Chapter One: The Descent
My life did not end with a scream; it ended with a shove.
They call it the “most wonderful time of the year,” a season of warmth, flickering candles, and the soft promise of new beginnings. But as I stood on the balcony of our fifth-floor apartment at Skyline Heights in Denver, the air felt like a whetted blade against my skin. I was seven months pregnant, my body a heavy, awkward vessel for a life I already loved more than my own. My hand rested habitually on the swell of my stomach, feeling the rhythmic, comforting stirrings of the boy we had planned to name Leo.
Behind me stood Daniel, the man who had promised to be my anchor. For weeks, the atmosphere between us had been thick with a tension I couldn’t quite name. It was a suffocating layer of secrecy—whispered phone calls in the dead of night, bank statements hidden in the depths of his briefcase, and a sudden, jagged irritability that replaced his usual warmth. We had argued that evening about our mounting debt, though he insisted everything was under control. He seemed different—distant, his eyes vacant, as if he were already living in a future that didn’t include me.
