by Willow Rose
“It was scary,” she said.
Jean’s frightened eyes lingered on me.
“When will this ever end, Harry?”
I shook my head in disbelief. “When I shut up.”
She leaned back with a deep exhale. “I can’t believe they’d…I mean…come on!”
I nodded in agreement. It was, by far, one of the scariest minutes of my life. Luckily, both Josie and I had made it through without a scratch. She was sitting in a chair on the other side of me, eyes staring blankly into the air, in a state of complete shock. I put my arm around her and pulled her close. Her body was shaking in my arms, but she wasn’t crying. She was just staring into thin air, barely even blinking, hardly breathing.
“Maybe it’s time I cave in,” I said, addressed to Jean. “Maybe I’ve reached my limit now.”
She sat up straight and gave me one of her looks, reminding me of my mother the time I had told her I was going to quit playing baseball because someone on the team was picking on me. I had trouble running fast because I had grown so much very fast and become clumsy and unable to control my long limbs almost overnight.
“You listen to me,” she had said back then, giving me that exact same look. “If you give in to a bully, you empower him. You give him complete power over you. Instead, you show them what you’re made of, Harry. You become the best and the fastest.”
And so, I did. Once I realized those long legs could be used for running really fast, I had become the star of the team within months, and no one bullied me again. I still knew this to be true; you shouldn’t give in just because you go through resistance or because people were pushing against you. But this was different. This was becoming dangerous.
“Don’t you dare even say that,” Jean said. “I will not hear those words leave your lips again, Harry Hunter.”
It was always serious with Jean when she called me by my full name. That’s when she meant business…when she wanted to be sure I was listening.
“I have to think about my family, about Josie,” I said and glanced down at her in my arms. “I don’t think I can justify this any longer.”
“You listen to me, Harry Hunter,” she said. “These people almost killed you and your entire family tonight. You don’t let them get away with this, you hear me? This is not you. This is the fear talking. Don’t let fear do the talking for you. Fear is a coward. Faith is the warrior, and you’re a warrior, Harry. Have faith. And then do your part. Bring them down, all of them this time.”
“But how?” I asked, throwing out my hands. “How am I supposed to do that? I’m talking to the FBI. I’m helping them all I can, but even they keep running into walls of silence. No one dares to rat on their colleagues. They’ve tried to follow the money trail and so far, arrested a couple of officers from our district, but they’ve only just scratched the surface. I have a feeling this goes way deeper. If only there were something else I could do…”
She nodded, then pulled out her phone from her pocket. “Maybe this can help.”
She found a video and played it for me. “I was on my phone right when it happened, checking emails. I saw the car, driving fast down our street, tires screeching loudly. I don’t know why, but something compelled me to do it. I turned on the camera and started recording right before they began shooting. Look.”
She turned the video on, and I watched as the blue car rushed down the street, then slowed down right in front of my house, and some type of automatic rifle was pushed out through the window, then began to shoot. It all went by so fast; it seemed impossible that it was the same incident that I had experienced inside my house. Being in there, fearing for my family’s and my life had felt like an eternity…like it would never stop. In the video, it took less than a minute.
But the picture was very clear of the car, and as I looked in through the window, my heart began to beat so fast I feared it might explode.
Chapter 31
I decided to stay the night at the hospital, while Jean took Josie home. Jean drove Josie to my dad’s place, where she’d spend the night while a forensics team took care of our house. Josie needed her sleep, and there was no reason for her to stay. The doctor had told us Camille was going to be okay. She had lost a lot of blood, and they had to stitch her up on her shoulder and neck, but she was going to be fine. They were all superficial wounds, and there was no severe damage done or any fractures. She had been very lucky, he said. Also, to have an ER nurse as a neighbor to stop the bleeding in time.
“It was all just a very happy ending,” he said.
I didn’t know about happy or ending since I had a feeling this was far from over yet.
I waited until Camille was out of surgery around three a.m., then went with her into the room they gave her and waited for her to wake up from the anesthesia. Around four a.m., she was fully awake, her brown eyes looking at me. I couldn’t – for the life of me—understand how she could look so beautiful even with what she had been through. But she did. She was gorgeous, as always. She parted her lips like she wanted to speak.
I shushed her while pulling up the covers.
“You need to rest, Camille. We’ll talk later.”
She put her hand on my arm, then squeezed it to stop me.
“No.”
I paused. “What do you mean, no? You’re beginning to sound like your teenage daughter; do you know that?”
She looked at me, her eyes strained, painful.
“I…need to tell you the truth. About me. I owe this to you. You’ve been nothing but good to me.”
I shook my head. “Nonsense. You don’t owe me anything. I don’t need to know. At least not now. We can talk about it later.”
I looked away, biting my cheek. I realized my hands were shaking. I had wanted answers, but now that she was offering them to me, I wasn’t sure I wanted them anymore. I was terrified of what they might do to me, how I might react. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know anymore.
Because I feared it would destroy everything. Destroy me and my family.
“But I need to,” she said. “I need to tell you the truth, no matter what it might do to me, what it might do to us.”
I shook my head. She sent me a weak smile.
“It’s time, Harry. No more lies. No more secrets. These people almost killed me a second time tonight, trying to shut me up, wanting to shut both of us up. But it was mostly me because I have the knowledge to take them down. I am dangerous to them, and we both know this.”
I stared at her, my nostrils flaring, not knowing what to do. I grabbed a chair from the corner of the room and sat down next to her bed, holding her delicate hand tightly in mine, pressing back my fears, bracing myself for what was about to hit me.
“All right. I guess we’re doing this, then.”
Chapter 32
“Growing up in the Dominican Republic, all people ever dreamed about was coming to America. Where I grew up, sexual abuse was like second-hand smoke. It was everywhere. You couldn’t escape it. You knew one day it would catch up to you. I was exploited by a couple of my father’s friends, and he let them do it, even received money from them. He was a pimp, not just for me, but for numerous other girls in our neighborhood. It was normal. My granddad was a pimp, and when my brother turned thirteen, he was told he was going to be a pimp too. It was just the way things were where we lived. I knew that I had only two choices. Either I became a prostitute, or I became a pimp. There were no other possibilities, no other way. I remember seeing the people involved in trafficking in their new cars, their big houses, throwing money around downtown. They were living the life. So, I decided I didn’t want to live my life as a victim anymore. When I turned eighteen, I decided I was done being exploited, and I wanted to make a life for myself. And I was good at it. I would approach girls in the street or at the mall, and they’d let me because I was a woman, a beautiful woman. I was nice, and why would some nice woman not be someone you could trust? I would pick the prettiest girl, sitting by herself. I’d tell h
er she had beautiful eyes. If she said thank you, I’d leave. But if she told me, ‘No, I don’t,’ I knew I had her. I looked for the broken ones, the ones easy to persuade, the ones who would want a new life for themselves. So, I told them I could get them a modeling job and told them to come with me to the harbor, where my brother waited with the rest of his team. They’d stack them in boats and transport them to the U.S. coast. I would get my share of the money, and I began saving up. I wanted to get away. I wanted to travel to the U.S. I wanted to go to university, a real American university, FIT. I wanted to become an engineer. And this was my way. It was the only way. There was a lot of money to be made this way. And it wasn’t just young girls. We helped families fulfill their dreams of going to America, of starting over. We helped them get there, and that made me feel good about myself. They were achieving what I could only dream of. Every time I watched that boat leave at night, I would dream of it one day being me onboard, fulfilling my destiny. The power of the dream was so strong, it became a longing, a yearning, and I would often lie awake at night fantasizing about it, wanting it so bad I could scream. One day, when I had enough money, I told my brother to put me on board his boat. I handed him all my savings and told him I wanted to go. He looked at me, then shook his head. You know what he said? He said, “Can’t do it. You’re the best one we’ve got.” He wouldn’t let me go because he didn’t want to lose me and what I could do. It would be bad for his business. So, you know what I did? I went to his competitor, another guy whom I knew smuggled out refugees, and paid him instead. He took me on his boat along with maybe a hundred other refugees, with nothing but the clothes we wore and the dream in our minds. He took me to the coast of America, and then they threw us overboard, telling us to swim the rest of the way. So, we did. Not many made it. I did. I remember sitting on the beach north of here, holding the white sand between my fingers, thinking I made it, I finally made it. I also remember a body that had washed up close to me, then realized it wouldn’t be long before they’d come for us. So, I ran. I ran and hid and became a homeless person in Miami. Living in abandoned buildings, I met many people. One of them told me he could help me make money. And it wasn’t prostitution. He took me to the harbor, where I met with Ferdinand, the guy from your work, and that other man, Wolfe, was there too. Ferdinand said he had work for me if I wanted it. They wanted me to go back and forth between the U.S. and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, and help with the transport. I had an advantage because I was local, and they needed someone they could trust to handle the other side. I didn’t have to stay there, just go once or twice a month. If I did this, he would be able to give me a social security number and a passport. I would become an American. I didn’t even think about it for one second. I had to get off the streets. I had to make a life for myself. So, I did. I eventually made enough money to pay tuition for FIT, and I started there. I kept telling myself it wasn’t bad what I was doing. Everybody does it, I told myself. If I don’t, then someone else will. These people, most of them, wanted to go. They didn’t know what awaited them once they got here. Usually, it was working in a field or a factory; for some, it was prostitution, but for most of them, I truly believed they were given a better future. I told myself I was helping them. They wanted to go. Or they wouldn’t be willing to pay all that money for us to take them on a dangerous trip across the ocean. They knew the risks it involved. That’s how I justified it for myself. But I was suffering. Deep inside, I was hurting. Seeing these people getting stowed away, hundreds of them in small compartments, was awful. So that’s why I started doing drugs. I met a guy at FIT who introduced me to crack, and I took it without even questioning. Here was finally something that gave me peace, something that made me at ease and made me forget. And for about a year or so, I was doing great. I flew back and forth between Santo Domingo and Miami once or twice a month. I kept them on a schedule and made sure they paid our people in Miami and didn’t keep the money for themselves. I ran a tight ship, and no one dared to defy me. When I went back there, I drove a big car. I was the queen of the island, and no longer a victim. I felt important. People knew who I was, and they respected me. It felt good. But once I was back on American soil, it didn’t feel good anymore, and the more drugs I took to subdue it, the more I messed up. I was thrown out of FIT, and soon they found someone else to run the trafficking operation for them. I was cast out and found myself on the streets once again, alone and with no money, only craving my next fix. That’s how fast it can go.”
She sighed and placed a hand on my arm.
“Then, I met you—my savior. You picked me up in an abandoned house down in Overtown, where I had been living for months. I barely knew what year it was. You took me to rehab and paid out of your own pocket. No one had ever been so good to me. You came to see me every day and showed me so much love, it was overwhelming. I had never had anyone love me like that before. So, I decided to leave my past behind, and, once we got married, I believed it would actually happen. I was finally living the dream. When your colleagues, Wolfe and Ferdinand, realized who you were going to marry, they got scared. They came here, came to our house shortly after we married, when you weren’t there, and threatened me. They told me if I ever said anything to you, they’d kill our daughter and me. I promised them I wouldn’t. They came by at least once a year to make sure I wasn’t talking, throwing all kinds of threats around and humiliating me, telling me what scum I was, what a whore I was, and that no one would believe me anyway. They said they’d let me take the fall, and I’d go away for the rest of my life. Stuff like that.”
I looked up at Camille. I had listened while looking mostly at the floor below, my heart pounding in my chest.
“So, why did they try to kill you three years ago? What changed?” I asked, my voice shaking. I felt so repulsed by what I had heard; it was hard even to speak.
Camille exhaled. Her eyes filled and a tear escaped, then ran down her cheek.
“My brother came. He came to my door five years ago. After that, everything changed.”
“Your brother? He was here?”
She nodded, closing her eyes briefly. “He said I owed him money. He had brought a couple of guys, and they threatened to reveal that I was an illegal immigrant if I didn’t pay up. I had made it to America because of him, he said.”
“But it wasn’t him?” I asked. “He didn’t bring you here?”
“Doesn’t matter. He wanted money. So…I…well, I only know one way to get money…”
Camille looked away.
My hand slid out of hers, and I felt myself recoil.
“So, you…went back?”
She nodded, closing her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“I contacted Ferdinand, and he got me working the malls here, finding girls. I told him that’s what I was good at, finding the girls that were broken. They trusted me, I told him. It was easy for me to get to them. They always walked with me willingly. So, I started working for him again and gave all the money I earned to my brother. It was tormenting me, but I couldn’t see any other way out.”
I stood to my feet, pushing the chair across the floor behind me, making a screeching sound.
“You…you were out of it. We had a great life and still you…went back to…that?” I could barely get the words across my lips. “We had everything, Camille, and still you…I can’t believe you. Why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you ever tell me anything?”
“Don’t you understand? I couldn’t. Not only would they kill me and perhaps my family back in Santo Domingo, but I would also…lose you. You’d look at me the way you are now and yell at me like you just did. And I would lose Josie. I couldn’t bear that. I was finally happy. I thought I could stop at any time, that I could just tell Ferdinand I was done once I had paid my debt, but they wouldn’t let me. When I told them I was done, I wanted out because it was tormenting me to be lying to you, they came to our house one afternoon. They broke in through the back door, then injected me with drugs so
I overdosed. They knew my story and knew to make it look like I was just some addict who had slipped. But they hadn’t counted on me surviving. And now, they’re trying to kill me again. These people, Harry…You don’t know what you’re up against. They’re dangerous and powerful. There’s no stopping them. They’re everywhere.”
I stared at her, my nostrils flaring violently, my fists clenched. I could feel pain in my jaw and realized I had bitten down so hard that it was hurting me.
“I…I can’t believe this,” I said, going back and forth inside the room.
Camille was crying heavily, sobbing, and I felt nothing. I couldn’t make myself feel sorry for her, even if I tried. She had chosen this. She had made the choice for her and for us. She had exploited young, innocent girls and sent them into prostitution—sent them to slavery. She could justify it all she wanted. She could tell herself it was okay, that everyone did it, that these people wanted a better life, that she was helping them fulfill their dreams. She could say that she had no choice as much as she wanted to, but the fact was that these were nothing but excuses. She did have a choice. She had a choice back in the Dominican Republic, and she had a choice here. She most certainly had a choice after marrying me. Yet she still went back to it, and that made me angrier than anything.
How could I ever look into her eyes again and feel anything but disgust?
How could I ever forgive her?
“There might be no way of stopping them,” I said, pointing at her. “But you’re gonna help me do it anyway. Even if it costs us our lives. It’s the only way for you to redeem yourself; do you hear me? You and me, we’re taking them down, all of them. You’re gonna tell the FBI everything you just told me. You’re gonna give them names; you hear me? You’re gonna give them all the names they need, leaving no one out. If you ever want to see Josie again, that’s how it’ll go down. Are we clear?”
