Graeme had never told her?
“How could you not know who they were?” the general asked then. “The Breed that came to us earlier this year, Graeme, gathering information on them, told us he intended to inform you of the lie Brandenmore had told of your birth.”
“And you knew Brandenmore lied about it?” Cat asked, fighting to understand such deliberate cruelty. “The years Honor was at the center and you never told me?”
Regret and grief filled his expression as he reached out for her, sighing when she jerked back from his touch.
“How could I tell you?” he asked gently. “They held my child’s life in their hands. Brandenmore could have killed Honor as easily as he cured her. I didn’t dare let any of them suspect I was less than the good little Genetics Council follower. Then, just when I thought I could keep her safe, and could go to your parents, I was told you’d died in the labs when one of the Breeds there escaped. I couldn’t find any proof otherwise and didn’t dare add to your mother’s pain.”
“She never had more children?” Cat asked numbly.
“The genetic defect you were born with had something to do with an incompatibility between her and Kenneth’s genetics,” the general told her. “They didn’t dare risk it. Losing another child would have killed Helena.”
She was dying inside. Agonizing bursts of emotion were exploding inside her, ripping her apart with the force of them.
“And you say Graeme knew?” she asked.
The general nodded. “The Bengal boy that cared for you, Gideon I believe his name was, he knew as well. Once the genetic abnormality was being treated, Dr. Foster demanded to know who your parents were in case he needed further genetic information. The boy was there and I questioned his presence, though the doctor assured me he would never speak of it. I guess he didn’t.” He shook his graying head with sadness. “Damn, that kid loved you, though. There wasn’t a guard or doctor there who didn’t sweat whenever the therapies were given to you. Even Brandenmore walked cautiously around him where you were concerned. What they did to him later . . .” He drew in a hard breath as the scent of horrific disbelief wafted around him. “If they hadn’t threatened to reacquire you, he would have died during that last vivisection.” Horror flashed in his eyes and in Cat’s soul. “There were three. During the last one, Bennett gave the order to acquire you at all costs to see if you could survive the same experiments. God knew he deserved the peace after what Bennett did. I hope he finally found some measure of it.”
Three vivisections? They’d cut into him as he lived, exposed organs and inner flesh in an act that no other Breed was known to have survived? And they had threatened to do the same to her. There was no way he would have allowed that. Because of it, the monster that lurked inside him had risen like a demon of death to destroy anyone that dared threaten her.