Diego slammed his hand down on the table.
“Stop playing the victim. You’re the one who destroyed this family.”
I opened the folder.
Giving up my rights to the house.
Minimum child support.
Conditional custody.
And then I saw a clause that made the blood in my body freeze: if the baby was not Diego’s, I would have to repay him for all “marital expenses” from the past years.
I laughed.
A dry, broken laugh.
“Marital expenses? Are you going to include all the years I spent washing your underwear too?”
Paula’s face turned red.
Diego clenched his jaw.
“Sign it, Laura. Don’t make this more humiliating than it already is.”
“Humiliating was you leaving with your mistress before accompanying me to even one prenatal appointment.”
I didn’t sign.
That night, I slept with a chair wedged against my bedroom door.
I didn’t know why I did it.
Maybe when a woman has been pushed to the very edge of humiliation, she starts hearing danger in every tiny sound.
The next day, I went to the ultrasound appointment alone.
I wore a loose dress.
I combed my hair neatly.
I put on lipstick, even though my hand wouldn’t stop trembling.
Not for Diego.
For myself.
For the baby inside me, who was not to blame for any of this.
The clinic smelled faintly of antiseptic alcohol, baby powder, and the suppressed fear of young mothers.
Dr. Salinas greeted me with a gentle voice.
“Are you here alone?”
My husband had a vasectomy, yet two months later, I got pregnant. He called me a traitor, left me for another woman… but he had no idea that the biggest shock was waiting for him in the ultrasound room.018
