Flesh and Blood by Sian Rosé (100 books to read .txt) 📕

“You… you killed my baby,” she shrieked, bawling into the carpet where her face was planted firmly into the floor. She had no intention of getting up. “You…” she choked and spluttered, more bile spewing from the corners of her mouth and dribbling onto the floor. Her grief weighed impossibly heavy in her chest.

Was it really because she believed that Adil had murdered the child?

The tightly locked and secured door in the corner of Minnie’s mind suddenly blasted open and out poured a hot, thick mess of all of her deeply buried fears. All of the drugs, all of the alcohol… the beatings, the lack of food and water, and pre-natal care…

What chance had her baby stood? How could any defenceless, unborn child have survived for so long in such terrible circumstances?

She flinched as she felt the warmth of a hand resting on the top of her shoulder. Minnie was about to get to her feet and start thrashing about madly in a chaotic flurry of madness and grief when Adil spoke. Even underneath the croak of her cries, his soft, solemn voice broke through and sent a chill down her spine.

“Your baby is not dead.”

At that, the teenager’s head snapped upwards, her jaw opening in astonishment. “But… you…”

Adil’s eyes were watery as he stared at her. Both of his hands were on her, and she couldn’t help but take comfort from his touch. It had been a long, long time since she’d felt any kind of nurturing, and there was something about him that lulled her into believing his concern was genuine.

“I called child protective services,” he said calmly, although there was no denying the shame that tinged his expression.

Minnie remained silent, too stunned to speak.

“Your son will be put up for adoption. He’s healthy and strong,” Adil continued. “I know this must be awful for you, but if I sent you back to those people with the baby, I…”

SMACK.

The man’s cheek blazed red whilst the palm of Minnie’s hand burned with the sting of his skin.

“I’m a victim here,” she cried, her voice breaking. “You want to help us? Why didn’t you call the police?” she stood up, her face sodden, vision blurring. “So what is this? You send my baby off, and that’s your good deed, is it? And what about me? I just get to go back to…” she choked again. A new part of her heart snapped off and died, disintegrating into nothingness in the pit of her stomach as she envisioned that terrible house, the terrible room, and the terrible suffering she and Ronnie had endured for so long.

Adil bowed his head. “I’m a coward,” he replied.

Minnie swallowed and shook from head to toe, clenching her clammy fists as she glanced behind him at the open door. She considered making a dash for it whilst his head was down.

“What’re you so scared of?” she breathed out, never taking her eyes off of the doorway. “What is it? Steve?”

“Steve is nothing,” Adil replied, finally looking up at her. “It’s what he is a part of that I am afraid of.”

Images of the man with the fake IDs in the café; all of the dodgy businessmen that paid to rape her; Steve and his slimy face as he sucked up to them. It became clear then. The whole thing was just one big crime ring that she and Ronnie had so stupidly been sucked into. Then, something else occurred to her.

Heart racing, she took a step backwards, fear prickling beneath her skin. “And… you don’t want to get caught,” she said before she could stop herself.

Adil gasped as if she had stabbed him straight through the chest. “I didn’t know what I was getting into,” he said miserably, “really, I didn’t. It was only when you turned up here… in that state, and I started talking to Steve… that’s when I realised just how messed up this all is…” he swallowed and shook his head in disbelief. “I want to help you… I wish I could. That’s why I sent the little boy away.”

She pursed her lips tightly together, holding in fresh sobs at the thought of being knocked out, or drugged, then waking up again back in that cold, dark shithole of a room at Steve’s house. She envisioned another woman, another man taking her little newborn son home from the hospital, giving him a name, referring to themselves as mummy and daddy.

Suddenly, she lunged forwards, ramming her bare foot as hard as she possibly could into Adil’s crotch so that the man keeled over from surprise. She sprinted around him and fortunately recognised the small layout of the apartment, jogging down the hallway and back into the kitchen where she’d given birth just hours earlier.

“Minnie!” she heard Adil yell. The noise startled her, but she pressed on through the fear, her feet slapping against the kitchen tiles as she lunged for the knife block once again.

“Minnie, come on, just stop,” she heard him whine. Spinning around, she held out the knife in front of her, her limbs still trembling so that the metal blade wobbled dangerously in thin air.

“Fucking get away,” she spat, eyes glittering with venom as she bravely forced herself forwards.

He held up his light brown palms, his deep eyes widening as she thrust the knife at him. But he did not back away. He continued to move toward her.

Even faced with the blade of a knife and that warped, crazed, and terrifying expression splayed on her face, Adil was not truly afraid of her.

He was still coming towards her, unfaltering.

Disbelieving.

The white-hot rage that had simmered beneath her surface over the course of the last year surged through her veins in one molten shot of fury. Her head spun as she lunged forwards, slashing the knife through the air blindly.

She was transported back to that horrific time on the forest floor in the clearing, when she and Ronnie had been attacked, and this whole nightmare had just begun.

That was where it