I wasn’t just in labor.
I had been betrayed and sentenced all at once.
Ciro exhaled.
The sound traveled through the insulated steel like a ghost of a sigh.
“My love...” Ciro’s voice followed, low and almost gentle. “It breaks my heart that this will be the last time we speak.”
A pause.
“Yet it also gives me some twisted satisfaction,” he continued, “that while I’ll never have you... neither will Vincenzo.”
My chest tightened painfully.
“Rest in peace, Elena.”
“Consider it in advance.”
A faint, almost tender emphasis on the words.
Then his footsteps retreated—slow at first, then faster, until they finally faded, leaving nothing behind but silence.
“Ciro!” I screamed, slamming my numb palms against the steel door. “Ciro—please! I can’t die like this!”
My voice cracked into pieces.
“I’m eight months pregnant—my child is innocent! He’s coming—right now! Please—open the door!”
My fists struck the door again and again, weak and desperate.
“Ciro!”
But the only answer was my own voice—echoing back at me.
Thin. Useless.
Gone.
I slid down the door, my legs giving out beneath me.
My back hit the frost-covered steel with a dull thud, the impact sending a fresh wave of pain through my already freezing body.
Another contraction hit.
Hard.
I cried out, my hands instinctively gripping my stomach as the pain tore through me in sharp, rhythmic waves.
No.
Not just a contraction.
This was labor—real, unstoppable, coming now.
The baby was coming.
And the cold—
