by Pamela Crane
In a seismic shift, his voice grew harsh and deep, like gravel and splintering wood. An alter ego climbed out of him, like a demon shedding his human skin. “Time’s up, Tina. It’s your reckoning. A name change wasn’t going to throw me off your track for long. You still owe another year to pay off dear Daddy’s debt, and I’m coming to make sure you deliver on what you owe. Your father, sad to hear he’s gone. He’ll be missed. And I’m sure you don’t want to end up like your old man, so understand that I’m watching you. Waiting. I’m coming for you, and I expect it to go smoothly. You know what you have to lose—and that I don’t bluff. Oh, and I’m sure you know by now that if you go to the police, it will not end pretty for you or your new bestie, Ari Wilburn.” Then back to sickly sweet as if he was bidding his beloved mother goodnight: “Look forward to seeing you soon, darlin’.”
Up until I heard my name, the message felt movie-scene distant, like I was watching a horror flick where the serial killer toyed with his prey. Then my name. He knew my name. How the hell did he know my name?
Afterward, I felt exposed, naked. If ever there was a time for an anxiety attack to overpower me, now would be it. But an alien calmness pumped through my veins.
“Don’t tell me. Your sex trafficker?”
“One and the same.”
Before Tina had spilled her guts on the ride to Dunn, I had never really thought sex trafficking existed anymore. At least not in my reality, in my little corner of the world. But here before me was a real-life victim of a sordid underworld of vicious pimps and kinky johns, and the little-girls-lost that fueled the trade. I couldn’t even imagine the living hell she’d endured—and I had a very vivid imagination from growing up in the foster system.
“Yes, it’s him. But I can’t go back to that … life, slow death, whatever you want to call it. I’d rather take my own life on my own terms than die a little each day at his whims.”
“Tina, I promise I won’t let this sonofabitch get to you,” I vowed.
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with. Didn’t you hear him? If there was any doubt in my mind before, it’s gone now. He killed my father because dear Dad received money for services I never rendered. I skip out on him and my dad dies—a coincidence? No. He’s going to kill me if I don’t follow orders. And you too, Ari. He knows your name!” By this point Tina was hysterical, her voice peaking and wobbling with sobs.
“Sweetie, this isn’t a reason to kill yourself. Why would you—” I tried, but Tina cut me off.
“If I was dead, there would be nothing to collect on. And my dad’s dead, so Battan won’t be getting his money back from him. So there’d be no reason to go after you if I was gone. So you ask why I wanted to die? That’s why, Ari.”
“No, no, don’t say that. We can put him behind bars where scumbags like him belong.”
“Jail? Ha! He deserves more than rotting in a cell. He deserves the death penalty. He stole my innocence. All of my memories consist of years trapped in a hell of revolving men, each with their own sick, perverted impulses. They turned me into a shell of a human being while I endured endless suffering and torture at the hands of psychopaths. Ripped from my family, sold by my own parents for an easy buck, brought to America—the land of freedom! Yeah, right. Freedom to rape and molest and abuse a child as the world turned a blind eye.”
By now Tina’s fear had exploded into a diatribe of repressed rage that needed to pour free. She needed to vent it all, so I let her.
“What’s ironic is that sure, I attended school, and from the outside my life appeared normal. Except that I was hiding bruises and emaciation beneath my clothes and got pulled out of school for more sick days than any other kid in my class so I could service clients. And if I didn’t do as I was told? No food. No water. A beating or two or ten. Or good old-fashioned rape.”
She drew a deep breath, tears streaming in the wake of her pause. The curse was reeling her back into the nightmare—the memories. I never could figure out how to outrun them.
“So I stayed silent and alone,” she said, her voice now a whisper. “Did anyone even care or wonder why I had no friends? Why I was so shy? Why I was always sick? Why the smile of a man made my skin crawl, or the touch of another human made me jump? I will never know the joy of being a carefree kid lying on my back in the grass, looking up at the clouds in the sky and letting my imagination turn them into animals. Instead my childhood was a daily fight for my life, a life that my own family—even my own brother—saw turning to shit, and they benefited from it.”
Tina—or Sophia, I wasn’t sure what to call her now—had dwelled in a house of tears and lies her entire life. I had no words of condolence, no apologies or empathy or sorrow to offer. It was too horrible to process. So I stood there, dumbfounded, waiting for the hiccup of lost time to pass over us until I could figure out the right thing to say. Only questions came, like bubbles popping in my head.
“You know his name and where he lives. Why can’t we go after him and turn him in?”
“I can’t. I just can’t. You don’t understand.”
“Like hell you can’t, Tina. I’ll go with you.”
“No!”
Well, that sure as hell sounded final.
My brain skipped through possible solutions, backtracking and fast-forwarding through the information. It was only then I heard what she had said—really heard it.
“Wait—you have a brother? I thought you said you didn’t have any other family.” I was pretty sure she’d said as much in our first conversation. I admit, I was good at detecting inconsistencies in stories. I’d told my fair share of them as a kid.
“You’re assuming we speak. I haven’t seen him or talked to him since I was six. I don’t really count someone who left me to pretty much die as family.”
Over a decade-long schism between them? It sounded like my family didn’t have a monopoly on grudges after all. “Does he even know you’re here?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.”
She had a sibling and she didn’t even want him. I would have given anything to get Carli back, and Tina just tosses her brother away. I couldn’t help but hate her just a little in that moment, but I pushed past it. Clearly she had damage even I couldn’t understand. Who was I to judge her logic?
“Your brother—” I finally spoke. “Maybe he can help?”
She snorted at the suggestion. “Killian? Yeah right. I’m sure he’s been profiting off my living nightmare. Who do you think benefited from the money they sent my family all those years? He was an only child and probably loving it. Hell, he’s probably the one who turned me in when I escaped—once the paychecks stopped coming. I’d bet anything he gave them my new name and told them how to find me. Nothing like handing your own sister over to sociopaths to line your pockets,” she said with a sneer.
“Your brother would really do that to you?”
“I guarantee it.”
“How do you even know this if you haven’t spoken to him?”
She shrugged. “I heard things.”
“From who?” I wasn’t letting her off that easily.
“It doesn’t matter. All I’m saying is that he’s part of why I was forced into hiding. He never once came to my aid, never offered to help pay off whatever debt my father got into. If you ask me, I don’t have a brother.”
The vague details about her family relationships were really starting to piss me off. How did she expect me to help her when she was hiding every aspect of her life?
“Tina, if you haven’t talked to him, maybe he doesn’t know what’s going on. You should at least see what he knows, see if he can help.”
“Back off, Ari! Even if Killian did want to help, he’s sixteen. What can he possibly do? If he’s not already involved, I definitely don’t want to drag him into it. He should be concerned about partying and finding a girlfriend, not rescuing his sex-slave sister.”
Sixteen? He was just a boy, really. And at that age, probably just as helpless as Tina. “S
ounds like you might still care for him … a little,” I ventured.
“Maybe I do. So what? The bastards may have turned me into a screwing machine, but they didn’t steal my friggin’ humanity.” She started to sob quietly.
I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. I’d forgotten she’d just tried to kill herself and was in a psych ward. Not to mention she was a refugee from a sex-slave ring. The poor kid. I’d been through some shit, but it couldn’t hold a candle to Tina/Sophia’s story. I waited for the tension to drain out of the room before I spoke again.
“Do you have any other family?” I asked. “Someone I should call?”
“Well, there’s my grandmother, Rosalita. She knows the basics of what’s going on with my situation … and about my dad. He was her son. She’s kept tabs on everyone except me all these years. Luckily I found her contact info in his cell phone or else I would have lost touch with my whole family.”
“Is she supportive?” I hated to ask. But it was a reasonable question, considering Tina’s father and brother had both thrown her to wolves.
“Yeah, she wanted to come see me. Reconnect. I figured once things calmed down I’d take her up on it.”
“Well, I think now’s the time,” I suggested. “Maybe they’ll let you out of here sooner if they know you’re going to have … company.” I hoped breaking out of here sweetened the deal enough to get Tina to agree.
“I’ll just tell them I don’t have insurance.”
“Ha! They won’t be able to wheel you out of here fast enough.”
“Alright, I’ll call her and see if she’s up for a visit.”
The idea of a doting grandma watching over Tina lifted a corner of the blanket of stress weighing on me. But there was still so much more to worry about.
Even with the insinuated risk to my own life and the mountain of half-truths I’d need to trek through, I still wanted to help Tina. Maybe even needed to. I couldn’t explain it if I tried, but helping her was helping me. Crazy, I know.
If there was ever a time when I felt a bludgeon to the head trying to knock some sense into me, it was now. I needed a purpose in life, and one was knocking. I couldn’t save Carli. I couldn’t save myself. But hell if I couldn’t save Tina. Even if it cost me damn near everything. People like me didn’t have shit to lose anyways.
Chapter 15
Rosalita
San Luis, Mexico
1997
The creamy white gown hung on Mercedes Estrada like water rippling down a bronze sculpture. A simple heart-shaped bodice held up by angel hair-thin straps flowed effortlessly into waves around her ankles. Gossamer dreams of the wedding feast, piles of gifts, and dancing the night into morning played on her ruby lips in a blissful smile. Toying with an upswept hairstyle, she spun playfully in front of the dusty mirror in Rosalita’s bedroom, admiring the satin clinging to her curves.
“What do you think, Mrs. Alvarez—or can I call you Madre now? It’s only a week until we’re family.”
Rosalita Alvarez offered a tight-lipped grin. “Yes, dear, a week away. You must be nervous, no?”
Mercedes’s eyes flashed at Rosalita from the full-length mirror. “Si, I have butterflies in my stomach. But I adore your son. Josef’s perfect, don’t you agree?”
But Rosalita didn’t agree. It was true that she’d begun to love Mercedes like a daughter years ago when she and Josef held hands for the first time as childhood sweethearts. Their early courtship was filled with carefree idylls that had warmed Rosalita’s heart. Josef took Mercedes for walks down their packed dirt street to the market where he treated her with Mazapan, a sweet crushed peanut confection, or a Pulparindo, whose medley of sweetness, saltiness, and chili pepper fire made her little rosebud mouth pucker most charmingly. Sometimes Rosalita would watch them playing on the rickety swing set in the backyard, matching each other’s feats of daredevilry, and rejoice to see them stealing adolescent kisses mid flight.
Any mother would find such innocent demonstrations of affection endearing. Until that first sobering glimpse of reality. Rosalita knew the truth, saw the darkness peering from the corners, watched it unfold in a dangerous crescendo that would overtake the beauty of love and destroy everything in its wake.
Josef hung in the shadows, and Mercedes foolishly accompanied him.
It all started with a deception. A harmless lie. But it wasn’t so harmless, was it?
He had broken into the neighbor’s house and stolen their grocery money. None were the wiser about his involvement until Josef came home one day sporting flashy new sneakers. Shoes far beyond their means.
Where did you get those? Rosalita had asked him point-blank.
I found them, he snapped back.
But she knew. Money missing yesterday, fancy sneakers today.
Eduardo was no help, instead turning Rosalita’s accusation against her, questioning her sanity … yet again. And thus it was an unspoken secret between mother and son that neither would speak of again.
Little things like that throughout the years. Little things that kill your morality bit by bit. Little things that drag you into the mire of sin until it fills your lungs, suffocating you with evil. This was the path Rosalita now saw them on, but she dared not voice it.
Any union with Josef was lethal, but she was forbidden from saying as much, at her own peril. Her husband Eduardo would never abide any threat to the perpetuation of his genes. Within a year Mercedes would likely be birthing the first grandson, and to Eduardo, the promise of vigorous progeny was worth burying the secrets, the lies, the sinister companion that would haunt their family for generations to come.
Josef wasn’t the only one cursed. The chicken was coming home to roost, and Mercedes was that chicken. A mad one at that.
It hadn’t been all too obvious at the start. Small things, really. Rosalita noticed the lighthearted bickering between the young lovebirds but laughed it off as childish antics. Eventually harsh words were exchanged for heated fists on both ends, and the toxicity bled through in bruises and tears. It bubbled and popped under the surface, eventually erupting in off-again on-again relationship drama. The couple would drive each other away with their tempers, then Mercedes would lure Josef back with her chocho—Dios, forgive me for my language.
Discord. Seduction. It was the cycle they lived by. Certainly they would wear thin and part ways, Rosalita assumed. Until it didn’t. Until the proposal.
Asking for his abuela’s wedding ring, Josef had announced his plan to propose. Eduardo cheerfully clapped him on the back, praising his manhood. Rosalita, however, pleaded that they were too young, still needed to see the world before making such a big decision. And were they sure they were compatible?
“Aren’t they too young?” Rosalita exclaimed over a dinner of chimichangas that evening, turning to Eduardo for aid in thwarting this nonsense.
“He’s twenty-one, Mercedes is nineteen—they’re hardly children. Certainly old enough to live on their own,” Eduardo argued on his son’s behalf.
One less mouth to feed—that was Eduardo’s agenda.
“But the fighting. Love shouldn’t be so … violent,” Rosalita had further tried to reason.
“Oh, Mama, we bicker. That’s all. About stupid stuff,” Josef said, underplaying the truth of it. “But we love each other deeply. We love, we fight. We’re practically married already!” he laughed.
“There’s nothing wrong with pasión, my boy—it’s good for making babies,” Eduardo had said with a mischievous wink, squeezing Josef’s shoulder in approval.
“You don’t think they’re a bit aggressive with each other?” Rosalita had prodded.
“Enough!” Eduardo had turned on her, the word terse. “You know how you get when certain thoughts enter your head.” He tapped her skull, referring to her paranoia that caused her to say and do things she’d later regret—things that he had threatened to hospitalize her for but relented upon her assurance she would behave. “Those are lovers’ spats. Nothing to worry about, dear.”
But Rosalita was not so easily pacified. When their volcanic hatred eventually erupted, it would either kill their marriage, each other, or their future children. One way or another there would be victims.
These were the thoughts passing through Rosalita’s mind as she sat on her bed watching her future daughter-in-law twirl like a fandango dancer, basking in prenuptial bliss. Try as she might to hide her doubts, the urge to speak them became overwhelming.
“Mercedes, you know I love you, yes?”
“Ciertamente,” she said, mid-spin, then waltzed to Rosalita and hugged her. “You’re the mother I always wanted. If only my mother were alive to see this day, she would be so happy. But at least I have you.”
“Yes, dear, you do have me. And you trust that I’ll always be honest with you, yes?” She grasped Mercedes’s hands in a gesture of affection, hoping it would show her sincerity.
“Of course.” Mercedes sat on the bed next to her, eyeing her with mingled curiosity and wariness.
“Then I must speak truthfully with you now.”
“Okay …” Mercedes sounded doubtful.
“I fear for your marriage to my son. While I care for you both, it is not a healthy relationship. No mother wants to watch her child enter into a destructive relationship. You both have too much brokenness to heal together. Your loss of your mother, and your father the way he is …”
She didn’t want to touch on the inescapable facts of Mercedes’s father’s abusive behavior or his excessive drinking. Somehow they would eventually poison everything Mercedes touched—including Josef and any children they had.
“And then Josef isn’t without his issues, as you know. His urges and anger issues …”
Daring not to say more, Rosalita left it at that. Certainly Mercedes was familiar with Josef’s outbursts—and her instigation of them. Couldn’t the girl see just how ill fated their marriage was?
“I know we’re both flawed, but we love each other. We can work through whatever problems we face. I wish you could accept that. Eduardo has. Why haven’t you?”
