My Pregnant Husband Abandoned Me on a Mountain Trail, but When He Demanded My Return, His Friend’s Face Suddenly Turned Pale

“If you give birth to this child, you will raise it alone. I will not ruin my life for a mistake I never asked for!” — those were the last words Adrian said to me before getting into the car and leaving me alone on a deserted mountain trail.

It was four o’clock in the evening. I was seven months pregnant and wearing a thin jacket, in whose inner pocket I had a small copper whistle. My grandfather had given it to me in childhood and told me that in the mountains, sometimes it is not a person but an object that carries a sound.

That day I believed Adrian. I thought he was trying to save our marriage. We were supposed to spend two nights in a small wooden hotel, talk calmly, and even choose the baby’s name. But on the trail, in the middle of the forest, his face suddenly changed.

“You ruined everything, Nora,” he told me and slammed the car door.

“Adrian, please. It is at least two miles to the road. My phone is almost dead.”

“Then walk.”

“I am pregnant.”

He looked at me for several seconds. In his eyes I saw not anger, but something colder.

“That is exactly why you must learn to be alone.”

The car moved off. The tires threw up wet earth and splashed it onto my shoes. At first I thought he was merely frightening me. I thought he would return in ten minutes.

Ten minutes turned into an hour.

Fog descended on the forest. The phone had only nine percent. When I lit the screen, I saw a message that had arrived by accident. Adrian was not supposed to send it to me.

“She thinks she will handle this alone. Let us see how strong she is.”

The sender was his best friend, Marco.

My fingers froze. I tried to write a reply, but a second message came immediately.

“I will return there again in the evening. This time no one will be able to say it was an accident.”

I did not have time to read further. The phone screen went dark.

Around six o’clock I went down onto the trail. My foot slipped on wet pine needles and I fell down the slope. My knee struck a stone, my ankle twisted, and my palms were torn on the ground. Blood was coming from the knee of my jeans.

Fear was worse than the pain. The baby in my belly moved as if banging against a wall from inside.

“Mother is here,” I whispered. “Do not be afraid.”

Night slowly descended. My body was growing cold, but there was one thing my grandfather often told me. He said that mountain red ants, even in the heaviest cold, create a natural protective layer around a living creature if an underground nest is nearby.

It sounded like a childhood fairy tale. But at that moment I had nothing else.

Between the trees I saw an enormous red nest. I crawled toward it. The ants climbed onto my legs, although they did not bite me. The steam of warm earth enveloped my face.

I lay on my stomach and with my last strength closed my hand around the copper whistle.

The next morning, almost thirty-six hours later, two people appeared in the fog. Forest ranger Ernesto and his wife, emergency nurse Lucia, were running toward me.

“My God, they are eating her!” Ernesto shouted and raised a thick branch.

“Do not touch her!” Lucia grabbed his arm. “Look at what they are doing!”

Thousands of red ants were moving in two orderly rows. They were placing pine needles, leaves, and pieces of bark on my belly.

Lucia put her hand on my belly. My hands were cold as ice, but my belly was warm.

“The baby’s heartbeat is strong,” she said through tears.

I barely opened my eyes.

“Do not remove them,” I whispered. “I came to them intentionally. I knew why Adrian would return here.”

Ernesto bent down.

“What did you know?”

But instead of an answer, we heard the sound of an engine from above the forest. Someone was coming along the trail. Lucia found a small black device in the pocket of my jacket and froze. Its screen was still blinking, while at that same moment Ernesto rose from the ground and reached for a folder he had found in his bag…

Ernesto’s hand was extended toward the folder when a car door slammed in the forest.

“Quickly,” Lucia said. “If it is him, Nora must not see him.”

My body almost no longer obeyed me, but Adrian’s voice sounded clearly in my mind. “This time no one will be able to say it was an accident.”

Ernesto opened the folder. Inside was a copy of a police statement made out in my name, which I had not yet signed. Below it was a letter composed in imitation of my handwriting: “I went to the mountains alone because of depression.”

Lucia looked at the sheet and bit her lips.

“Did Adrian prepare this?”

“No,” I said with difficulty. “Marco.”

“Who is Marco?”

“His friend. He is coming too.”

The sound of footsteps in the pines drew closer. Ernesto hid the folder under his jacket, while Lucia carefully wrapped a blanket around the layer of ants so that it would not touch the pieces laid on my belly.

Adrian appeared. Concern was drawn on his face, but his eyes first checked not my body, but the ground around him.

“Where is my wife?” he asked.

Ernesto stood in front of him.

“Why did you return alone?”

“Nora got lost. I searched for her all night.”

“Two days later?”

Adrian smiled as if confused.

“I did not have a phone. I had to bring help from the road.”

Lucia looked back. Her gaze stopped on my face, then turned to Adrian.

“She is alive. But she is in very bad condition.”

Adrian’s face changed for a moment. Not from fear. From disappointment.

I saw it.

“Nora!” he called and moved toward me.

Ernesto blocked his way.

“You will not touch her yet.”

“She is my wife.”

“Now she is my responsibility.”

Adrian took a phone from his pocket. Marco’s call was visible on the screen. He quickly disconnected it.

“The ambulance is already on the way,” Lucia said.

“Call Marco,” I whispered.

Adrian turned his head toward me. Real fear appeared in his eyes for the first time.

“He has nothing to do with this.”

“Then why were you sending him messages about me?”

The forest fell silent.

Ernesto took a small black device from his pocket. It was the voice recorder found in my jacket pocket. I had turned it on several days earlier because I no longer trusted Adrian’s threats.

“Turn it on,” I told Lucia.

Adrian stepped forward.

“This is illegal.”

“It will be even more illegal if you harm us here,” Ernesto replied.

Lucia pressed the button with her finger. My own voice sounded in the forest, quiet and trembling.

“If anything happens to me, look under the old fire tower. Adrian told me that I must not go to a doctor until I signed the insurance documents.”

Adrian froze.

“This is fabricated,” he said.

His voice sounded in the recording.

“You will give birth to the child, then you will both become a problem. If you disappear, I will tell everyone that you were depressed.”

Lucia covered her mouth with her hand. Ernesto took out a radio and called for help.

“You knew he would return,” he told me.

“I knew he would make my murder look like an accident.”

Adrian stepped back.

“Nora, you cannot prove this.”

“Maybe I cannot,” I replied. “But that device and your message can.”

At that moment Marco came out of the forest. He was holding a small fuel container. His gaze moved first to Adrian, then to me.

“You did not tell me she would be alive,” he said.

Adrian lowered his eyes.

Ernesto reached for his weapon, but Marco had already raised a phone in his hand.

“I will tell you everything,” he said. “But first you must know whom that child belongs to…”

“What do you mean, whom he belongs to?” Lucia’s voice froze.

Marco put the fuel container on the ground. His fingers were shaking so much that the cap rolled onto the pine needles.

Adrian turned toward him.

“Be quiet, Marco.”

“I have been silent for three months,” he replied. “And because of it I see this forest in nightmares.”

I grasped Lucia’s hand. The baby moved again in my belly. That small movement was the only thing reminding me that I was still in the future.

Marco opened a folder on the phone.

“Nora’s child’s paternity test was performed at the clinic. Adrian hid the result from me. The child’s father is not him.”

The color drained from Adrian’s face.

“That is impossible.”

“It is possible,” Marco said. “And the result is with me.”

Ernesto took the phone from him. A laboratory report was visible on the screen. Lucia read it quickly, then bent toward me.

“Nora, it says here that the biological father of the child is Marco.”

The forest seemed to fold in around me.

I looked at Marco. He avoided my eyes.

“You?”

“We were together that night when Adrian left the house. You told me the marriage was over. I believed you. Then Adrian found the test and told me that if I revealed the truth, he would use everything against you.”

“So you decided to kill me?” I asked.

“Adrian decided. I agreed only for money,” Marco said. “The life insurance amounted to two million. He wanted you to die in the mountains, and for me to confirm that you had gone there yourself.”

Adrian covered his face with his hands.

“He would have left me anyway. I only… I was only looking for a way out.”

“Killing a person is not a way out,” Lucia said.

The sound of a vehicle approaching from far away came over the radio. Adrian suddenly stepped forward and bent toward my belly.

“Nora, please, tell them this is a misunderstanding. I was going to return to you.”

“Return?” I laughed, but the laughter turned into pain. “You returned to see whether I had died.”

Ernesto took out handcuffs.

“Hands behind your back.”

Adrian no longer resisted. Marco lowered his hands himself.

While the rescuers were preparing the stretcher, Lucia found one more thing in the inner seam of my jacket — a small plastic card that had fallen from Adrian’s work bag several days earlier. It contained the coordinates of the old fire tower and the time of the meeting.

“This is part of his plan,” Ernesto said.

But then he saw a strange inscription on the back of the card. It was not intended for me.

“If Adrian does not return, send the recording to Nora’s lawyer.”

Marco raised his head.

“I wrote that. But the recording has already been sent.”

“To whom?” I asked.

He looked at the phone screen and his eyes widened.

“Not to Nora’s lawyer. His phone forwarded it to another address. To all of Adrian’s business partners.”

At that same moment Adrian’s phone began to ring. Once. Twice. Then dozens of calls came in one after another.

Adrian looked at the screen and said in a whisper:

“This is only the beginning. They already know everything in the company…”