Chapter 5: Suffocating Blood
I started saving.
I urged my mother to do the same—to take whatever little she had and hold onto it. My brothers didn't need new shoes or new clothes. There was no reason to take them out every week.
She didn't listen.
She loved her children. She wanted them to feel provided for. She said outings were essential—that they needed to be among crowds, to experience life outside this house.
I told her not to give them spending money, that they could endure hunger just a little. But she prioritized us over herself. She had no savings because he never let her have enough to build one. She depended on him, as she always had.
So I stole from him.
Not the large bills—I was too much of a coward for that. Only coins. Scraps. Whatever I found after tearing through pockets, drawers, and corners.
I knew it was wrong, but what else could I do? I was not allowed to work. I was not given money, even though I needed it for the most basic things—things that should not have been a luxury. The things my mother and I should never have had to struggle for—sanitary products, clothes, shoes, even the ability to care for our hair.
Each time I took a coin, I hesitated. Terrified of the consequences of my own actions.
Would he notice? Would he call me a thief? Would he see me as an enemy?
He would.
And I was right.
I don't know if my brother ever saw me stealing. Maybe he did. Maybe that's why he was found, not with a handful of coins, but with the largest bill in this house.
Fearless.
Father was furious, he insulted my brother. His insults—words only uneducated goons would use. Where was the high class he prided himself on?
This was not discipline. This was not fatherhood. Just a businessman punishing a slave.
The belt hissed through the air before its metal end struck flesh. Once. Then again. And again.
Merciless. Unrelenting.
My mother begged him to stop. My brother—who had once been fearless—promised, swore, and pleaded. But the belt, as if craving his flesh, refused to pause. Each strike landed with precision, with weight, with the kind of force that could never be mistaken for love.
Each hit hurt me
'My baby, No my baby! HOW COULD HE???'
The room held its breath. My mother stood rigid. Her lips parted, but no words came—what was the point? Her cries had never stopped him before. Her rage trembled beneath her skin, heavy, suffocating, but she swallowed it whole.
She did not beg this time.
She only watched, her fury silent, her eyes burning with the weight of everything she could not say.
And my father—unmoved.
He just kept going.
I trembled, but I refused to leave.
He was mine to protect. He was my blood, my brother—but he was also my child. Not in name, not in birth, but in responsibility. In the weight I carried for him.
I watched the rise of his arm, the fall of the metal. I watched the way he hurt my child as if he were not his own blood.
Not even my mother—who had struggled, who had suffered—had ever laid hands on us like he did.
I felt it then.
My nails curled, desperate to turn into talons, embedding into the soft flesh of my palm.
The teeth that desired to rip his burnt flesh enclosed in my shut lips.
The tears that felt like blood burned their path to my chest, each one heavy with fury.
Only fear stopped me from rushing to him like a furious wolf avenging her child.
I wanted to lunge—to tear into him, shred him, break him into nothing. I wanted my nails to carve blood roads down his arms, my fangs to crush his throat, my fury to make him fear the very existence of me.
I was trapped in place, paralyzed, watching.
I don't understand. Is he not my father?
All my brother and I did was take our allowance from his pockets without his permission.
Like he had taken my mother—her body, her life, her future—without her acceptance.
Why was his theft acceptable, but ours a crime?
We do not believe in stealing from others. But him? Just a sperm donor.
Why not?
He is not a father.
Not when the money he provides is not enough.
Not when his presence weighs more than his absence.
Not when fear walks in his shadow.