Amélia’s stifled scream tore through the heavy April morning air, but no one in the stifling kitchen of the Fonseca family’s grand house dared to move. The acrid smell of caustic soda mingled with the metallic stench of blood and the cloying aroma of wilted flowers. In the luxurious bedroom, Dona Leopoldina Fonseca stood motionless, holding the empty glass jar. Her blue eyes gleamed with a mixture of sadistic satisfaction and nascent remorse as she watched Amélia, the 23-year-old slave, whose trembling hands tried to touch a face that was dissolving, revealing raw, pulsating flesh.

It had all begun three months earlier, in 1871, shortly after the promulgation of the controversial Free Womb Law. Amélia arrived at the Nossa Senhora da Piedade farm  as part of an inheritance. Her beauty was extraordinary: cinnamon skin, almond-shaped eyes, and a refined posture that hinted at an educated background, perhaps that of freed slaves who had fallen on hard times.

Thirty-eight-year-old Dona Leopoldina immediately noticed how her husband, Colonel Fernando Fonseca, lingered on Amélia. She saw how the stern face of the fifty-two-year-old softened when she was near, how he found excuses to stay in the large house instead of overseeing the coffee fields. Envy, fueled by insecurity about her own beauty fading from the tropics and childbirth, grew in Leopoldina like a poisonous weed. Amélia was everything she had lost: youth, freshness, and her husband’s attention.

The final straw came one afternoon in the study. Leopoldina found her husband and Amélia conversing softly about Portuguese poetry. The young slave was reciting verses by Camões from memory, with perfect diction. The stag of jealousy, long dormant, erupted within Leopoldina, consuming her rationality.

That night, with the Colonel away to discuss the new law with other landowners, Leopoldina put her plan into action. She summoned Amélia to her chambers under the pretext of teaching her how to embroider her daughter’s trousseau. When the young woman entered, unaware of the danger, Leopoldina, with terrifying calm, asked her to hold a tray. Then, she stood up and, without a word, threw the contents of the flask of caustic soda directly onto the slave’s perfect face.

It was Sebastiana, the 56-year-old cook and healer of ancestral African knowledge, who heard the heart-wrenching screams. She ran to the main house, found the horrific scene, and, without asking any questions, took Amélia in her arms. She carried her to the  senzala (the slave quarters), while the rest of the captives watched in silent horror. Among them was Rafael, a 26-year-old free man, who watched from the shadows, knowing that the moment had come to reveal secrets that could change everything.

For five days, Sebastiana fought for Amélia’s life, applying poultices of herbs, slug and clay, whispering prayers in Yoruba to save what remained of the young woman.

When Colonel Fernando returned, he found an atmosphere of palpable fear. Foreman Tomé tried to explain it away as a “regrettable accident,” but the Colonel went straight to his wife’s quarters. He found her distraught, still wearing the same clothes she had been wearing for days. “I made a terrible mistake,” she whispered. He extracted the confession, and his fury was replaced by icy horror.

He rushed to the  cell . What he saw took his breath away. Amélia’s face was an unrecognizable mass of tissue destroyed under Sebastiana’s medicinal pastes. “Your wife did this,” Sebastiana said, without a trace of her usual deference. “She destroyed her out of pure envy.”

Ashamed as he had never been in his life, the Colonel knelt down. “Do everything you can,” he told Sebastiana. “And when she recovers, she will have her  letter of alforria  (manumission). It is inadequate compensation, but it is what I will do.”

It was then that Rafael stepped forward. “Colonel,” he said firmly, “there is something you must know. Amélia is not merely her uncle’s slave.” The silence grew heavy. “She is his niece. She is the legitimate daughter of his older brother, Rodrigo Fonseca, whom he believed to be dead without issue.”

Rafael pulled out a yellowed envelope. It contained a baptismal certificate, love letters from Rodrigo, and the original will, all of which proved that Amélia was his own flesh and blood, hidden by the family to avoid a mixed-race scandal.

The Colonel paled, clutching the papers with trembling hands. Reality hit him: his wife, consumed by jealousy over a slave, had brutally mutilated her own niece.

The scandal was never made public. Dona Leopoldina was confined to her chambers, a prisoner of her luxury and her husband’s icy gaze; she lived the rest of her days like a ghost in her own house, haunted by the face she had destroyed.

Colonel Fernando Fonseca signed  Amélia’s letter of alforria  , but he did more than that: he gave her the documents that proved her lineage and a considerable sum of money.

Sebastiana, with her remedies, managed to save Amélia’s life and her sight, but the scars were permanent. Her face, once a Renaissance work of art, was now a grotesque mask that would tell her story forever.

One morning, months later, Amélia left the  Nossa Senhora da Piedade farm  . She was a free woman, legally recognized, and with the means to forge her own destiny. Rafael, who had risked everything by revealing the truth, accompanied her. Together, they left the coffee fields, leaving behind the large house, which had become a silent tomb for the crimes and secrets of the Fonseca family.