Chapter 1
“Get up, you useless cow!” he screamed, violently yanking the heavy blankets off my body and exposing me to the chilly morning air. “Do you think being pregnant makes you some kind of queen? My parents are downstairs waiting to eat, and you’re still lounging in bed!”
Every single muscle in my aching body protested as I forced myself upright, fighting waves of nausea and exhaustion. “My back... it hurts so badly,” I whispered, clutching my swollen belly. “I can’t move that fast right now.”
Victor sneered, his eyes filled with bottomless contempt. “Millions of women get pregnant every day and don’t whine every second of their lives. Stop acting like a spoiled princess and get downstairs immediately!”
I swallowed my burning anger and humiliation. Not because I wasn’t furious—my blood boiled with rage—but because my unborn baby mattered infinitely more than my pride.
Each painful, trembling step down the staircase felt like walking over broken glass. When I finally reached the bottom, waiting at the kitchen table were Helena and Raul, Victor’s parents, wearing smug, condescending smiles. His younger sister Nora sat right beside them, casually holding up her smartphone as she secretly recorded me, capturing my misery for her own amusement.
“Well, look who finally decided to show up,” Helena mocked, taking a slow sip of her coffee. “She carries one little baby and suddenly thinks the whole world should halt its rotation and wait on her hand and foot.”
Victor shrugged dramatically, pulling out his chair. “I’ve been way too patient with her for months.” Then he pointed a sharp finger directly toward the stove. “You heard my mother. Eggs, bacon, pancakes. And don’t ruin breakfast the way you ruin everything else in this house.”
I opened the refrigerator to grab the ingredients, but a violent, blinding wave of dizziness slammed into me with hurricane force. The room spun wildly off its axis. My knees instantly gave out beneath my weight. Before I could catch myself, I crashed hard onto the freezing tile floor.
Raul rolled his eyes with disgust. “Oh, here comes another dramatic performance. She’s such an actress.”
Victor didn’t offer a hand to help me up. Instead, his face darkened further. He walked to the corner of the kitchen, reached down, and grabbed a thick, heavy wooden stick he kept hidden behind the pantry. “I told you to get up!”
The sickening crack echoed through the room as the wooden stick smashed brutally into my thigh. Pain exploded through my nervous system, white-hot and blinding. I screamed in agony and instinctively curled into a tight ball around my stomach, shielding my unborn child with everything I had left.
“She deserves another one!” Helena laughed aloud, clapping her hands. “Maybe then she’ll finally learn her place in this family!”
“Please...” I sobbed, tears streaming down my face. “Please... not the baby... stop...”
Victor’s eyes turned even colder, devoid of any human empathy. “So now you care about something? You’ve never respected me or my family.” He lifted the heavy stick high above his head again.
Out of the corner of my tear-blurred vision, I spotted my smartphone lying on the kitchen rug just a few feet away from where I lay crumpled. It looked impossibly far, like a distant star.
Ignoring the blinding pain ripping through my body, I threw myself across the freezing floor, sliding on my stomach.
“Stop her! Don’t let her grab that phone!” Raul shouted, jumping up from his chair.
My trembling fingertips barely touched the glass screen. With superhuman adrenaline, I opened my chat window with my older brother Alex—a former Marine Corps sniper who lived only ten minutes away and had promised to protect me with his life. With shaking, bloody fingers, I typed two words:
Help. Please.
The message delivered with a quiet ping.
One second later, Victor lunged forward, ripped the phone from my bleeding hands, and smashed it repeatedly against the tile wall until it shattered into a hundred useless pieces of plastic and glass.
He grabbed my hair in a vicious fist and forced my head back violently. “You really think anyone’s coming to save you from me?” he whispered, his hot breath reeking of coffee and malice. “Today... you’re finally going to learn your lesson once and for all.”
Everything went completely dark.
Cold tile pressed against my cheek, anchoring me to reality as consciousness drifted farther and farther away. The suffocating smell of burned grease mixed with the metallic tang of blood until every breath tasted like pure terror. Helena’s laughter echoed above me, cruel and effortless, as though she were watching a comedy show instead of a pregnant woman fighting desperately to stay alive.
The edges of my vision darkened into a deep, velvety black. The kitchen blurred into shapeless shadows. Then... my baby moved.
A tiny, fragile, defiant kick. Small. Weak. Beautiful.
That single, miraculous movement cut through the darkness like a golden lifeline. I couldn’t give up. Not now. Not while my innocent child was still fighting to survive inside me.
I clung to that feeling with every ounce of strength I had left. Victor paced back and forth across the kitchen floor, breathing heavily, the wooden stick still hanging lazily from his bloodied hand. It no longer looked like an ordinary piece of wood; it looked like undeniable evidence. Proof of a sadistic crime none of them wanted to admit.
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Helena clicked her tongue in profound annoyance. “She always does this,” she complained to her husband. “Crying... fainting... playing the victim. She’s been putting on this pathetic act for months just to get attention.”
Victor slowly tightened his grip around the wooden stick once more. Then he turned his cold, dead eyes toward my motionless body again... and this time, the look in his eyes made my blood run instantly cold.
