Chapter 4

A few days later, Michael returned to the cabin, his face a mask of feigned sorrow and gentle concern. Jessica was with him, looking pale and interesting, cradling a newborn.

"Sarah, my love," Michael cooed, kneeling beside the cot I lay in. "Maria... Maria performed a miracle. Our baby... she managed to save our baby boy." He gestured to the infant in Jessica' s arms. "He' s small, but he' s a fighter. Just like his mother."

I stared at the child. Jessica' s child. Not mine. My baby girl was dead, her tiny life snuffed out by this monster and his lover. But I looked at Michael, at Jessica' s triumphant smirk, and I knew I had to play along. For now. Maria' s warning, her truth, was a shield around my shattered heart.

"Our... boy?" I whispered, letting my voice tremble.

"Yes," Michael said, beaming. "He needs you, Sarah. He needs his mother' s milk."

And so began the next phase of my torture. I was forced to breastfeed Jessica' s baby, my body producing nourishment for the child of the woman who had helped destroy my life, who had celebrated my mother' s death. Each time the baby latched on, it was a fresh wave of humiliation, a physical reminder of my loss, my captivity.

Michael watched, his eyes cold and possessive. Jessica lounged nearby, her comments dripping with malice. "Look at her, Michael. Such a good little milk machine. So useful, isn't she?"

She' d often talk about her resentment, her voice laced with a bitterness that seemed bottomless. "You always had it so easy, Sarah. Your mother, doting on you. My life... my past... it' s all your family' s fault. You took everything from me, even before you were born." Her accusations were vague, twisted, blaming my dead mother, my entire existence, for her own miserable history.

I remembered my mother then, her worried face, her disapproval of Michael. "He' s changed too much, too fast, Sarah. It' s not natural," she' d said, her voice thin from her illness. I had dismissed her, full of my "love" for Michael, the man who now held me prisoner. The guilt was a constant, dull ache. If only I had listened.

Jessica would preen, running her hand through Michael' s hair. "He' s mine, Sarah. He was always mine. You were just a convenient detour, a way for him to get what he wanted from your family before your mother got too suspicious."

A detour. A milk machine. That' s all I was to them. I existed in a fog of grief and forced servitude, the ghost of my own baby a constant, silent companion. Maria's truth was the only thing that kept me sane, a tiny, flickering ember of defiance in the overwhelming darkness.