Chapter 12
The stench of rotten mud, kerosene, and waterlogged wood filled my lungs with every shallow breath.
I'd been lying on the uneven plank floor for three days, trapped in a tiny room on the upper floor of an abandoned retreat the flood was swallowing inch by inch.
My wrists throbbed, rubbed raw by the thick rope Nicanor had used to drag me from the wrecked truck to the boat.
The darkness was nearly total, broken only by the flickering light of a lantern left in the hallway, casting menacing shadows through the gap beneath the locked door.
I tried to brace myself against the edge of the old bed to sit up, but a wave of nausea hit me so violently and suddenly that I had to swallow hard, squeezing my eyes shut until the dizziness passed.
It wasn't the first time that day. The dizziness and nausea had been coming in waves ever since I'd been dragged to this hellhole.
At first, I blamed the discomfort on the shock of the car crash, the blow to my head, or the few spoonfuls of inedible food I'd managed to choke down over the previous two nights.
But as I leaned back against the damp wall and slid my dirt-covered hands over my belly, my brain—trained in biology and science—made the calculation my grief had been ignoring.
The late period. The bone-deep exhaustion of the last few weeks. The tender sensitivity I'd brushed off.
My heart stopped for a full second. The air vanished from the tiny room.
I lowered both hands to the base of my belly, pressing through the dirty fabric of my pants.
The math was simple and devastating. The night at the research station.
The storm. The blind surrender in the darkness, where there'd been no room for caution or protection—only the desperate need to belong to each other.
Pregnant…
I could be pregnant with Jo?o Bento's child.
The man who'd climbed onto a stage in front of the entire state and called me a pathetic mistake.
The heir who'd crossed his arms and thrown me to the lions.
I was carrying the blood of the same family that had murdered my father—and was hours away from murdering me too.
A dry sob tore through my throat, but I forced it back down.
There was no room for despair. Before, I'd been willing to fight just to survive and get revenge on Jurandir Falc?o.
But in that instant, the game had changed irreversibly.
The lioness awakened beneath my skin, instinctive and wild.
I was no longer just a kidnapped auditor—I was a shield.
And they wouldn't take my life, or the tiny life pulsing inside me.
The muddy water had already reached the third step of the outside staircase when I heard Nicanor's voice echo down the hallway.
“Tomorrow morning, if the water keeps rising, we do the job,” the foreman said, his voice cold and methodical. His boots creaked on the rotted planks. “The boat tips, she goes under, and the flood finishes the work. No body, no trace of anything.”
The other man answered from farther away. I didn't recognize the voice—just the short laugh, utterly devoid of humanity.
They were going to drown me. Jurandir had ordered a clean death—good for business—a convenient “accident” that the Pantanal's nature would cover up.
I took my hands off my belly and felt along the torn lining of the old mattress beside me.
Célia, the retreat's cook who'd been forced by Nicanor to look after me, had worn eyes brimming with guilt since the first night.
In the early hours of the second day, while Nicanor slept off his drunkenness downstairs, she'd whispered to me about a group of women in S?o Paulo.
P.O. Box 104. According to Célia, they were the last hope for those the colonels wanted to erase from the map.
She'd smuggled me a tiny piece of pencil and a crumpled sheet of paper under my food plate, promising to get it to a trusted driver on the highway.
I pulled out the paper with trembling fingertips.
I knelt on the floor, using the thin beam of yellowish light coming through the crack in the door, and began to write. My hands ached, but urgency guided the pencil, forcing the letters to fit in the cramped space.
“He controls the police, the judges, and the city's silence. He said my body will disappear in the waters. I think I'm pregnant. If this letter reaches someone, please… don't let them take my baby too.”
My hand stopped over the words “my baby.”
My chest tightened with a sharp, cutting pain. I didn't know if it was a boy or a girl. I hadn't had an ultrasound, hadn't bought a single tiny shoe, hadn't celebrated. The only thing I could give this innocent life, here on the filthy floor of this prison, was my strength.
I folded the paper meticulously, hiding it in my palm the moment the rusty latch creaked.
Célia entered with a tray of cold food. Short, with graying hair pulled back in a messy bun and eyes wide with terror, she pushed the door open with her hip and crouched in front of me.
“They're taking you tomorrow morning,” Célia warned in a tense whisper, pretending to adjust the aluminum plate on the floor to disguise our contact. “The boss called. He ordered them to finish this before his son finds his way here. Jo?o Bento is tearing the whole ranch apart looking for you.”
My heart raced, a spark of shock cutting through my pain. Bento was looking for me? The man who'd rejected me at the auction was at war with his own father? The thought tried to pry open a crack of hope, but I crushed it. My rescue didn't depend on him—it depended on me.
“Then take the letter today. Now,” I insisted, leaning forward and clasping her trembling hand.
“The lower road's underwater, ma'am,” the woman said, shaking her head in despair as she wiped her hands on her grimy apron. “Cars can't get through anymore.”
“You said there's a canoe tied up behind the kitchen,” I reminded her, holding her gaze, willing courage to replace her fear.
Célia went pale and turned toward the half-open door, terrified by the footsteps in the hallway.
“I can't get past them,” she whispered, her voice strangled. “They're armed and shoot first without asking, Dona Rosário.”
“You won't need to get past anyone,” I said with surgical certainty.
I slid the folded letter into the cook's calloused hand and closed her fingers over the paper.
“When the lights go out, wait one minute.
They'll run to the back to check the generator.
That's your cue. Slip out by the chicken coop, get into the water, and paddle downstream.
Don't look back, Célia. Go straight to town and send this.”
“And you?” she asked, eyes brimming with panic as she pressed the note against her chest.
I almost let out a humorless laugh, straightening my aching shoulders. Jurandir wanted me as a silent corpse in the water, but I was still breathing.
“I'm going to kill the lights,” I replied, unwavering.
Célia squeezed my hand back. The terror on her face began giving way to silent resolve. She nodded.
“If I make it out, the letter will get there. I swear to God.”
“Don't say 'if,'” I cut her off, shaking my head slowly. “We're getting out of here alive.”
From the hallway, a violent bang on the door made the wood crack. Célia jumped, nearly knocking over the empty tray.
“Enough talking, old woman!” Nicanor shouted from outside, his voice slurred with drink. “Drop the plate and get out of there! Don't go giving the doctor any ideas. When the water covers the last step, she'll learn to swim.”
Célia shoved the paper into her skirt's waistband in one quick motion, hiding the bulk under her apron.
She picked up the tray from the floor, hunched her shoulders, and shuffled to the exit, slipping into the posture of the frightened servant they expected.
Before turning the latch, she looked back at me one last time over her shoulder.
I nodded.
The door closed, and the key turned from the outside with a final click.
I got up from the floor immediately. Dizziness tried to overtake me, but I bit the inside of my cheek, using the pain to stay focused. I walked silently to the corner of the room where the wall had rotted away, revealing the breaker box and exposed wiring of the house's old electrical system.
I pulled the crooked piece of rusty wire from my shirt sleeve—the one I'd torn from the bed springs the day before. I had no way to disarm Nicanor with my bare hands. But I could plunge them all into panic and darkness.
I knelt near the old outlet. The sound of torrential rain pounding the roof masked any noise I made. I gripped the wire firmly, calculating exactly where the positive and negative poles met in the exposed wiring.
Suddenly, a quick, sharp twinge tugged at the bottom of my belly.
I stopped, holding my breath. The pain wasn't intense—just a spasm, a reminder from my exhausted body protesting the strain—but in that split second, it felt like a living warning. An internal touch from the only thing in the world I couldn't fail to protect.
I ran a trembling hand over my face, wiping away a hot tear of fear and fury I hadn't realized I'd shed. A narrow, dangerous smile tugged at the corner of my lips.
“That's it,” I murmured into the darkness, caressing my belly before gripping the wire again. “Hold on in there. Fight with me.”
Jurandir Falc?o thought he'd bought the entire Pantanal, that impunity was his birthright, and that silence was the only way out for anyone who crossed him. He just forgot that a woman with no way out, fighting for her own child's life, doesn't ask for passage. She tears down walls.
With a precise, merciless movement, I drove the rusty wire directly into the exposed wiring.
A muffled boom echoed through the wall, followed by a violent blue flash of sparks that blinded me for an instant. The smell of burnt rubber filled the damp air of my prison.
In the blink of an eye, the yellowish light in the hallway died. The hum of the old generator choked and fell completely silent, plunging the floating house into the densest, most absolute, most terrifying darkness.
The confused shouts of Nicanor and his henchmen erupted from the floor below. The distraction was set. The first step toward the destruction of the Falc?o empire had just begun in the darkness of the Pantanal.