She left me alone in the mountains nine months pregnant, but when an unknown man appeared, Rafael lost his composure for the first time

At the moment when the newborn was not crying in my arms, I realized that my husband’s abandonment had not been the most terrible thing that could have happened that night.

There was no blood left on Gabriel Montenegro’s face. For several seconds he looked motionlessly at the baby, then placed his fingers on her tiny back and began to act with all his strength, but carefully. I only watched. My heart stopped together with hers.

“Gabriel, why isn’t she crying?” I asked, although I no longer wanted to hear the answer immediately.

The smell of firewood stood in the cabin, snow covered the windows, while small puddles of water appeared on the floor from his wet boots. The silver clasp sewn onto my stomach, which my mother had given me for the child’s birth, was pressing into my skin. I held it as if it were the only thing that still connected me to reality.

Gabriel lifted the baby to his chest.

“Look at her, Isabella. Don’t close your eyes.”

“My child…”

“She is fighting. You must fight too.”

His voice was stern, but his hands were trembling. The man at whose name people throughout southern Santa Catarina fell silent now stood before a lifeless baby as if he had lost his own life.

Then he brought his lips to the tiny nose and blew air into it. Once. A second time. A third time.

I wanted to scream, but no voice came out.

Suddenly the baby exhaled weakly. Then a small, hoarse cry was heard.

“She’s breathing!” I heard Gabriel’s voice.

I began to cry and stretched out my arms. He carefully handed me the baby. I pressed my daughter to my chest and brought her warmth to my face. At that moment, that breathing sounded to me like the voice of the whole world.

“Thank you…” I barely said.

Gabriel lowered his head.

“Thank me later. First I have to get you out of here.”

Outside, the wind struck the walls of the house. It was four o’clock at night, and the road had disappeared under the snow. Gabriel turned on an old radio, but only crackling sounded. Then he wrapped the baby together with me in a blanket and covered my shoulder with his heavy black scarf. The scarf smelled strongly of smoke and pine.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

He looked toward the door.

“I didn’t find you by chance.”

“What does that mean?”

He gave no answer. He only took the lantern and went outside.

In the morning, when I woke up in the hospital, a white sky could be seen beyond the window. My daughter was being watched through glass. The doctor told me that Gabriel had given her a chance to survive. And I could not stop thinking about why he had appeared exactly in the place where Rafael had left me.

Gabriel was sitting in the corridor. His coat was still wet, and there was a deep scratch on his right hand.

“Rafael has not returned for three days,” I said.

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

He looked me in the eyes.

“Because I have been searching for him these three days.”

My stomach seemed to contract.

“You were looking for my husband?”

Gabriel took a brown leather folder from his bag, but stopped before opening it.

“Before you see this, you should know that you did not end up in that cabin by chance. The car stopping was not accidental either. And what you thought about your husband may not have been the truth at all.”

“What did he do?”

Gabriel lifted the folder’s clasp with his finger. The metal rang sharply in the cold corridor. Just as he was about to place his hand on the first sheet, the hospital door opened from outside and a policeman rushed in…

The hospital door opened so hard that the handle struck the wall. Snow water ran down the policeman’s face, and in his hand he held a small plastic bracelet from the children’s ward.

“Isabella Ferreira?” he asked me.

“That’s me. What happened?”

The policeman first looked at Gabriel, then at the folder, and finally toward the children’s ward.

“Your husband was here.”

The strength left my legs.

“Rafael?”

“The security cameras show that he entered the hospital at six in the morning. He told the nurse that he was the baby’s father. He had prepared the documents in advance.”

“Where is my child?” I screamed.

The policeman pressed his lips together.

“First listen to me carefully.”

“Where is my child?”

Gabriel put a hand on my shoulder, but I shook it off and ran down the corridor. Two doctors stood by the glass door. The bed was empty. The baby’s blanket lay on the floor, and a pink plastic bracelet lay on it.

I could no longer swallow air.

“No… no, this cannot be…”

The nurse said through tears:

“He knew your husband’s name. He also knew the baby’s date of birth. He said that you could not think after the anesthesia and that the doctor had given him permission to transfer the baby.”

“You believed him?”

The woman’s face reddened.

“He showed us an official document.”

Gabriel came up to us. He was still holding the same folder.

“Now you must know why this happened,” he told me.

“He took my child! And you are showing me papers here?”

“If you want to find her, you must understand whom he is fleeing from and why.”

The policeman coughed sternly.

“Montenegro is right. An investigation against your husband was already under way.”

They opened the folder in a small family room. The clock showed seven in the morning. A wooden cross stood on the table, and an old heater hummed by the wall.

Gabriel handed me the first document.

“Rafael arranged the car damage in advance. The fuel line had been cut, and there was sand in the brake-fluid reservoir.”

“It could have been a mistake…”

“No,” said the policeman. “Tools were found by the roadside. His fingerprints are on them.”

I looked at the paper, but the letters blurred into one another.

Gabriel placed a second document down.

“He knew about your family’s property.”

“What property?”

“Your grandfather’s will.”

The name “Alberto Ferreira” was written at the top of the sheet. Below it was a description of the land and an amount that seemed impossible even to imagine.

“That was Grandfather’s old house,” I whispered.

“Not only the house. The entire mountain slope, the forest, the water sources, and the right to a tourist project. The will says that the property would pass to you in full after the birth of your first child.”

Something collapsed inside my chest.

“Rafael knew?”

Gabriel nodded.

“He obtained a copy six months before the wedding.”

I tried to stand up from the chair, but my knees gave way.

“Then our wedding…”

“May have been a plan from the beginning,” said the policeman.

Gabriel took out the last sheet. At the bottom was my signature, although I had never written it. Beside it was Gabriel’s surname.

“You are here too,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Did you want my land too?”

For the first time I saw shame in his eyes.

“I wanted to buy it. Unlike Rafael’s business, my offer was drawn up legally. But I should not have begun interfering in your life.”

“Why are you helping me now?”

“Because when I found out what he intended, it was already too late. I went to the road, but he was no longer there. I found only his phone and your name in the last message.”

Suddenly the policeman’s phone rang. He answered, listened to several words, and his face changed.

“They found the car near the old bridge over the river.”

“Rafael?” I asked.

“No. Only his car.”

“The baby?”

The policeman lowered his eyes.

“A neighbor says he saw a black car on the shore. Your husband was behind the wheel. There was a child seat in the back seat.”

Gabriel’s black scarf was in my hand. I had gripped it so tightly that my fingers hurt.

“Where did he go?” I asked.

The policeman opened the door and called to the officers in the corridor.

“It appears that he is not merely trying to escape. He had prepared a way out of the city in advance.”

Gabriel looked at one small paper remaining in the folder. His eyes suddenly hardened.

“What is it?” I asked.

He did not answer me. He slowly turned the paper over and said:

“Isabella, Rafael did not need only your property. Someone was helping him who knew that the baby would be born today…”

And right then my phone, which had been switched off for three days, lit up by itself. One new message appeared on the screen…

The message contained only one sentence: “If you want to see the baby alive, do not trust Gabriel anymore.”

The phone fell from my hand. The screen remained blinking on the floor, as if someone from far away was still watching me.

“Is this his number?” the policeman asked.

“I don’t know.”

Gabriel picked up the phone, but the message had already been deleted. Only the trace of an unknown number remained.

“Someone entered the system illegally,” he said.

“Did you order your people to do it?” I asked.

Gabriel’s face tensed.

“If I were guilty, you would never have found your child by now.”

“But you wanted my land too!”

“I wanted the land, not your death.”

The policeman placed a small memory card on the table.

“We found this in Rafael’s car. We cannot open it without a court order, but Gabriel said that everything might be on it.”

“Open it,” I said.

“If it turns out to be illegal evidence…”

“My child was taken!” I shouted. “We will talk about rules later.”

Gabriel put the card into the laptop. A camera recording filmed near the bridge opened on the screen. The time was two seventeen at night. Rafael got out of the car. He was holding a phone and talking to someone.

“Quickly,” his voice could be heard. “Isabella will not last until morning. If she survives, the plan changes.”

I clutched the back of the chair.

In the recording, Rafael took a small fuel container from the trunk. Then the road to the cabin appeared on the screen. He was wearing the same brown coat he had worn on our trip.

“He left you and came back?” Gabriel murmured.

The video continued.

Rafael said into the phone:

“After the child is born, everything will automatically pass into her name. Then I will arrange the documents. If the mother survives, we will tell her that she was lost. If she does not survive, so much the better.”

My knees gave way.

“No…” I said.

But the voice in the recording continued:

“Do not touch Gabriel Montenegro. He will come for the money too, but he does not yet know that his signature has already been used.”

Gabriel moved closer to the screen.

“That is not my signature.”

In the video, Rafael spread several papers across the table. One was a power of attorney for the temporary management of my property. My name was written at the bottom, although the letters clearly looked forged.

“He forged my signature,” I whispered.

“Not only yours,” Gabriel said. “My company seal was used too.”

Then another voice was heard in the recording. A woman’s. Calm, low, and familiar to me.

“You must take the baby to the hospital. It will be easy to take her out from there.”

I moved closer to the screen.

“That voice…”

Gabriel stopped the video.

“Whose is it?”

I closed my eyes. In childhood, my mother always pronounced my name in the same way, pausing slightly on the last syllable. This voice sounded like hers.

“My mother’s,” I said.

Silence fell over the room.

The policeman raised his head.

“Your mother, Lucia Ferreira, died three months ago, didn’t she?”

“That is what I was told.”

“Who told you?”

I could not answer.

Gabriel took another document from the folder and placed it on the table. It was a death certificate. It had a date, a doctor’s signature, and a hospital stamp. But in the lower corner of the document was the same mark that had appeared on Rafael’s forged power of attorney.

“Your mother may be alive,” Gabriel said.

All the old memories lit up in my head at once: her sudden illness, the locked room, the relative’s statement that the funeral had to be held quickly.

“Why would they hide it from me?”

Gabriel looked at the phone. A new call came from an unknown number.

The policeman put his hand on his weapon.

“Do not answer.”

But I had already picked it up.

“Who is this?”

For several seconds there was only the sound of breathing. Then the woman said quietly:

“Isabella, I am still alive. Your child is not with me. Rafael has her. And if you want to save her, you must come alone in the morning to the house where you spent your childhood…”

The line disconnected immediately.

Gabriel looked toward the window. Snow was still falling outside.

“It is a trap,” he said.

“It may be my mother.”

“And it may be the person who controls your family.”

At that moment the policeman listened to a message received over the radio. His face gradually turned pale.

“They found the car at the end of the old road,” he said. “The child seat is inside, but Rafael and the baby are gone.”

Gabriel looked toward me.

“Tomorrow morning you will not go alone.”

I saw fear in his eyes.

And for the first time I understood that Rafael’s plan was much bigger than property. Someone alive was hiding in my family, while a person who had planned the end of my life from the moment of my birth was searching for my child…