She was halfway to the door when he called to her.
“I’d do anything for you. You know that.”
She nodded, smiling and pressing the powder blue clutch bag to her chest.
Roman didn’t look quite as eased as his wife. “But there’s one thing I will never do,” he took the spot she’d vacated on his desk. “I will never stand by and let someone hurt you. Anyone. This is the last time I stop. The last time I forget. Ever. Understood?”
She replied with another nod, that one stiffer, far more reserved than before. “Yes, Roman,” she managed and made her way from her husband’s office.
~49~
Giselle left Brogue with Athena that morning before she started her errands for the day.
Athena had been delighted. The woman was already rattling off a list of things she and her grandson would be doing before Giselle could tell her when she’d be back. She got back to the city in time to meet with the caterers she had decided to use for the family dinner the following week. Then, it was off to visit with her family.
She tried not to make too much of the strange vibes she got from her mother, sister and grandmother. Conversation had seemed the slightest bit strained while they chatted during lunch at her sister’s house. Gwendolyn lived in Jamaica, Queens.
Giselle tried not to let the women’s obvious moods preoccupy her too much. She promised to get to the bottom of whatever had them agitated later. Just then, she had bigger fish to convince.
She’d called Tesano HQ from Gwen’s house and learned that Humphrey was working from home that day. Giselle cheered her good luck. It would be much better to talk with him there. Besides, it would give her the chance to survey the job she’d done decorating the place and how its owner had settled in.
A guard escorted her to the private elevator that would take her to Humphrey’s penthouse. The oak paneled doors opened with a silent swoosh upon reaching its lofty destination. Giselle smiled when she stepped out onto the foyer’s parquet floors and she delighted in the herringbone pattern of the rich gold wood.
Intrigued by the opportunity to survey, Giselle smoothed her hands down the sides of the striped blue bell-bottoms she wore with a green blouse. She took time to enjoy the high ceilinged living room with its gray and white color scheme. So far it looked as if the owner was keeping the place in its dazzling move-in condition even after all this time. She enjoyed the space and strolled over to take in the city view from the breathtakingly tall windows. Voices caught her ear, however, and she remembered her reason for being there.
“Humphrey?” she moved in the direction where she’d heard the voices. She knew her way around the spacious abode having spent so much time there during the decorating. Humphrey had given her carte blanche to design as she saw fit.
Giselle had ordered herself not to get carried away. Nevertheless, she was happy to see that Humphrey had taken some of her suggestions about the rooms he had at his disposal. She’d suggested he keep business on one side of the house while devoting the other to leisure. She had also suggested that he actually use the leisure spots. She was pleased to see both a den and small library when she peeked past two of the doors. The others were locked.
The voices had gotten louder when she neared the corridor that ran perpendicular to the one containing the den and library. She was now thinking of the space as the leisure hall.
“Humphrey?” she called, her steps halting. The last thing she wanted was to interrupt if his day off was about being ‘leisurely’ with another.
Tentatively, she made her way toward one of the two doors in the hall. She had a better bead on the voices then and didn’t get the sense that the chatter was about anything romantic. Her heels made only the tiniest clicks on the mushroom colored marble she now walked over.
“Humphrey? It’s Giselle,” she called at the door before gently easing it open.
Her platform sandals sank into plush carpeting.The room was primarily bathed in black, but for the gleam coming off a far wall. Giselle realized her brother-in-law had taken her suggestion to devote space to leisure more seriously than she thought. The room had been outfitted into some kind of home theater. Giselle was impressed by three rows of oversized, overstuffed chairs facing the far wall. The wide space reflected images generated from a projector peeking through a high window on the opposite side of the room.
Giselle heard Humphrey’s name. She turned, realizing it had come from the screen. A frown drew her delicate brows close and she inched forward until she was bracing against the back of one of the highbacked theater chairs. The man who had spoken, was wearing a kind of surgical uniform. She wasn’t sure why he looked out of place to her in such garb. Perhaps, it was the long black ponytail he sported.
The man waved a hand and the camera panned to a line of women. A few were black, others were Latin or some other ethnicity she couldn’t identify. Her fingers tightened over the back of the chair. Terror was apparent in each pair of eyes the camera captured.
Giselle tried to dismiss the frightened faces, but knew they had been indelibly marked on her memory. She attempted to focus on the man’s words then- ‘unlocking the secrets of the ovary’, ‘overcoming the messy aspects of reproduction’, and ‘the future of procreation,’ the terms filtered in and out of her consciousness.
The camera panned, as the man went across the spacious sterile looking room to a large box atop a wide rolling cart. The box was a machine of some sort with lots of tubes, knobs and pumps attached.
“...the incubation chamber,” the man said. “We’ll soon take parents completely out of the equation.”
Giselle’s thoughts were spinning and she could make very little sense of the man’s words. She had comprehended enough to know his words were sheer lunacy. She watched the camera pan again.
“Humphrey?” She whispered when the familiar face filled the screen.
The room darkened again before a new scene emerged on the walls a few seconds later. Giselle saw that Humphrey was wearing the same kind of surgical uniform as the man with the ponytail. The camera dipped slightly and she could see that he was standing over a stainless steel table. A quiet cry escaped her when the shot zoomed to show a small cart of gleaming scalpels to one side. Then, it panned to capture Humphrey covering the lower half of his face with a surgical mask. The last scene before the camera went black, was of one of the women from the first scene. Her eyes remained wide and terror- filled. Her head moved side to side on the shiny table as she tried to avoid the breathing mask being lowered to her face. After a few, deep inhales, she was unconscious.
“Humphrey,” Giselle’s voice was little more than a murmur. She watched in horror as he worked with determination over the woman’s bare torso, making precise slices with the surgical tools he held. Giselle flinched when a splatter hit the camera lens-blood. She knew it was all too real.
“Take it easy, Tesano,” the man with the ponytail encouraged. “We want to harvest, not sterilize. This is art.”
“Art,” Humphrey said.
Once more, the screen filled with Humphrey’s face. His cap, mask and smock were blood splattered. His eyes held a maniacal gleam as he raised the bloody scalpel to the screen.
Giselle screamed. Stumbling on her heels, she pivoted for the door and ran...into Humphrey. She struggled when his arms enfolded her.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he assured.
“Wh-what are you doing Humphrey? W-what have you done?”
“What needs to be done to make things better-as they should be.”
Giselle wrenched against Humphrey’s hold, relief surging when he let go. “B-better? How?”
Humphrey kept himself between Giselle and the door as he waved to the screen. She refused to look at it. She could look nowhere but his face which was like something from a horror film. The projector’s light gave his skin a garish yet mesmerizing sheen.
“Why would you do this? H-how could you do this to those women?” She retreated deeper into the room as he advanced.
“Those women are the answer to every problem I’ve ever had since that mongrel Pitch drew breath.”
