The Fall of V

by Jessica Gadziala

  Actually, this was another mostly-empty room with boarded windows, white-faded-to-yellow walls, wooden floors in desperate need of wax, or even simply a broom and mop, and one lone captain's chair in a hideous salmon color butted into a corner.

  That was it.

  Almost as if this place was temporary.

  Temporary, but Chris had been here months.

  If they were just squatting, surely someone would have seen and reported them by now.

  Unless we were in the middle of nowhere.

  That thought made me feel anxious and comforted in equal turns.

  Anxious because if we were in a populated area, when we escaped, we could find a house and ring the bell, find a road and flag down a car, find a restaurant and beg for protection while we wait for the cops.

  It would be the easier solution.

  But comforted because if we were in the middle of nowhere, there would likely be woods to disappear into. And while I wasn't exactly the survivalist like Uncle Duke, I certainly knew a lot about the woods from time spent with Uncle Wolf and Malc in them.

  I could guide us through them.

  If they were too thick, I could ensure we survived in them for a few days before we could find some help.

  Either way - in a populated area or the woods - I would make sure we all made it out of here.

  But an hour past.

  An hour and ten.

  Then feet.

  Boots.

  And something else.

  Something I heard a million times before.

  From my mom.

  The girls club.

  My friends.

  From even myself.

  Heels.

  But, no.

  That couldn't be right.

  This was a place of masculine evil.

  It was no place for a woman in heels.

  But they kept coming closer, somehow matching the thumping of my confused heart.

  The boots stopped first.

  The knob turned.

  I raised my arms, ready to stab forward if necessary.

  And, well, at this point, I was pretty sure it would definitely be necessary.

  By any means, Aunt Janie would tell me. You have a right to protect yourself for any reason and by any means.

  I had a right to defend myself, God-given and undeniable, up to death, right through it.

  "Well, well," A woman's voice said, low and almost melodic, but in a cold way, like the chicks in movies you just knew were going to end up stabbing someone or stealing someone else's husband. "It seems this little mouse refuses to be caged. Something will need to be done about those wooden spikes," she added to the same man who had bound me to the chair in the first place.

  He took an immediate step forward, but hesitated, something in his eyes relaying some sort of worry or maybe - dare I even think it - fear.

  "What are you waiting for?"

  "Saw what she did to Harry."

  "Oh, yes," the woman said, smiling evilly. "Harry. It seems you managed an impressive feat. You ruptured his liver and cracked a rib into his lungs."

  Cracked a rib into his lungs.

  Into his lungs.

  Which would mean sure death if it wasn't treated immediately.

  Maybe it was, though, I comforted myself, finding that the idea of killing someone and the practical application of it were two completely different things.

  Maybe that was what took so long, getting him to a hospital, getting the situation sussed out.

  I swallowed a bit hard, lifting my chin, not wanting any of my uncertainty to show. If she wanted to believe I was a heartless killer, then that was what I would be.

  "Am I supposed to feel sorry about that?" I asked, taking my cue from her, dropping any feeling at all from my tone.

  "Well, any decent person would. Seeing as I can't have that kind of situation tracing back to me, to here. Harry, unfortunately, needed to be put down."

  Killed.

  He'd been killed?

  Two things tried to fight for space in my mind then.

  First, I wasn't a killer. I mean, if we wanted to get technical about it, he would have absolutely died from the lung puncture that I had inflicted if he didn't get to the hospital soon enough. But, technically, I had not taken a life.

  Second, this woman was speaking as though she was the boss.

  But the boss to what?

  An army of men who preyed on girls.

  But, no.

  That made no sense.

  There was no hierarchy in that, no ruling position, unless...

  Oh, God.

  She was a human trafficker.

  She was a predator of women.

  A woman herself.

  Something flew back to the forefront of my mind, buried and dusty from time, muffled because I had been pretending to sleep one night at Hailstorm, so my mom and aunts would talk more freely, and I could listen in.

  "That's how it is, though," Aunt Lo had been saying. "With women."

  "But wouldn't you agree that we are more nurturing by nature?" Mom had asked.

  "Sure, but if something happens, something robs a woman of that nurturing quality, there is no more heartless, no more ruthless, merciless creature on the Earth. Give me ten male kingpins over any one female one any day. That's all I am saying."

  And here I was, facing my Aunt Lo - by all standards one of the most badass women in the world - 's biggest nightmare.

  A female kingpin.

  A woman who trafficked other women.

  A woman who allowed her men to chain girls in the basement to beat and rape to their evil heart's content.

  My spit turned sour, hard to swallow without cringing, but I fought it. I tried to school my face in nonchalance even as I lifted my chin higher.

  "Put down?" I asked.

  "Yes."

  "Hopefully right out in the backyard like the rabid dog he was."

  "Oh, I like this spirit," she said, nodding.

  Almost like she was... I don't know, proud?

  But that made no sense.

  Why would she be proud of imprisoning a girl with 'spirit'?

  "My goal in life, to impress heartless human trafficking bitches."

  Apparently, once you started cussing, you couldn't stop. No wonder most of my uncles, and at least half of my aunts used them to punctuate their points.

  "Take a good look at me, dear," she invited, even though I was clearly looking right at her.

  "I'm looking right at you."

  "Look through eyes not so heavily laced with teenaged angsty hatred," she clarified, making my hackles only manage to rise further. There was maybe nothing in the world I hated more than adults condescending to me, as though a couple of years made that big of a difference with emotions and passions. I knew adults who flew off the handle - both to hysterics or violent rage - far more easily than my age-mates did.

  But she was right; all I could see when I looked at her was what she had allowed her men to do to other women, what a soulless, heartless monster she was.

  I wasn't sure I had even really seen her until she demanded I do so.

  It took just seconds.

  Three, tops.

  Three seconds to see it.

  Because there was no mistaking it.

  It was in the subtle contours of a body, so familiar. In the bone structure of her face. In her eye color. My eye color.

  And, finally, it was in the hair.

  The red hair I had always envied, mostly in the confines of my own heart, not wanting to come off as insecure, or that I didn't want to inherit the dark hair from my father.

  But that was my mother's hair.

  It was my mother's face.

  It was my mother's body.

  Plus a few years.

  Which, really, could only mean one thing.

  "Now you're getting it," she said, smiling.

  That was one difference.

  While, technically, maybe those were the same lips, that wa
s not the same smile.

  When my mother did it, it lit up her whole face, it etched deep into her cheeks, made her eyes dance, gave her happy creases.

  When my mother smiled, it was a sight to see.

  Whereas with this woman, all you could see was the smile of a snake, fangs dripping, just ready to sink them in and infect you.

  "What? You don't want to give your grandmother a hug?"

  There it was.

  A confirmation I didn't really need since the DNA was undeniable, but somehow, hearing it aloud made it feel more real.

  Sickeningly real.

  Because if this was my grandmother, it meant some of her was in me, there was a connection - even if it was only genetic - binding us.

  I couldn't help but wonder as I looked at her, as my mind tried to process this information, how did others do it? How did the parents, siblings, children of serial killers, rapists, or pedophiles handle the weight of that reality? That they were related to monsters? Did they wonder if there were pieces of that evil in them as well? That such a thing could be hereditary?

  Even as I thought those things though, another realization crowded them out.

  My mother was related to this woman, more completely than even I was.

  And there was no kinder a woman, more caring a mother, no more devoted a wife, the most morally-minded woman I had met. She was pure goodness, light, warmth. With a little dab of grit and strength to even it out, so she wasn't all mush.

  That was who I had come from.

  Not this abomination before me.

  "I guess I shouldn't be surprised they never told you. They'd rather brush me under a rug, lock me up in a cell, deny that I ever existed at all."

  They?

  But even as the question formed, things started coming back to me.

  Like stolen snippets of conversation that abruptly cut off when my grandfather would come to visit to speak to my parents, and I would catch him saying that she was nothing to worry about, that she was never going to get within a mile of my mom and us again.

  Again.

  Like she had gotten to us before?

  But I would have remembered that.

  I remembered the eye color of my first Barbie from back when I was three-years-old - an inhuman cobalt blue that I colored over with brown a few weeks after getting it.

  I would have remembered a woman 'getting to' me before.

  So, what then?

  My mom?

  My mom.

  See, I hadn't really gotten up the nerve. To ask. I had tried over the years, wanting to know, wanting to understand, wanting her to share it with me. But she was fiercely protective over them, covering them up if I happened to walk in on her changing, quick to whip around to face me so her back was hidden.

  The scars.

  My mom had a lot of scars.

  All across her back.

  All old, healed, but still slightly raised, white-ish, shiny, standing out against her otherwise perfect skin.

  Scars that had troubled me whenever I thought of them, knowing the layout of them was too precise to have been from some freak accident where she got torn up somehow.

  And, besides, if it was just some freak accident, there was really no reason to hide them from me, to keep the truth of it to herself.

  So the reason had to be more personal, more evil than that.

  I had wondered once, feeling my loyalty tugged in two directions, if maybe my grandfather had been a different man when he had raised her, if he had been heavy-handed and brutal, in complete contrast to the man who snuck me candy and brought me on wild shopping sprees at the toy or book store.

  I had never been able to picture him doing it, picking up some object, and slashing it across my mom's back.

  You never really knew what someone was capable of, what ugly resided in their hearts, but I never could accept that as the reality.

  But maybe there was a different explanation.

  Maybe this woman before me, who had a black hole for a heart, maybe she had been one to find so much fault in her daughter that she sliced her open, made her bleed.

  Now that was a reality I could easily accept.

  Maybe that was what she meant by they.

  My mother and grandfather, who kept this from me, protected me from it.

  Not sure what to say, not wanting to show a weakness by protecting my family, I said nothing at all, just listened to my own heartbeat, the steady whooshing sound of my pulse in my ears.

  "I've seen them, you know," she went on, clearly having it in her mind to have a heart-to-heart with her long-lost granddaughter. To what end? That was yet to be seen. But if she wanted to talk, it meant more time for me to think, to process, to plan to figure how I could play this to my advantage.

  "My daughter. That thug she calls a husband. Your brothers. Those people you call aunts and uncles. The same people who have refused to tell you about me since you were born, who also conveniently left out that they kept me imprisoned in a cell on your grandfather's property for even longer than that."

  I tried not to let her words have impact, tried not to feel anything about them. Which was clearly her motive in telling me.

  But how could I not think about it? Feel about it?

  Even if I didn't want to - because I loved these people more than I had words to express, and I had a lot of words - there was no stopping it.

  The sinking sensation in my gut, a sensation I had no other word for except horror.

  I wanted to deny it, to say they weren't capable, no matter what this woman had done to deserve it, of illegally imprisoning her for decades.

  Even if that was where she was headed - to a cell - it had to be done right. Right? You couldn't just catch people, throw them in a cell, and act like life could just go on as normal, like you weren't some makeshift warden.

  It was especially hard for me to picture my mother being a part of that. My father, Aunt Lo, I got that. I wasn't naive. Their operations were the types that operated on the fringes of society, that crossed lines normal law-abiding citizens didn't even want to think about.

  There were things I generally didn't let myself think about.

  Even knowing what I knew about their operations.

  I didn't let my mind drift to the uglier things.

  Like to maintain their reins at the top, Daddy and Aunt Lo likely had to do things that weren't simply questionable morally, but outright wrong.

  Torture.

  Murder.

  It was hard to accept that about these people who had braided my hair, who had held my hand at my first dentist appointment, who wiped away tears, who treated bloody knees.

  These were people who had taught me fundamental life lessons that had shaped me into who I turned out to be.

  But for all that love and light, there was no denying there was also a healthy dose of dark, or heartlessness.

  That was a hard thing to accept.

  But there was no way to avoid that harsh truth when there was a woman before you - like it or not, a family member - who was telling you that these people you shared meals with, trained with, laughed with, had put her in a cell to rot.

  That being said, I know these people. I knew that whatever it was she had done meant she had earned such a fate.

  "I can't imagine you were innocent," I said, shifting my gaze to her man who had decided it was safe to approach me.

  It would never be safe to approach me again.

  That was the odd, rather unwelcome thought, that crossed my mind right then. But even as I wanted to deny it, I saw the truth in it.

  In what she had allowed to happen to me.

  She had made it so that even if I escaped, even if I took every precaution to make sure nothing like this could ever happen to me again, it would never go away.

  The pulsating, undeniable distrust that flowed through my veins as sure as my blood did.

  Any man's gaze who lingered would set me on edge. Anybody that got too close would make my hands
curl into fists to protect myself. Any basement would bring images flooding back like a riptide trying to pull me under the crushing weight of them.

  It wouldn't matter how much I trained, over-trained, tried to make my body the weapon I knew it could be.

  More determined even than Aunt Janie.

  More hardened than Uncle Pagan.

  More diverse than Aunt Lo.

  More relentless than Lenny.

  I would make myself into a whole other beast entirely

  Unstoppable.

  Untouchable.

  Un-take-able.

  No one would ever again put me in a situation like this woman - my grandmother - had.

  No one would ever again make me feel helpless, trapped, hopeless.

  And in my heart, I knew that maybe meant something for my future that I would have to face eventually.

  But those were thoughts for another time, when I didn't have other, more pressing things to worry about.

  My freedom.

  Chris'.

  Mary's.

  That had to be at the forefront of my mind.

  Not my father's - and aunts' and uncles' - dealings.

  Not what they had done almost two decades ago.

  Not what I would do weeks or months from now.

  All I had right now was this moment.

  This moment with a big guy who wanted to take my weapons from me.

  This moment where I was confronted with a psychopath who also happened to be my only living grandmother.

  This moment where I wasn't exactly sure what part I was supposed to play - the sympathetic ear, or the badass she had been impressed by.

  "Who on this Earth is innocent?" she asked, shrugging one of her shoulders as her gray eyes pierced into me. "No one. Not even you, granddaughter." I must have raised a brow, shown some sign of confusion or interest - both of which I felt at those words - because she went on. "All the petty rebellions. And moon-eyeing a man you know would go to jail if he touched you."

  Vance.

  It was weird; I hadn't thought about him at all.

  It was especially strange seeing as for the past several years, it seemed impossible to think of anything else. At least not for longer than a few minutes. He was like a magnet, and my mind was drawn to thoughts of him, images of him, dreams of him.

  But it had been days.

  Days when maybe my mind should have drifted, should have sought out his memory, should have found comfort in it.