His eyes darkened, something feral surfacing beneath the control.
“From this moment forward, Elena,” he went on, voice dropping into something cold and final, “you will pay. You will pay with every breath you take until I decide you’ve suffered enough.”
My chest felt too small for my lungs. Each inhale burned.
He moved again.
I retreated again.
My back brushed cold air—too close to nothing, nowhere left to go.
“I never loved her,” he said suddenly, and the words caught, jagged, as though ripped from someplace raw and infected. The shift startled me more than his threats. “Not the way men are supposed to love their wives. Yes.” His jaw tightened. “But she was the mother of my son.”
His voice fractured, just slightly.
“My wife,” he continued. “Eight months pregnant with my child.”
My stomach dropped into free fall.
“And you butchered her.”
The word slammed into me like a physical blow.
“You cut her open,” he said, each syllable precise, merciless. “Like she was nothing. Like flesh meant to be discarded. You murdered the baby inside her.”
I shook my head violently, tears blurring my vision.
No.
No, no, no—
“How,” he demanded quietly, stepping into my space now, towering, unavoidable, “does a woman’s heart become so evil?”
The question wasn’t rhetorical.
It was an accusation carved into bone.
I opened my mouth.
Tried to scream.
Tried to tell him the truth.
Nothing came out.
The sound died before it was born, strangled somewhere deep in my throat. Pain flared instantly—sharp, searing—like glass lodged behind my voice.
I forced air through my lungs, tried again, but my body betrayed me the way it always did.
On a good day, maybe ten percent of the time, my words came out clear.
Most days—eighty, eighty-five percent—I stammered, tripped over syllables, my tongue lagging behind my thoughts.
And the remaining moments—the worst ones—I went completely mute.
This was one of those moments.
My throat locked. Muscles seized. No sound. Not even a broken one.
