He stops filming. Looks at the phone screen, reviewing the footage. Then he smiles. “Perfect. This will break him completely.”
“Please—”
“Begging won’t save you. Crying won’t save you. Your husband couldn’t save you even if he wanted to. Because right now, he thinks you left him.” Dmitri walks toward the door. “And by the time he figures out the truth, it’ll be too late.”
“Wait! Please, wait?—”
But he’s gone. The door slams shut with a metallic clang that echoes through the warehouse. I’m alone in the dark.
The thin streams of sunlight from the skylights are fading as evening approaches. Soon it’ll be completely black in here.
I try to steady my breathing, try to think. But all I can think about is Ledger in our penthouse, looking at the empty closet. Reading those fake texts. Believing I left him.
And the baby. My son. Dante. Who’s moving inside me, who has no idea his life is in danger.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to my stomach, to the baby who can’t hear me but who I need to talk to anyway. “I’m so sorry, baby. I should have trusted your father’s instincts. Should have stayed home. Should have never opened the door to those men.”
He shifts inside me, pressing hard against my ribs.
The warehouse grows darker. The temperature drops. My wrists and ankles throb where the zip ties cut into swollen flesh.
And I think about my mother.
Not the sick version from the end. Not the woman wasting away in a hospital bed. But the healthy version from when I was sixteen, when she took me to Spain for the first time.
We went to her hometown, a small village near Barcelona, where she grew up before immigrating to America. She showed me the house where she was raised, the school she attended, and the church where her parents got married.
And then she showed me the café where she met my father.
It was a small place on a cobblestone street, with outdoor tables and red awnings. We sat at one of those tables, drinking coffee, while she told me the story I’d heard a dozen times before but never really understood.
“I was nineteen,” she said, stirring sugar into her espresso. “Working here to save money for university. And one day,this American soldier walked in. Young, handsome, full of confidence. He ordered in terrible Spanish, and I laughed at his pronunciation.”
“And he fell in love with you,” I said, because I knew the next part.
“He said he did. For three months, he came to this café every day. Bought me flowers. Learned Spanish properly so he could tell me how beautiful I was. Promised me the world.” She stared into her coffee cup. “And I believed him. When he said he’d bring me to America, that we’d get married, that we’d build a life together. I believed every word.”
“But he left.”
“His deployment ended. He went back to California. Promised to send for me as soon as he got settled. I waited. Wrote letters. Called the number he gave me.” She looked up at me. “The number was disconnected. The letters came back undeliverable. He’d given me a fake name, fake address, fake promises. Everything was a lie.”
I’d heard this story before, but sitting in that café where it all started, it hit different. “Did you ever regret having me?”
“Never.” She reached across the table and took my hand.
“But you were alone.”
“I was lonely sometimes. But I was never alone. I had you.” She squeezed my hand. “And that was enough. That was everything.”
Now, lying on the cold concrete floor of an abandoned warehouse with my baby moving inside me, I understand what she meant.
Dante is everything. This tiny person I haven’t even met yet is worth every sacrifice. Every moment of fear. Every second of pain. And I will fight for him even if Ledger doesn’t come, even if I have to do this alone.
Just like my mother did.
The baby shifts again, and this time it’s different. Harder. Lower. A tightening in my stomach that makes me catch my breath.
No. Not now. It’s too early. I’m only thirty-two weeks. He can’t come now.
