Those fragile, nauseating weeks when every smell turns hostile, when dizziness strikes without warning, when fear and hope coexist in equal measure.
She had endured that behind bars. Metal bunks. Stale air. Guards who barked orders instead of offering water. No doctor’s gentle reassurance. No hand to steady her when the room spun.
Her second trimester.
The months when the baby begins to move—those first flutters that steal a woman’s breath, that make her pause in wonder.
When the body starts to change in ways that can no longer be hidden. When instinctively, unconsciously, a hand settles over the swell as if to protect it from the world. She had felt those movements in the echoing corridors of Blackridge, surrounded by women hardened by violence, stripped of softness long ago.
And the third.
God.
The heaviest, most vulnerable stretch—when ankles swell, sleep becomes a negotiation, when every breath reminds you of the life pressing from within.
When a husband is meant to wake at night to fetch water, to rub aching backs, to whisper that everything will be all right.
She had borne it alone.
Nine months.
Nine months of watching her body change in a place designed to erase dignity.
Nine months of carrying my child in secret terror.
Nine months of knowing that if anyone discovered the truth, mercy would not follow.
And at the end—when labor should have brought life screaming into the world—it brought only silence.
They called it an accident.
I knew better.
It was murder by neglect. By cruelty. By my hand.
“How cruel I am.” The words tore free in a broken whisper, scraped raw from somewhere beneath my ribs.
Pain flared briefly as sharp stones bit through fabric and skin, but I welcomed it. I deserved worse. Blood seeped warm against my leg, grounding me in a reality I no longer wanted to inhabit.
I tried to speak again—to beg, to promise, to swear allegiance to a future she might never allow me into.
I never got the chance.
The low, predatory growl of engines rolled across the lot, vibrating through the air like a warning.
Three Lamborghini Urus—yellow, aggressive, unmistakably expensive—screeched to a halt in flawless formation.
Dust and gravel exploded outward, swirling like smoke from a battlefield.
Doors opened in unison.
Six men stepped out.
Tailored black suits. Polished shoes. The unmistakable posture of men who did not ask permission to exist.
Power radiated from them—not loud, not chaotic, but absolute. The kind that bent rooms without effort.
Not one of them looked at me.
