With an angry snarl, Eddie tackled me down and straddled me before I even knew what’d happened. He wasn’t putting all his weight on my stomach, but that was only because he needed the leverage to wrap his hands around my throat.

I clawed and scratched and tried to buck him off me without hurting my baby, but he stayed firm. Squeezing just hard enough to reduce my breaths but not hard enough to completely cut them off.

Torturing me with the sensation of never quite being able to fill my lungs.

“I’m not touching that thing,” he said coldly. “I went through all the work of switching out your pill packs because I thought it would fix you. I was wrong. My child won’t have a cheating whore for a mother. When you die, the last thing you’ll do on this earth is take it with you.”

I wanted to say I was brave.

I wanted to say that, for my baby, I developed superstrength and threw Eddie off me.

I wanted to say I did something. Anything.

But I didn’t.

I froze.

I didn’t know what to do. How to save Squish.

Pure panic, paired with Eddie suppressing my airflow, stole the little oxygen I was getting. My vision began to tunnel. My extremities tingled and numbed.

I was dying.

Fading out.

I couldn’t allow it to happen. I’d almost let Squish down before by staying with Eddie as long as I had. I should’ve left him long before I’d gotten pregnant. I should’ve left him the day I’d found out.

I couldn’t let my daughter down again.

I needed to do something. Be strong.

There was a faint rumble, like thunder in the distance. The noise grew louder.

And Eddie’s grip grew tighter.

“Camera,” I forced out. It took all my effort to lift my heavy limb, but I shoved the watch in his face. “Recording everything to the cloud.”

He reared back, his hold loosening enough that I could gasp in greedy breaths.

It hurt to talk, but I did it anyway. “Right now, there’s just assault. But if you kill me or Squish or any of them, there will be proof, and it’ll be released.”

“I don’t believe you, you lying bitch.”

I pointed out the tiny lens.

He hovered over me, his eyes going wide. The motorcycles grew louder.

“Even if I’m lying, is it worth the risk? Am I worth the risk?”

Hatred filled his face, and I thought he was going to kill me anyway. Recording or not, I thought he was about to pull out his gun and get it over with.

But his time was almost up. The roar of the motorcycles was close.

Knights riding in on chrome and steel.