Part 4 — On Our Anniversary, My Husband Hit Me, But When All Three Brothers Appeared at the Door, Lauren’s Smile Suddenly Disappeared

We decided to go to the clinic that same night.

It was raining outside. Raindrops collided on the car windows, as if someone were trying to get out from inside.

I sat in the back seat. My hand was on my stomach, and I was holding the documents given by Daniel.

Michael was beside me.

Alex was sitting at the wheel.

And Daniel was looking at the house for the last time before the door locked.

Ethan remained in the living room. Lauren was already getting ready to leave, but her phone did not stop.

“You cannot leave,” Ethan told her.

“I have nothing more to do with you.”

“You know everything.”

“That is exactly why I am leaving.”

She opened the door.

The flashing lights of a police car appeared in the hallway.

Ethan immediately looked toward Daniel.

“Did you call the police?”

“No,” I said. “Your bank called them first.”

Two investigators entered. One held a folder of documents, the other a small recording device.

Ethan lowered his voice.

“Grace, you can still stop everything.”

“No, Ethan. This time no one can stop what you yourself started.”

“I am your husband.”

“You lost that word on the night when you brought another woman into our house and then hit me.”

The investigator put handcuffs on him.

Lauren stood at the door, her face having turned white.

“I did not know about the forged signature,” she said. “I swear.”

“Say that in court,” the investigator replied.

In the end Ethan looked at me again.

“Grace, tell them that this was a mistake.”

I said nothing.

For the first time he heard his own words in someone else’s voice.

Alex turned on the recording.

“It is not your house anymore.”

His voice could be heard clearly in the recording.

“This company is mine.”

“You are only the signatory, Grace. Without it you are nothing.”

Ethan froze.

Hearing his own voice was harder for him than the policemen’s touch.

“Turn it off,” he said.

“Why?” I asked. “Did you not want everyone to know for the first time that I was nothing?”

He lowered his eyes.

At the clinic the doctor examined me for a long time. The baby’s heartbeat was strong. When I heard the fast, even sound on the monitor, my hands began to tremble.

“Everything will be all right,” the doctor told me.

That simple sentence was the first thing I believed that night.

In the morning the investigator brought us new news. The bank had stopped the money transferred to the foreign account. The password used by Ethan was found on the same device that was found in the house. And the camera recording showed how he was printing the documents at the desk in my office.

The final evidence was a sheet of paper left by his hand.

It said: “Grace cannot resist me.”

He valued my silence.

And for the first time, silence did not protect me.

Three days later I returned home.

His office was empty. Only straight strips of dust remained on the bookshelves. Our wedding photograph hung on the wall, but Ethan’s face had been cut out of it.

Lauren had taken it.

In the desk drawer I found my small cream-colored box. The ultrasound picture was still inside. The corner had bent slightly, but the baby’s small profile could still be seen.

I held the box in my hands, and for the first time I did not want to explain anything to anyone.

For weeks, lawyers, bank employees, and investigators came. Ethan’s lawyer called me once.

“If you reach an agreement, he may avoid prison,” he told me.

“What do you mean?”

“Part of the company, the house, changing your testimony against him.”

“He forged my signature and was stealing my money.”

“But the two of you are going to have a child.”

“That is exactly why I do not want my child to think that love means forgiving crime.”

The lawyer sighed.

“Then there will be no agreement.”

“There should not be one.”

Ethan was finally arrested for financial fraud, using forged documents, and violence. Lauren gave testimony. She admitted that Ethan had told her that I was only a temporary obstacle and that the house would soon pass into his hands.

I did not rejoice at his punishment.

I simply no longer covered for him.

Four months later I gave birth to a child.

It was a boy.

Luka.

Daniel brought a small wooden plaque to the hospital, with my son’s name written on it. Michael placed the baby’s crib by the window. Alex installed shelves in the kitchen and made coffee for me every morning.

The family became noisy again.

But there was no fear in this noise anymore.

Six months later I transferred the company into my name. I turned Ethan’s old office into a creative room for children. There was a large window there, through which the rays of the sun fell on the city rooftops in the morning.

Luka sat on the floor and drew with colored pencils. One day he drew three tall men, one woman, and a small circle on a sheet of paper.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Us,” he told me. “This little circle is in your heart.”

I smiled.

“You are there.”

“No. There is the house.”

That evening the first snow came. The city quietly turned white. I was standing by the window and Luka was asleep when the phone rang.

It was not an unknown number.

It was Ethan.

His voice sounded tired and quiet.

“I only want five minutes.”

“For what?”

“To explain to you.”

“Everything has already been explained.”

“Grace, I have changed.”

A snowflake settled on the window and immediately melted.

“I hope you really have changed,” I told him.

He was silent for several seconds.

“May I see you at least once?”

“No.”

“At least for our child.”

“You will see the child according to the procedure established by law, in a safe environment, and only when specialists say that it is good for him.”

“Do you not love me anymore?”

I had had the answer to this question for a long time, but for the first time I said it aloud.

“I no longer live by giving myself up in the name of love.”

I ended the call.

I entered Luka’s room. He was holding a small wooden train and smiling even in his sleep.

I put the cream-colored box by the head of the bed. I no longer hid the ultrasound picture. Beside it lay the child’s first drawing.

In the same box I kept the small silver lock that had rolled across the floor that night. Earlier I had thought that it belonged to my marriage. Now I understood that it was only locking the door to the past.

Luka woke up in the morning.

“Mom, is the snow still there?”

“It is.”

“Then let’s go.”

I put on his coat, took his hand, and we left the house. The snow softly crunched under our feet in the yard. The brothers were already there, each holding a hot drink.

I looked back.

The house was still ours.

But for the first time those walls were no longer only a house. It was the place where my child would grow up and where I would no longer have to hide my own truth.

The cream-colored box remained by the window, in the first ray of sunlight.

I did not look back at the closed door again.