My Husband Saw My Sister Kissing on New Year’s Eve, but at My Calm Answer, He Was the First to Turn Pale

On the first morning of the New Year, my husband insisted that I could not even set foot outside his house, although that night I realized for the first time that I already had a reason to escape.

It was eleven o’clock in the evening. On the second floor of a huge house in Alpine, I stood before the mirror and stroked my belly. I was seven months pregnant. The green dress, which the seamstress had altered twice, still squeezed my waist.

A small silver key hung around my neck. It was the key to my old bakery, the only thing that had remained mine even after the marriage. Whenever I was afraid, I touched its cold surface with my fingers and remembered the woman who kneaded dough at four in the morning and controlled her own life herself.

More than a hundred guests were laughing downstairs. The music shook the walls. Champagne glasses struck against one another, while armed men stood silently in the corners.

I hated parties like this.

There was a knock at the door.

“B?,” it was Chloe’s voice. “Are you still here?”

My younger sister entered the room. She was wearing a silver dress that glittered with every step.

“My legs hurt,” I told her.

“Come downstairs. Gabriel is looking for you.”

I looked at her from the mirror.

“Really?”

Chloe’s smile disappeared for a moment.

“Of course.”

Three months earlier she had called me and, crying, told me that her latest relationship had also ended. I opened my door to her. She was my sister. There was no other answer.

Now the warmth in her eyes that I had known since childhood was no longer there.

“Chloe,” I said, “is something happening between Gabriel and me?”

Silence fell in the room. Only the sound of bass coming from below could be heard.

“That is ridiculous.”

“Look at me.”

“I am looking at you.”

“No. Really look at me.”

My child moved inside my belly. I put my hand on my stomach and waited for her face to give me the answer.

“I brought you into my home,” I told her quietly. “If there is something I should know, tell me now.”

“Nothing is happening.”

I wanted to believe her.

“Okay,” I said at last.

Chloe exhaled and closed the door.

Twenty minutes later I went downstairs. I wanted to find Gabriel, kiss him at midnight, and then return to the room.

When I reached the billiard room, I heard Chloe’s laughter.

She was laughing as she had never laughed with me.

The door was slightly open. Inside, a golden lamp was falling on the billiard table. I stopped.

“We shouldn’t,” Chloe said breathlessly.

“She is upstairs,” Gabriel answered.

“She may look for you.”

“Lately she sleeps all the time.”

My heart sped up as if I were running up the stairs.

I opened the door.

Gabriel was standing by the table, and Chloe was between his knees. His hand was holding my sister by the chin.

Then he kissed her.

Not accidentally.

Not like a drunk man.

He kissed her as a man kisses someone with whom he has already done this many times.

The bag fell from my hand. Inside it, the key fell onto the floor and rang sharply.

Both of them looked at me.

“B…” Chloe whispered.

I stepped back.

“Do not come near me.”

Gabriel followed me into the corridor.

“Beatrice, wait for me.”

“How long has it been?” I asked.

He took me by the arm. So carefully, as if he was protecting my body, but not my heart.

“It was a mistake.”

“How long has it been?” I repeated.

Chloe appeared in the doorway. There were no tears on her face.

“B, please…”

I looked at her.

“How long has it been?”

This time neither of them answered me.

Gabriel closed the door, looked toward the security, and said in a low voice:

“No one is leaving this house tonight.”

“I am not your prisoner.”

His face hardened.

“You are my wife.”

“And her?”

Chloe pressed her lips together.

Gabriel leaned toward me.

“Go upstairs. Now.”

And I looked at the silver key lying on the floor. At that time I still did not know that this little key opened the only door whose existence Gabriel had hidden from me…

The lock of the door behind my back clicked shut.

The darkness of four in the morning stood in the room. Gabriel turned the key in the door twice, then put it in his pocket.

“Are you doing this?” I asked, pressing a hand to my belly.

“Until you calm down, you will stay here.”

“Am I a problem for you, a pregnant woman who needs to be calmed down?”

He walked to the window. Outside, snow was beginning, and white flakes covered the garden lights.

“I do not want you to do something while angry.”

“You kissed my sister in front of me and I am supposed to think about whether or not to do something?”

“I feel nothing for Chloe.”

“Then why were you kissing her?”

Gabriel fell silent.

His silence was worse than an answer.

I knocked on the door.

“Open it for me.”

“We will talk in the morning.”

“Open it now!”

From the other side of the corridor, security called out:

“Mr. Rossi, is everything all right?”

Gabriel raised his voice:

“My wife is tired. Let no one come in.”

I seized the door handle with both hands. The cold metal pierced my palms. For the first time I felt that my name meant nothing in this house.

At six in the morning Gabriel left. I thought he had left me alone, but the lock was still locked from outside.

I looked at the roof from the window. The third floor was low, although with my belly I could not take such a risk. I sat by the bed and tried not to cry.

Then I remembered the small metal box from my bakery. I had had it brought to the house several weeks earlier. Inside it I had old recipes, my grandmother’s letters, and that silver key.

The key was no longer with me. It had remained on the floor.

But the box?

I looked under the bed. The box was there. I reached in and pulled it out. I opened the lid. Under the recipes I saw a small memory card that I had never put there.

At exactly that moment Chloe’s voice sounded from outside the door.

“B, may I come in?”

I did not answer.

“I know you can hear me.”

I pressed the box to my chest.

“Go away.”

“Gabriel did not want it to happen this way.”

“It happened anyway.”

“You cannot understand how much I love him.”

The child moved strongly in my belly.

“You do not know love, Chloe.”

She laughed quietly behind the door.

“You are holding him with a child.”

Those words destroyed something inside me. Not because they hurt me. Because I suddenly understood why Gabriel had asked about every doctor’s visit in recent months, why he had asked me to hand over my bank accounts to him, and why he kept repeating that I would need rest after giving birth.

In the evening I called the lawyer Marco Bellini. I had kept his number on an old bakery receipt.

“Marco, I need to speak to you quietly.”

“Beatrice? What happened?”

“My husband is locking me in a room. My sister is with him. And I think this is not only betrayal.”

“Can you record on the phone?”

“What if they find out?”

“Then do not risk it. Look for the old clock in the kitchen. Do you remember the one I gave you?”

Then I remembered: the bakery clock, with copper hands, still hung on the first floor. Marco had once told me that an emergency memory device was hidden behind it.

At eleven at night the room door suddenly opened. Gabriel entered, holding my bank documents in his hand.

“Sign.”

“What?”

“The temporary transfer of the property. Everything must be arranged before the child’s birth.”

“What if I do not sign?”

He put the documents on the table.

“Then I will call the doctor and tell him that you are emotionally unstable.”

Chloe stood behind him.

I looked at both of them and for the first time I no longer felt fear. Only cold.

“Tomorrow morning,” I said.

Gabriel smiled.

“Smart girl.”

When they left, I opened the window lock. I could not leave the room, but the roof of the old laundry was under the window. Because of the child, I moved slowly, on my knees. My legs were shaking, although my hand was no longer reaching for the door handle.

When I reached the kitchen clock, I remembered Marco’s words. I lifted the copper back cover.

Inside, a small device was blinking.

And beside it, hidden in the dust, lay a white envelope on which only one word was written: Beatrice.

I reached toward the envelope, but at that same moment an alarm sounded throughout the house…

The sound of the alarm shook the walls.

I stood on the kitchen floor, holding the device taken from the clock in one hand and protecting my belly with the other. The guards’ footsteps quickly approached.

The copper clock was still blinking. The small red light seemed to repeat my heartbeat.

“She is here!” someone shouted.

The door opened and Gabriel rushed in. Chloe and two guards stood behind him.

“What did you do?” he asked me.

“For the first time in my life, what was necessary.”

His gaze moved to the device.

“Give it to me.”

“No.”

“Beatrice, do not make me.”

“You already made me.”

Chloe cautiously took a step forward.

“Is it only a recording?”

I looked at her.

“You know what it is.”

Her face turned pale.

At that moment Marco Bellini entered through the back door with two police officers. The guards moved their hands toward their weapons, but one of the police officers showed his badge.

“Everyone stay where you are,” he said. “Mrs. Rossi’s safety is our responsibility.”

Gabriel looked at Marco.

“You entered my house illegally.”

“Your house?” Marco answered coldly. “You do not mean the property transferred into your name—the property connected to your wife’s bakery accounts?”

Silence fell.

Marco took the device from me, connected it to a laptop, and played the recording.

First Gabriel’s voice was heard.

“After the child is born, we will put Beatrice in a psychiatric clinic. I have already spoken to the doctor.”

Chloe’s voice immediately followed:

“If she leaves, you will not be able to keep the child.”

“She will not leave. I will make her sign.”

“And if she resists us?”

Gabriel chuckled.

“Then everyone will believe that she lost her mind after giving birth.”

The recording continued for several seconds. Then my husband’s calmest, most frightening words were heard:

“The money transferred from her bakery accounts is already enough. If necessary, we will write everything else in her name as well.”

Chloe then asked:

“And me?”

“You will be in her place. But first the child must be born.”

The recording stopped.

Chloe covered her mouth with her hand.

“I did not know he would go this far.”

Gabriel looked toward her.

“Be quiet.”

“You told me that you only wanted a divorce!”

“Be quiet!”

The police officer put handcuffs on him. Gabriel did not resist. He simply looked at me.

“Beatrice, I did all this for the child.”

“No,” I answered. “You did all this for your own power.”

Marco opened the envelope we had found behind the clock. Inside were a forged copy of my signature and bank statements. Now no one could say that I was merely a deceived, jealous pregnant woman.

Chloe collapsed against the wall.

“B, forgive me.”

I did not go toward her.

“You chose my house. You chose my husband. Now choose your consequences too.”

Marco said something quietly to the police officers. One of them immediately took out a phone.

“What is happening?” I asked.

Marco turned toward me, but did not answer.

At that moment a call came to his phone. He listened, his face changed, and he looked at Gabriel.

“Mrs. Rossi, that call was from your doctor’s clinic.”

“What did they want?”

Marco lowered his voice.

“They said that Gabriel had already filed a petition for custody of the child this morning and attached to the document one file that even we have not yet seen.”

Gabriel lost his color for the first time.

But I did not yet understand that the file hidden in the clinic was not only a lie prepared for court. It showed a person who had been working against me from inside the house, in front of everyone, all this time…