The red marks were worse now.
They looked like bites.
Her stomach twisted.
She turned back to the crib and pressed her hand into the mattress.
It was damp.
Soft.
Wrong.
She glanced toward the door. The hallway was silent. Margaret had returned to the master suite.
Emily lifted the corner of the fitted sheet.
At first, she thought it was shadows.
Then her eyes adjusted.
And reality hit her like a physical blow.
The mattress was alive.
It was rotting—and crawling.
Thousands of maggots writhed across the surface, burrowing into black, decomposing patches of padding. The interior had collapsed into something dark and wet, filled with mold, dead insects, and decay so advanced it looked like it had been pulled from a flooded basement.
Emily clapped a hand over her mouth.
She staggered backward, heart pounding.
Oliver had been sleeping on this.
Every night.
She ripped the sheet back farther.
The infestation covered the entire mattress.
“How…?” she whispered.
This was a $12 million mansion.
And a newborn baby had been laid on rot.
She looked at Oliver’s back.
Those welts weren’t rashes.
They were bites.
From whatever had been crawling beneath him while he slept.