chapter 7
I brought the ultrasound photo to the clinic the next morning.
The doctor took one look and shook her head.
“This didn’t come from our office.”
Someone was trying to scare me.
I knew that much.
She asked if I had somewhere safe to stay.
I nodded.
But I was lying.
There was no safe place.
Not when you had been dragged into the games of men who believed everything belonged to them, including you.
That night, I double-locked every door and checked every window. I slept with a kitchen knife under my pillow and my phone beside my hand.
I barely slept at all.
A week later, the apartment buzzer rang.
I froze.
I didn’t answer.
It rang again.
And again.
Then a voice came through the intercom.
“Rachel. It’s me.”
Ethan.
Every muscle in my body locked up.
I didn’t move.
I barely breathed.
He kept talking. “Rachel, I know you’re in there. Please. I just want to talk. I’m not here to hurt you.”
I stepped away from the intercom like it had burned me.
Then I ran.
I grabbed my bag, went out through the back, and climbed down the fire escape with shaking hands. By the time I reached the street, I was already crying without making a sound.
I got on the first bus that came.
I didn’t care where it was going.
I sat in the back, one hand cradling my stomach, and whispered the same words to myself over and over.
He found me.
He found me.
And worse, he had sounded sincere.
That was the part that terrified me most.
Because monsters don’t always come roaring.
Sometimes they come in soft voices.
Sometimes they whisper your name like they never betrayed you at all.
Sometimes they speak as if they still belong in your life.
I changed towns again.
This time I bought a cheap wig, dyed my brows, wore oversized glasses, and moved into a room above a closed-down bookstore. The windows barely opened and the heater rattled all night, but it was quiet.
No online trail.
No forwarding address.
No name on the mailbox.
I became someone who existed only in passing glances.
The town was small. People minded their business. I picked up odd jobs cleaning an old tailor’s shop in exchange for meals and tips.
The owner, Mr. Drew, was nearly eighty and half blind. He never asked my name.
He just called me “kid.”
One evening, as I was locking the back door, he looked at me and said, “You look like someone carrying a war inside her.”
I paused.
“Maybe I am.”
He nodded, as if that answer made perfect sense.
“Don’t let it win.”
That night, I sat on the floor and counted every coin I had left.
Enough for one more month.
After that, I would need a real job again. I might have to reveal pieces of myself I had worked so hard to hide.
But I still wasn’t ready.
Not while Ethan was looking for me.
Because by then, I knew it was him.
Jake would have sent lawyers.
Jake would have used threats written on company letterhead.
But Ethan came in person.
Ethan used his own voice.
Soft. Careful. Familiar.
And that made everything worse.
He wasn’t trying to punish me.
He wanted to bring me back.
Some nights, I wrote letters I never intended to send.
To Ethan.
To Jake.
To the baby.
One of them read:
Dear Lila, if you ever read this, know that I tried. I tried to build a life far away from the people who broke me. You were the reason I kept running. And if one day you wonder why your father isn’t in our life, I hope you understand that I wasn’t only protecting you from him. I was protecting you from what loving someone like that can do to a woman.
The next morning, I burned that letter in the sink.
I didn’t want fear to be the thing that raised us.
But fear had already made a home inside me.