PART 1
“She is already asleep. Bring her here, but this time do not leave any marks on her.”
When I heard my husband’s voice on that recording, I felt like something inside me broke forever.
That night I woke up in the passenger seat of my brother-in-law Lucas’s car. We were parked in the basement of the apartment building where I lived with Christopher, in Saint Louis, Missouri. It was 11:08 p.m.
I had left my office at 9:40 p.m., and the journey usually took less than half an hour.
My neck ached, I had a strange twinge in my lower back, and one of my stockings was pulled down around my knee. What worried me most was discovering that the seat back was much more reclined than I had left it.
Lucas was not inside the car, so I remained motionless for a few seconds.
That had already happened three times, and it was always the same routine.
Christopher would say he had a business dinner or a meeting with clients, and he would send his brother to pick me up.
“Here, sister-in-law, drink this because you look completely exhausted,” Lucas would say while handing me an open bottle of water.
I always drank it without second thoughts, and right after that, my memories completely faded away.
Upon waking, my body always felt heavy and sore.
When I told Christopher about it, he just laughed it off.
“Gaby, you spend ten hours sitting in front of a computer, so you just need more exercise,” he told me with a reassuring smile.
That explanation had seemed reasonable to me until, after the third time, I bought a small audio recorder and hid it inside my bag.
That night I finally had the courage to listen to the files inside the bathroom.
First I heard my own voice thanking Lucas for the water, followed by ten minutes of total silence.
Then I heard Lucas making a phone call.
“She has fallen asleep again,” Lucas reported.
And then I heard Christopher speaking to my husband over the phone while I was unconscious.
“Perfect, so bring her in right now because Samantha is already here,” Christopher said coldly. “And do not be an idiot this time, so do not leave marks on her like last time.”
Lucas let out a nervous laugh over the line.
“It was just a tiny bruise,” Lucas replied defensively.
“Well, it hardly ever gets us into trouble, but just do what I told you,” Christopher commanded before ending the call.
Then I heard the car engine stop, followed by the sound of a door opening.
My seatbelt was released, the seat back began to recline, and Lucas murmured right beside me.
“You really trust us too much, sister-in-law,” he whispered softly.
I heard the distinct sound of his hand brushing against my clothes, which made me turn off the recorder immediately because I could not bear to listen any longer.
I went straight to the bathroom mirror and slowly lowered the collar of my blouse.
Below my collarbone was a purplish mark that I had been attributing for several days to some accidental blow I could not remember.
I realized then that Christopher knew exactly what was happening, and he had probably organized the entire thing himself.
However, there was one phrase that kept hitting me in the head continuously.
“Samantha is already here.”
Who was Samantha?
When I came out of the bathroom, Christopher was sitting in front of the television like any other normal night.
“Did you fall asleep in the car again?” he asked me with a gentle smile.
I nodded slowly to keep up appearances.
He came closer and began massaging my sore shoulders.
“I told you, my love, you really need to move more,” he whispered softly.
“You are completely right,” I replied with a faint smile.
That night I slept facing the cold wall, pretending to be calm while he breathed less than a meter away from me.
At three in the morning, I opened the notes app on my phone and wrote down everything.
“Recording. Water bottle. Mark on the body. Four episodes. Samantha. Christopher knows everything.”
Then I added one final thought to my hidden note.
“I am not going to face him yet.”
If Christopher thought I was still the same trusting wife, he would continue to make careless mistakes.
I needed to know how far that living nightmare truly went before making my move.
What I discovered the very next morning was so monstrous that the audio recording ended up seeming like just the beginning.
PART 2
I waited until Christopher left for his office the next morning before going into his private home office.
For two years I had respected that room as sacred territory because he always warned me about it.
“I keep very sensitive company documents in here,” he used to tell me.
His family owned a logistics company, and after we got married, Christopher brought me on board as a minority shareholder through a family agreement.
We had also signed prenuptial agreements and several private contracts over the years.
Until that morning, I never imagined those legal papers could have any relation to what was happening to me.
I found a pharmacy receipt tucked inside a thick book on his shelf.
It was a prescription for zolpidem under Lucas’s name, and the date coincided with the exact week he started picking me up.
I felt deeply nauseous, but I kept searching through his desk drawers.
Inside a thick manila envelope, I found several bank statements with large transactions.
On March 10, there was a transfer of 180,000 dollars to Lucas with the concept listed as “services”.
There were other transfers including 60,000 dollars to Samantha R. for apartment rental and medical studies.
On April 5, another payment was logged under “pregnancy expenses”.
I froze in front of that last phrase for several seconds.
In another hidden folder, I found printed photographs of Christopher leaving a private clinic with a young pregnant woman.
