Blurred Lines

Chapter 4

They drove in silence. 

At first she couldn't be sure, but when he passed the city limits and moved beyond them, she knew that he wasn't taking her home. 

 "Where are you taking me?"

"A hospital," he said, not bothering to take his eyes off the road when he eventually responded. 

The apartment complex he stopped in front of was public housing at its worst, and Abigail had lived in some questionable homes as a teenager. It was run down and derelict - the kind of place you never wanted to visit. Graffiti sprawled the walls. Kids that should have been in school, hung around a defunct playground in clothes that were too thin for this time of the year. The windows and doors of some apartments were boarded up, while others looked like they should have been condemned years ago. She looked at him wondering what was going through his mind. This was no hospital by any stretch of the imagination.

He got out and came around to her door as she looked around them with frightened eyes.

"Get out," he said simply, not bothering to offer her any kind of explanation.

"Where is this place?" she asked hesitantly, making no attempt to move as he stood at her door.

He grabbed her upper arm and pulled her to her feet.

"Careful where you step. There's syringes on the ground," he warned.

This was what he meant by a hospital? He meant to bring her here?

A frightening realisation dawned on her all at once, and panic swept through her ravaged body. 

He wasn't taking her to a doctor. He was taking her to get an abortion.

"No, no. You can't do this here. I'm 15 weeks pregnant," she pleaded. He seemed to hesitate at the advanced stage of her pregnancy, before continuing to move her through the housing complex.

"Do you think I didn't try to do this already?" she yelled, trying to free her arm from his grip. 

He tightened his grip.

"I'll bleed to death here!"

He stopped, turning on her suddenly until she found herself standing eye to eye with him. He looked down at her, his eyes ice cold.

"Not if I kill you first," he hissed, grabbing her throat without warning as he pushed her against the balustrade. 

"If this kid is mine like you say, and you didn't get rid of it when you should have, then you needed to tell me before you decided to keep it."

He let go of her suddenly. She bent forward gulping in as much air as she could into her deprived lungs. 

Asshole. Real daddy-of-the-fucking-year material he was going to be.

She'd barely caught her breath when he grabbed her wrist and dragged her forward. 

Syringes littered the hallway of the building he led her into. 

As they climbed their way up to the third floor apartment, Abigail saw two tenants. The first was an elderly man who slammed his door shut when he caught sight of Ruslan, and the second was a woman they encountered on the second floor. She looked like she was going to work. When she saw them approach, she pancaked herself against the wall in an effort to steer clear of them. Abigail imagined that even in this public housing hellhole, seeing a 6'4 tattooed man, leading a 5'7 barefoot woman dressed in sweats and a tank top on a 50 degree day, must have been an unusual sight.