At five in the morning, the bedroom door slammed so hard it struck the wall and bounced back.

I woke with a gasp, one hand flying straight to my stomach.

For one confused second I thought something terrible had happened outside the house.

A fire.

A break-in.

Some emergency in the street.

Then I saw my husband standing in the doorway, breathing hard, eyes already full of rage, and I understood the emergency was me.

“Get up, you useless cow,” Víctor barked.

He crossed the room in three long strides and tore the blanket off my body so violently that cold air hit my swollen legs like ice water.

I pushed myself upright with both hands, wincing as pain shot across my lower back.

I was six months pregnant, exhausted, and barely sleeping through the night anymore.

My ankles were swollen, my hips ached constantly, and for the last two days I had felt a strange tightness in my lower abdomen that I was too afraid to name.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice rough with sleep.

“My parents are downstairs,” he snapped.

“They’re hungry.

And you’ve been lying in bed like some queen while everyone waits on you.”

I swallowed and tried to swing my legs over the side of the mattress.

“I just need a minute,” I said quietly.

“It hurts when I stand too fast.”

He laughed at me.

It was not the laugh of a husband.

It was the laugh of someone who enjoyed seeing another person weak.

“Other women work until the day they give birth,” he said.

“You act like you’re special because you’re pregnant.

Get downstairs and cook breakfast.”

His parents had arrived late the night before and insisted on staying over.

That by itself would have been enough to fill me with dread.

Helena and Raúl never visited without turning the house into a stage where I was the servant and they were the judges.

But since I became pregnant, their cruelty had sharpened into something uglier.

They no longer insulted only my cooking or my cleaning or my clothes.

They insulted my body, my pain, the way I walked, the way I breathed.

And Víctor let them.

No.

That wasn’t the truth.

He joined them.

I stood slowly, one hand pressed to my back, the other under my belly.

He watched me the way a man might watch an animal he considered stubborn.

“Move,” he said.

I walked past him and down the stairs, gripping the railing because my legs were already trembling.

The house smelled of stale coffee and frying grease from the pan Helena had probably dirtied and then left for me to clean.

In the kitchen, his parents sat at the table waiting.

Raúl had his arms folded.

Helena wore her usual expression of polished disgust.

And Nora, Víctor’s younger sister, sat by the window with her phone raised, camera pointed straight at me.

She didn’t even pretend to hide it.

“Morning,” she said, smiling at the screen instead of me.

“Thought I’d capture domestic life.”

“Look at her,” Helena said, not bothering to lower her voice.

“She walks like she’s carrying the whole world.”

“Maybe she thinks she is,” Raúl muttered.

Víctor entered behind me and kissed his mother on the cheek.

“Sorry you had to wait,”