When my husband welded the door shut on the dog cage in our basement and left me naked, nine months pregnant, and bleeding on the cold metal floor while he told our dinner guests upstairs I was “visiting family,” I knew tonight I would either die giving birth in that cage or destroy him forever.

Marcus drove the heel of his brown shoe into the steel cage.

The bars slammed against Emma’s shoulder, knocking her sideways across the cold concrete. She folded both arms around her stomach before she hit the floor, protecting the baby from the impact.

“You’re giving birth in that cage,” he said, “and nobody upstairs even knows you exist.”

A contraction tightened through her lower body. Emma pressed her lips together until the pressure eased, refusing to make the sound he wanted from her.

Above them, laughter moved through the house.

Marcus’s parents had arrived first. His sister Dana and her husband, Eric, had followed with wine and a bakery box. For twenty minutes, chairs had scraped across the dining-room floor while Marcus explained that Emma had gone to stay with her sister because pregnancy had made her “emotional.”

Her car was still in the garage.

Her hospital bag was still beside the washer.

Her husband was counting on nobody asking the right question.

Marcus crouched and pushed a rotten apple between the bars.

“Eat it, dog. I need the baby alive longer than you.”

Emma kicked it back. It rolled beneath the workbench and stopped beside the welding mask he had used to seal the cage door two nights earlier.

“My sister knows where I am,” she said.

Marcus smiled, but his eyes shifted toward the basement stairs.

Rachel knew Emma had become afraid of him. She knew Marcus had taken Emma’s car keys after their last argument. She knew Emma had hidden an old prepaid phone beneath the loose metal panel beside the cage.

What Rachel did not know was whether Emma had been exaggerating, as Marcus kept insisting.

The phone beneath the panel began to vibrate.

Marcus’s head snapped toward the sound.

“What did you hide under there?”

Emma covered the panel with her palm.

The skin near her thumb split against the sharp edge, leaving a thin smear of blood across the metal.

Then the front door opened upstairs.

Heavy footsteps crossed the kitchen and stopped directly above the basement door.

A woman’s voice called, “Marcus?”

Emma recognized her sister.