Four months after our wedding, I was kidnapped and assaulted by his enemies.
Three months after I was rescued, I discovered I was pregnant.
I swore — again and again — on everything I still believe in — that the child is his.
I’ve done thirty one DNA tests.
Every single one confirms it.
But he refuses to believe me.
He hates me because of what our father did to him and his autistic younger sister when they were children — kidnapped, tortured, and used as leverage in one of Vasquez’s old wars.
That hatred has only grown inside him over the years.
And now, his first love — the woman fate chose for him before this marriage to me — is pregnant as well.
Even knowing the child she carries is his late best friend’s — and that everyone in this house knows it isn’t his.
He dotes on her.
He visits her every day.
He brings her flowers, doctors, warm blankets.
Me?
He locked me in an industrial cold room, knowing I was heavily pregnant.
The temperature is kept at –42°C.
Hot water thrown into the air turns to ice before it hits the floor.
My fingers are numb even when I tuck them under my arms.
I am eight months pregnant.
And I can feel my baby slowing down.
Fewer movements.
Weaker kicks.
The cold is killing us both.
I have forty-eight hours at most before my blood turns to sludge and my heart stops.
Probably less.
The only person in this house who still has a shred of conscience is the young kitchen maid who brings my meals.
She’s risking her life to smuggle this letter out.
If she succeeds, it means she got past the guards and the mail checks.
If she fails...
You’ll never know I tried.
