Part 4 — 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 six in the morning, all the telephones in the police station rang at the same time.

Rafael’s bank account was closed.

His cards were cancelled.

Roadblocks were set up on the mountain roads, and the data of the baby and her father was sent to the airports.

I sat on a cold chair and held Gabriel’s black scarf with both hands. I had taken it from the cabin. The scarf still smelled of smoke and pine. By this smell I understood that that night had not been a dream.

“The lawyer has arrived,” said the policeman.

A tall woman entered the room, holding a brown leather bag.

“I am Rafael Almeida’s representative.”

Gabriel stood up.

“You are no longer his representative.”

The woman looked at him sternly.

“On the contrary. He called me in the morning.”

“And what did he tell you?”

The lawyer took a sheet of paper from her bag.

“He told me that he has the baby safely and is demanding a deal. Half the property in exchange for Isabella’s life.”

My body froze.

“He knows that I am alive?”

“He knows. That is exactly why he called me.”

Gabriel struck the table with his hand.

“Are you still carrying out his instructions?”

The woman looked at us for a long time, then closed the bag.

“No. From this moment I am no longer his lawyer.”

“Why?”

“Because yesterday I received an audio recording in which he himself admitted the murder plan. I am a lawyer, not an accomplice.”

She turned on the recording.

Rafael’s voice sounded in the room.

“If Isabella survives, tell her that Grandmother helped take the baby. While she chases Gabriel, I will cross the border.”

My breath caught.

“I do not care what she will think. The property must remain for me. The baby is only the key to the signature.”

I already knew these words. I had heard something similar at least once.

After the wedding, in the kitchen of our house, Rafael’s phone had remained switched on. I thought he was finishing a conversation with some friend. Then he told me: “First I will make her give birth to the baby, then everything will fall into place.”

That day I did not believe my own ears.

Now his voice was sounding in the room.

In his own words.

The recording continued.

“Isabella notices nothing. If necessary, I will kill her in the mountains.”

The lawyer turned off the sound.

I lowered my eyes.

“Did he say these words himself?” I asked.

“Yes,” the woman answered. “The conversation was recorded on a recorder hidden in my bag. Two days ago I realized that this was no longer an ordinary financial dispute.”

Gabriel looked at the policeman.

“Now you have enough against him.”

“We have enough for a search warrant,” said the policeman. “But the child’s location is still unknown.”

At that same moment, a message arrived on my phone.

“Come to the old house. Alone.”

The address was my childhood home.

Gabriel shook his head.

“You will not go there alone.”

“My mother may be there.”

“And Rafael may be waiting for you.”

“That is why I must go.”

He watched me for several seconds.

“Then I will be behind you.”

“No. If he told me to come alone…”

“You cannot save the child alone.”

There was no anger in his voice. Only fear.

We left in two cars. The house stood at the end of the forest; its windows were dusty and its doors half-open. In childhood I spent every summer there. On the wall still hung my adolescent drawing—a sun, a house, and three people whom I then called a family.

No one was inside.

Only the old clock was ticking.

A white baby sock lay on the table in the living room. Beside it was a small note.

“Look into the basement.”

Gabriel took out his weapon and went ahead.

At the basement door I heard a woman’s quiet voice.

“Isabella, if you are truly my daughter, come down alone.”

I placed my foot on the stairs.

“Mother?”

A woman emerged from the darkness.

It was Lucia. Her hair had turned almost completely white, and her face showed exhaustion. She was alive.

I could not move.

“Why did you hide yourself from me?” I asked.

“Because Rafael told me he was not going to kill you. He told me he would only separate you from the baby temporarily.”

“And you believed him?”

Lucia lowered her eyes.

“He financed my treatment. When I tried to escape, he stopped everything. Then he showed me your marriage documents and told me that it was already too late.”

Gabriel appeared at the top of the stairs.

Lucia looked at him.

“He dragged you in too, didn’t he?”

“He only used my name,” Gabriel answered. “But I did not manage to stop him in time.”

Lucia began to cry.

“The baby is not here. Rafael took her to the old chapel. He said that he would go toward the border from there.”

The police already knew the road. In a few minutes sirens sounded in the forest.

The chapel was ruined. Rafael stood there beside the baby seat, holding a fuel can.

“One step more and I will set the house on fire!” he shouted.

I stepped forward.

“Rafael, give me the baby.”

“First sign the property documents.”

“Everything is already over.”

He laughed.

“You cannot prove anything.”

The policeman said loudly:

“Rafael Almeida, drop the weapon and raise your hands.”

Rafael lifted the baby from the seat.

“If you come closer, I will throw her out the window!”

My legs moved by themselves.

“Do not do this. She is your child too.”

“She is the key!”

Silence fell.

Rafael immediately understood what he had said. His face changed.

The policeman quietly turned on the recording the lawyer had given us. Rafael’s own voice rang throughout the chapel: “The baby is only the key to the signature.”

He stood motionless.

For the first time he heard himself through someone else’s ears.

His hands dropped.

“Turn it off…” he whispered.

“You said that,” I told him.

“I… did not mean it that way.”

“You meant exactly that.”

The policeman carefully took the baby. My daughter immediately began to cry. I pressed her to my chest and buried my face in her hair.

Rafael stretched his hands forward.

“Isabella, please. I loved you.”

I looked at him.

“You loved what you would receive after my death.”

He had no answer left.

The legal process lasted for months. Rafael was charged with attempted murder, illegally taking the child, fraud, and document forgery. Lucia testified. The lawyer also told everything.

The court temporarily protected my family’s land. Gabriel withdrew his claim and officially confirmed that he had never demanded rights to the property.

One evening he came to me.

“If I had not come that night…” he began.

“You came.”

“I was only trying to save you.”

“I know.”

“But you are not obliged to be grateful to me.”

For the first time I smiled at him.

“I am grateful. But now I must choose my life myself.”

He nodded.

“That is right.”

My daughter was lying in the room. Beside her bed hung her first drawing: a small house, heavy snow, and two figures holding hands with each other.

Three months later I changed cities.

The new apartment was small, but I locked the door from the inside. In the morning I took the child to the window. Together we drank milk, listened to the rain, and in the evening arranged the little shoes by the radiator.

I began working at a children’s assistance center. There I listened to women who still thought that fear was love. I promised them nothing. I only told them what I told myself every morning: being alone and being abandoned are not the same thing.

In winter the first snow came.

My daughter drew a little sun on the window with her finger.

“Mother, can there be sun in the snow too?”

“There can,” I answered. “If you know where to look.”

That same week I received a letter from Rafael.

“Give me one chance. I have changed. Our family can exist again.”

I held the letter in my hand for a long time.

Then I folded it and put it in the trash bin.

I did not hate him.

I simply was no longer going to save him from the consequences he himself had created.

My relationship with Gabriel remained slow and careful. Sometimes he called me and asked how the child was. Sometimes he would not appear for weeks. No one tried to control my life again.

One morning, while I was putting a coat on my daughter, Gabriel left a small wooden box at the door.

Inside lay his black scarf. Washed, folded, and together with a small pine branch.

“That night warmth saved you. Now you will no longer need it to remember my name,” was written on the card.

I kept the scarf on the upper shelf of the wardrobe.

Not to forget the past.

So that I would remember how far I had come.

In the evening my daughter took my finger.

“Mother, who saved us that night?”

Outside the window, snow was falling quietly.

“First, one unknown man,” I told her. “And then, ourselves.”

She did not understand, but she smiled at me.

And I carefully took the black scarf and spread it by the window. Its old smell had almost disappeared.

Almost.

That night, for the first time, I was no longer afraid of snow.

And the snow kept falling.