Page 121 of The Life of Anna-Tenth Anniversary Edition: Act 2

“God, no . . .”

“Here is your son, Wilhelm.” Devin held up his bloody hand to the phone. Anna sobbed in the background, blood streaming out of her body. She strained against the cuffs, though with less energy than before.

Wilhelm couldn’t hold himself back any longer. The phone slipped from his hand and he fell to the floor on his hands and knees, vomiting multiple times. He could hear Ilsa sniffling and Devin laughing while Anna sobbed. He had failed Anna. God, the poor girl.

“Turn off the phone, Ilsa,” he pleaded in a soft voice. “Please.” He stared at the black floor, surrounded by the sour smell of the contents of his stomach. There was movement on the bed and the room became silent. The blue glow of the phone faded, and then the room went dark.

“Wilhelm...” Ilsa said softly. She turned on the bedside light and kneeled beside him. “Oh, Wilhelm.” She stroked his head for a few moments and then stood and went into the bathroom.

He heard the water running and she returned a few minutes later to run a cool cloth over his forehead and face. He sat up and leaned back against the bed, his heart shredded. Ilsa spoke softly on the phone, telling Lukas that Wilhelm had been ill.

Wilhelm couldn’t push the horrible images from his mind. Anna. His precious baby. He had even been thinking of names that morning. Tears ran down his cheeks and onto his chest.

Ilsa left again and returned with his robe. “Come, let’s sleep in another room.” He stood absently and let her help him into his robe. She took his hand and led him out of the bedroom into a nearby guest room.

He sat down hard on the bed and stared at the floor, his mind unable to fully accept what he had just seen. He rarely used the word evil, but that was the only word he could come up with to describe what he had just seen. Devin was evil. To reach into a woman’s body and abort a baby with his own hands? Only an evil man could do such a thing.

“Poor Anna,” he whispered. “My poor, poor Anna.” He looked bleary-eyed at his wife.

Ilsa sat next to him and held him tightly. “He really... did that to her?”

“Yes. He’s a monster and must be stopped.”

“But how? Alex is?—‍”

“I know, Mausi. But there is always a way. We just have to find it.” He would avenge his son’s death. It would be Wilhelm’s pleasure to kill Devin with his bare hands, but he doubted he could overpower the wicked Chairman. Maybe he needed to call in the Assassins.

Chapter 68

Anna huddled in her bed at the Manor, staring blankly out the window as the sun rose. Her baby... Wilhelm’s baby... gone. A bird pecked at the grass in her little yard and she watched it, grateful for the tiny distraction from her grief. But too soon it flew away and she was left staring at nothing again. She shivered in the cold air, but she couldn’t muster the energy to cover herself. Her pillow was soaked with her tears, but they had long dried in her eyes. The Immortal had healed her body, though it had done nothing for the messy, bloody mess Devin had made of her heart.

My baby . . . Wilhelm’s baby . . .

She hugged her knees to her chest, wishing the floor would open up and take her down into the depths of the earth. That she could cease to exist and feel nothing ever again. To not exist was the only way she would ever have peace.

A flicker of emotion lit in her heart. Heat burned in her chest. She imagined grasping the sun and shoving it into Devin’s mouth and watching him burn from within. Devin had taken away everything good in her life. Everything!

She sat up suddenly, then stood and looked around the room. She tilted her head as she stared at the ceramic lamp on the table next to the bed. Without thinking, she grabbed it around the narrow neck and threw it across the room. The sound as the ceramic shattered against the marble fireplace was fiercely satisfying. She pulled a ceramic figurine of a girl from her bookshelf and threw it across the room. And another, and another, and another. The air was filled with the joyful sounds of destruction. She threw a metal statue and hit the mirror, and the mirror exploded into millions of tiny pieces that caught the sunlight as they fell to the floor.

Anything she could pick up, she threw. The wooden clock on the mantle went through a window. The brass vase on the table made a satisfying clang as it hit the fireplace, but she liked the shattering sounds best, and so went into the bathroom to find more things to throw. She gathered all the glass bottles she could carry, dumped them on her bed, and hurled them, one at a time, at the marble fireplace. The room soon filled with the scents of roses and musk and vanilla.

Midway through the arc of one of the larger bottles, her forearm hit a barrier. She whirled around to see Ian holding her arm in the air with a tight grip.

“Let me go,” she growled through gritted teeth, struggling like a wild animal against him.

She gave him a ferocious glare and yanked with all her might, and was shocked when she pulled loose. Stepping back, she hurled the bottle at Ian’s face, missing him by millimeters as he ducked out of the way. She gave a vicious roar and grabbed another bottle to hurl at him when he lunged for her, pushing her to the floor and holding her hands above her head.

Using all of her strength, she cursed and yelled and screamed while trying to escape. She had almost slipped away when two other men ran in and grabbed her. Each held her by an arm, and Ian held her legs, panting.

She fought with all her might, once again almost freeing herself when more men came in and put cuffs on her wrists and ankles and chained her, spread eagle, to her bed. She continued to scream and curse at them, yanking at the chains, making the metal dig into the wood of the bed.

Ian stood over her with a bewildered look on his face as she pulled and cursed at him. A wooden crack made him jump back. He shouted something at one of the men, who ran out of the room.

Anna heard the crack and looked down at her feet to see the bottom bedpost was leaning precariously toward the center of the bed. She grinned maniacally and gave a great yank with her leg, and the bedpost fell over. Ian leaped forward to keep it from falling on her. She continued to kick and scream. The other post was cracking and he lay down on her legs, but her rage consumed her, making her stronger than she’d ever been before, and she kicked him off.

Her arms weren’t nearly as strong as her legs, and all she could do was pull at them. A searing pain shot through her arm from her right elbow at one yank, and she screamed in pain and frustration when her arm wouldn’t work anymore.

The man Ian had yelled at rushed back in with a syringe. Anna saw it and screamed in primal terror. She knew what that meant. Three men held her down as Ian pushed it into her neck. A moment later, she grew dizzy and her eyelids drooped.

---