Eight months pregnant, I moved carefully, as if every step carried the weight of two lives.My name is Lucía Morales, and that afternoon in our apartment in Vallecas, I forgot to add salt to the soup. It was a small mistake—but with Javier Ortega, small mistakes were never treated as small.He came home tense and irritable. After tasting the soup, his frustration exploded. Everything happened so fast that my body reacted before my mind could. The bowl was knocked over, hot liquid spilling down and leaving me shaken.“Useless,” he shouted.My baby shifted inside me, as if trying to retreat toodidn’t cry. I didn’t plead. I stood there, staring at the wet floor, silently counting my breaths. I had cried before—when he called me a burden, when he checked my phone, when he stopped me from seeing my mother. But that night, something shut down… and something else woke up.

Javier stepped onto the balcony to smoke, acting as if nothing unusual had happened. I went to the bathroom, rinsed my face with cold water, and looked at myself in the mirror. I was startled by how calm I seemed. One thought settled clearly in my mind: If this is how he reacts over soup today, what will happen tomorrow when the baby cries?I gripped the sink and remembered Ana, a former classmate—the only person in my life Javier didn’t know. She had always said, “If you ever need help, call me. Anytime.”
I never had. Shame, fear, and false hope kept me silent.But my baby moved again, and the decision was made.I opened the drawer where I kept tablecloths. Inside was my ID—and a small notebook where I had quietly written dates and words over time. My phone buzzed with a message from Javier:
“Clean this up before I come back.”