by Breck, A. R.
I lay there for many minutes. So long that I drift off and come to. When I’m certain he’s gone and I won’t run into him, I get up, stumbling to my feet and slipping my dress back on. Wobbling to the door, I peak around the corner.
No one.
I limp my way down the stairs. The party is long over. I pass no one as I make my way out the door and to my hut. At least I don’t see anyone. There are likely guards who are not even batting an eye at my battered form, but they’ve seen it before. This is nothing new. They know the monster and keep him safe in his castle.
I nearly sigh in relief as I walk up to my house. Slipping inside, I drop my clothes and shoes inside the door. I hope they are gone by the time I wake up. Burned and tossed in the garbage.
I crawl underneath my cool sheets, close my eyes, and wait for sleep to take me.
It doesn’t.
I toss and turn all night, pain keeping my body and mind awake and thinking maybe it’s time sleep not take me.
Maybe death should instead.
* * *
“Mommy?”
I crack my eyes open, barely feeling conscious as a miniature body crawls on top of me.
“Mommy, you have owie?” Tiny hands press against my face, and I cringe when my body thumps in pain.
“I’m okay.” I groan and look up, wondering how she got in here. Ms. Maria stands in the doorway with a painful grin on her face.
“Mr. Fernandez says to let you rest today. I thought I would let you spend the day with Lilah, unless you weren’t feeling up to it?” She looks unsure, like she wants to grab Lilah and bolt back to the main house.
I wrap my arm around her tiny form and press her against me, even when the pain intensifies. “I’ll be fine. Thank you.”
She nods, walking out the door and closing it quietly behind her, the hinges squeaking in protest.
Maybe my little hut wants me to be free of this place, too.
“Mommy, you sick?” She wiggles out of my hold and looks at me again. A heavy frown sits on her face like she wants to start crying.
I hold my breath as I sit up, bringing the blanket with me to cover the wounds on my chest. “No, Lilah. I’m not sick. If you give me a minute, we can go sit outside for a bit if you’d like.”
“Yeah! Can we go to the flowers?” She forgets about my appearance as she slides to the ground and starts bouncing on her feet.
“Great, why don’t you go color for a few minutes while I get ready?” I nod towards her box of toys and breathe a sigh of relief when she turns her back towards me. I avoid all mirrors, too scared to see what I look like. I’m afraid if I saw how bad I looked; the pain might intensify. I’d rather forget about it all together. Hopefully the pain will go with it.
I walk over to the dresser and grab some leggings and an oversized long sleeve. I’ll melt in the Mexico heat, but I’m in no mood to deal with the double glances or stares today from the grounds people.
“Ready?” I ask as I slip on a pair of flip flops.
“Yeah!” Lilah runs to the door, forgetting her toys in a pile on the ground as she runs outside. She darts straight to the garden, pressing her nose against the bright red roses and smelling them. I smile and walk to the bench that sits in the shade. The gardener is working nearby, pruning the bushes. I wave to him, and Lilah is quick to make conversation. All of the workers here adore Lilah. She’s the princess in this jail, after all. The daughter of the ruler of this land.
This will all be hers someday.
It makes me sick just thinking about it.
I watch Lilah for a while as she follows the gardener. When she gets bored of that, I watch as she sprints over to the tire swing. She plops down onto her stomach and I nearly get nauseous watching her spin in circles.
She giggles, and I stand up. “Slow down. You’re going to make yourself sick.” She doesn’t listen, of course. “Slow down, Lilah.” She hops off at my tone, and instantly falls on her butt. “See?” She giggles, and I break down and chuckle with her “I’m going to go potty quick. I’ll be right back. Quit spinning so fast.”
She nods at me, diving back onto the tire swing and I watch as it starts spinning again.
“Fucking hell.” It hurts as I walk, but I make it back into the house to use the bathroom.
Bang. Bang.
The sound goes off as I flush the toilet. I’m confused at first on what it could be. There isn’t much around here besides the massive compound. We’re far enough into the desert. But weird noises do happen from time to time.
Bang. Bang.
When a siren starts going off that I’ve never heard before, my stomach drops.
“Lilah!” I scream, running to the door, my pain all but forgotten.
Boom.
An explosion goes off outside, and the walls shake. Debris from the ceiling falls around me like snow. I cough through the smoke. I can hear people screaming outside, and continuous popping which as they grow closer, I realize what it is.
Gun shots.
My body trembles in fear.
Where is Lilah?
I open the door right when another blast happens, and I fly backwards, falling onto my back. The wind gets knocked out of me and I open my mouth, only to have a silent scream come out. My lungs are crushed from the impact and the pain is excruciating.
When the air is allowed to fill my lungs, I gasp out a sobbing breath and scream. “Lilah!” The pain throughout my body is agonizing, but I still roll onto my front and crawl towards the door. “Lilah…” I sob.
The guns still go off around me in every direction, and every so often I can hear a ping way too close to me as a bullet ricochets off a piece of metal. The smell of gunfire and burning buildings fills my nostrils, and I cough and sneeze when it becomes too much.
So much screaming.
My skin is gray and blackened at this point from the soot of ruined buildings and sand. I can barely see through the dense air and breathing is even worse. I cough and gag again as my throat gets covered in a thick residue.
Feeling around in front of me, my palms dig into the pebbles and rocks on the ground. I crawl forward, pushing aside pieces of building and whatever else has landed in front of me. It’s only when my hair touches silky hair that terror clutches my throat in a painful grip.
“Lilah?” I scream out, crawling on top of the body. Once I realize the body is too big to be Lilah’s, I gasp out in relief, but then let out a scream when I realize who it is.
“Elena!” I cry, brushing the hair out of her face. Her eyes stay open, even as her gaze remains out in the distance. The light has left from her eyes, and the large piece of debris protruding from her neck gives away her cause of death. “Elena!” I cry again, clutching her to me. “Please, no!”
I clam up once I hear the rumble of motorcycles. I’m seriously in trouble. Not Santiago nor any of his associate ride a motorcycle. But after living with him for years, I’ve come to realize people who he doesn’t respect—and people who don’t respect him—do.
I bend over and kiss Elena on the forehead. “I love you.” I whisper, and then begin crawling away from my house as the bikes come near me. “Lilah!” I cry out, moving as quickly as I can even on my stomach. My forearms scrape against rocks, and I can feel my too fresh wounds from the night before beginning to reopen.
I find the little bit of weeds that have sprouted the desert sand and use them as leverage, pulling them to help me get forward. Some are strong enough to take the stress of my pull, others give underneath my fingers, the dead twigs shattering underneath by palms.
The pressure of a boot on top of my back halts me in place. It feels heavy, thick. The expanse of the boot covers most of my back. It feels huge, like I’ll stare up and see a giant standing above me.
I cry out, Lilah’s name whispering from my lips.
The boot slides off my back and the tip nudges underneath my shoulder, flipping me over with little effort. “What the fuck?” A tall man with a hat flipped backwar
ds stares down at me with a scowl on his face. My eyes trail down, in complete shock of the man standing before me. He’s tall, well over six feet and his arm that has a pistol pointed at me is covered in black and gray tattoos. Darkness swirls up his muscular forearm and for a moment I’m curious on how far it travels.
I feel like this man could take over the world. He seems that powerful. More powerful than Santiago, and that terrifies me.
“The fuck happened to you?” He barks at me, bending towards me and showing off his dark, dark blue eyes. It’s like the coldest, deepest part of the ocean painted its way to his irises. His icy blue eyes are even more blue than mine. People say my eyes resemble the clearest skies. This man’s eyes what I imagine the ocean would look like. They’re a bit cold, though, and his sharp jaw line only adds to that fact. The dark stubble on his face gives him a five o’ clock shadow. He looks like a mean, cold man who does positively terrible things to people.
And he’s standing right above me.
He makes a motion to grab me, and I flinch away from his touch, crab-walking away from him. “Please don’t hurt me.” I cry.
His eyes flash in shock before turning angry. Furious. He reaches down, and this time doesn’t care about my flinching or scared body. He hauls me to my feet by my bicep, ignoring my wounds and bruises with a flick of his eyes.
“You’re coming with me.” He says gruffly.
“Wait! Wait, wait, wait.” I dig my heels into the dirt. “Please, Lilah!” I scream, looking over my shoulder. “Lilah!” I turn to the man who has me in his grip, slapping his arm. When that does nothing, I try to dig my fingers underneath his that are locked around my arm. They don’t budge. It’s like they are cemented to me. He continues to walk into the cloud of dust, away from the tire swing where Lilah last was.
“Stop!” I scream at the top of my lungs. His eyes widen, but he listens this time. Stopping, he turns to me with irritation lining his gaze.
“What the fuck is it?” He says through his perfectly straight, white teeth.
With my free hand, I point shakily towards the tree that holds the tire swing. I can barely see it, but I can tell it is rocking back and forth. It looks eerie, like this place has become abandoned. The life in the place is gone, except the tire swing that sways ever so slightly from one direction to the next. “L-Lilah. Please, I can’t leave without her!”
He sighs, hopefully getting irritated enough that he leaves me for dead. I’d rather try and survive this apocalypse by myself. The last thing I want is to go from one monster to the next.
Turning on his heels, he walks towards the tree while mumbling under his breath. My heart beats a mile a minute. I need to find Lilah. She has to be here. She has to be. He probably assumes he will be dragging me across the dirt, not expecting me to get a burst of panicked energy. I start running, nearly ripping his fingers from my arm, but he holds tight. He senses my panic because he speeds up with me, and together we make it to the tire swing.
No Lilah.
“Lilah!” I scream, tears of panic flowing down my dirty face. The gun shots haven’t stopped. It sounds like World War fucking Three here and all I want is to find my daughter. “Lilah!” I cry out again.
I hear a little whimper, and my gaze shoots to this mystery man the same time his flies to mine. “Over there.” He nods his head towards the destroyed flower garden.
Finally, he releases my grip and I sprint away from him and into the garden. It’s a mess of dirt and broken flowers. “Lilah!” I cry, and when I hear another whimper, I dart around a pile of creeping phloxes. There, curled into a ball, sweaty and dirty is Lilah. She’s crying, but when she hears the crunching of dead flowers, she peeks her head out of her arms. Once she notices it’s me, she flies out of her ball and into my arms. “Mommy, I’m scared!” She sobs. I pick her up, ready to start running when I feel a large hand clamp on my arm.
“We have to go.” The strange man says from over my shoulder. Confusion lays in his eyes as he glances from me to Lilah. I don’t even want to go there.
“Please let us go. I promise I won’t say anything.” I plead to the man.
He ignores me, pulling me along to a couple large vans sitting on the side of my hut that I didn’t notice before. Two bikes sit beside them.
Shit, these really are motorcycle rivals.
Once we get to the vans, I see the back doors opened and look into the eyes of the latest group of girls that have been brought to Mexico sitting and trembling in fear. They look panicked, emaciated, and horrified as they look at the destruction happening around them. What are these guys doing, and why do they want all the girls? Are they stealing them for their own ring? I don’t understand.
What if these bikers are worse than Santiago? I couldn’t handle worse.
The door to the van the girls are sitting in gets closed. Lilah and I get shoved in the one next to it. It’s empty, and that terrifies me on an entire different level. A blonde guy appears out of nowhere. He doesn’t seem like a bad guy, but he still wears the uniform. The leather vest, the biker boots, the blank stare. He might be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“Take ‘em to the club.” My captor says to the blonde as he nods towards me and Lilah.
“Mommy, I went potty in my pants.” It’s then I notice her damp shorts.
“Shh, it’s okay.” I shush her, trying to hear what happens between the two men outside of the van.
“What? Why? Why don’t they go with the others?” The blonde man says with a face full of confusion.
“Just bring ‘em there, all right?” He pulls a cigarette out of his pocket and sparks it up. Slipping his lighter back in his pocket, he glances up at me once more before hopping on his bike, revving it up and speeding away.
The blonde man squints his eyes where my captor sped off, before turning around and coming to shut my door.
“Please. Please let us go. I promise, we won’t speak a word. We just want to go.”
The blonde looks at me with sympathy. Genuine sympathy. “Sorry, kids. I don’t get it either, but I gotta listen to the VP.” He shakes his head, shutting the door and locking us inside.
A moment later, the van rumbles to life and we rock back and forth as the van makes its way across the gravel road and off into the unknown.
I close my eyes and just pray I’m not moving from one prison to the next.
7
Aziel
The wind whips at my face as I near home. The sad girl and the baby play through my mind the entire ride back.
Once we cross the border, I watch in the rearview mirror as the first van full of girls takes a right, making its way towards New Mexico. There’s a halfway house/treatment center that we have set up there to help the girls get back into the real world. Some stay there until their family comes to claim them. Others don’t have a family, and they’re welcome to stay there as long as they need to. Get back on their feet. If they’re underage, we make sure they go into a good foster care. We’re doing what we can to right the wrong. To patch the Band-Aid over the wound that is Santiago and his filthy trafficking ring.
I spit onto the ground as my mouth fills with distaste. That girl I pulled off the ground was covered head to toe in bruises, lashes, so many fucking wounds on her body it was like connecting the dots of horror.
I pull up to our gate and nod to our prospect, Charlie, as he opens it for me. The white van holding the girl and the baby pull in behind me.
Why did I bring her here?
Maybe it’s because I have too many questions for her.
Where did you come from?
What are you to Santiago?
How long have you been there?
What the hell did he do to you?
But even as I tell myself the only reason I brought her here is to grill her, the burning in my gut tells me otherwise. I don’t want to delve into any deeper reason when I don’t even know the girl. I don’t know her fucking name, but just seeing her on the ground as she crawls in desp
eration clawed at my insides much like she clawed at the ground. It did something to me. She did something to me. But I’m not ready to analyze it yet.
I roll to a stop in front of the mechanic’s shop and park my bike next to the other. Pops and Pascal are already here. West is driving the van with the mysterious girl. The rest of the guys are still on their way back. Jex is here somewhere since he doesn’t ride anymore. From what I was told before I left the compound, Santiago got out. Whether he has people at the border to inform him or if it was just pure luck, he wasn’t there when we ambushed the place. We took down a lot of his men, though, so that’s a win. We also got some guys from other countries who were here to buy the girls. But our biggest victory of all, is the fact that we were able to save most of the girls. Three girls that were held in that cellar were already dead when we got there. We were too late. Their emaciated bodies stared helplessly into nothingness. Their crippled limbs nothing more than skin and bones. Their skin was gray. Who knows how long they’ve been held in that cell. But we can’t save everyone. We’ll consider it a victory. One step closer to taking Santiago down.
“Hey.” I say to my pops as I turn off my bike. He’s got a thick red blood streak down his cheek. “We should have stayed down there. Waited for him to come back or something. Went looking for him.”
“Nah.” Pops shakes his head. “He was too far gone. It’ll be hard to get to him now. He’ll be heavily guarded and I’m thinkin’ we should be expecting some kind of retaliation.”
I scoff. “He can try.”
He slaps my back and chuckles. “Yeah, I know.”
“So, what’s next steps? We should move while his trail is hot.” I’m buzzing with the need to kill these sick bastards. I got to quite a few of them before I found the girl, but then my focus was on her. My kill count today is way down, and I don’t like it. My adrenaline is still high.
