ALEXIS
Ramona disappears and comes back a while later with a small point-and-shoot digital camera. I’m less than compliant when she tells me she wants to take photos of me. I start kicking and screaming, and she counters my refusal with two heavy set women, who hurry into the room and pin me down on the bed while she forces something—a pill—down my throat.
The two women keep me pinned to the bed, grunting as I try and wrestle free of them, until Ramona’s happy that whatever she’s given me will be taking effect soon. They leave, then, and Ramona smirks as I try launching to my feet, only to find that my arms and legs are made out of rubber. I hit the ground hard, but it doesn’t seem to matter. In actual fact, nothing really matters anymore.
She makes me pose in my yellow dress, dead eyes staring straight down the lens, and then she makes me strip. She tells me how I’m to stand or sit, how I’m to hold myself, and she snaps off picture after picture of me, the flash burning another flare of color into my retinas each time. When she tells me to sit on a wooden chair and open my legs for her, I come to my senses long enough to refuse, and she slaps me around the face.
“You’d better just do it, white girl. You don’t want to make this hard on yourself,” she says to me, her voice softening. It’s as though Ramona is both the good cop and the bad in this scenario, which makes it hard to know how to react to her—I never know which side of her I’m dealing with at any one time. She gets her way in the end. I open my legs and close my eyes, and the flash doesn’t bother me this time. I think maybe she’ll tell me she wants to take the shot again, eyes open this time, but she doesn’t. Maybe the people who will be viewing these pictures like when a girl’s shame is evident, along with the most private parts of her body. Maybe that’s what excites them.
“Don’t worry,” Ramona says, as she hovers in the doorway, half in, half out, her job done. “You’ll be out of here really soon. The men who are gonna bid on you, they take good care of their possessions. If you’re good to them, do as your told, you won’t want for anything. It’s a better fucking life than you would have had here with Raphael.”
She says this as though she might know from personal experience what a life with Raphael might be like. I have no choice but to put the yellow dress back on. Ramona leaves me alone in the bare room, my clothes, the clothes I wore in another life still quietly stinking of vomit in the corner, and me curled up in the middle of the bed, too empty and too nothing to even cry anymore.
I eventually fall asleep. I don’t dream, which is a small blessing. It’s dark when I’m woken up—by a silhouette standing in the doorway. Raphael. “You fucking lying whore,” he spits.
I sit bolt upright on the bed, my head spinning. The drugs from earlier have mercifully worn off, but now I feel sick. Adrenalin washes through me in a powerful tide that jumpstarts my heart, sending it into overdrive. Where is Hector? Ramona? Without them here, I don’t feel safe. Not that I’m safe with them here, but at least they would protect their goods, as it were. “You’ve been touched before. I know it. I can fucking smell it on you,” Raphael snarls.
He takes one step into the room, and I push back on the bed, my hands and feet scrambling for purchase against the sheets. “I’ll scream,” I whisper. My voice cracks—so much fear, so much adrenalin—and I think perhaps he might not have heard me. “I’ll scream,” I say again, this time louder, more confident. Raphael snorts.
“Scream all you like. It won’t get you anywhere. You’ve been bought and paid for now, bitch. And from what I know of your new owner, you’re gonna wish you’d never been born. Get ready. They’re already coming for you.”
Ramona’s warning—be good and your new owner will be good to you—was apparently a waste of breath. If Raphael thinks whoever’s bought me is a bad person, then I am totally fucked. “Come with me,” he commands. I get to my feet, my head spinning from lack of food and panic, and follow after him as he leads me back down the stairs. In the corridor, he stops abruptly, turning on me. My head smashes against the wall as he pins me by the throat with one powerful hand. “You should know, Sophia Letitia Marne, that I have a very long memory. And I hate being fucked around, especially by whores. I don’t like not getting what I want. You got a sister, huh? Any family? I am going to find your family, Sophia, and I’m gonna make them pay for your little lie. You hear me? And then, when I’ve fucked and killed your mother and all of your sisters, I’m going to send you pictures. And you’ll know that their deaths were because of you.” He spits in my face, then—a huge, wet ball of saliva and phlegm that hits me on the mouth and cheek. “Just wait and see if I don’t,” he whispers.
A door next to us opens, sending a rectangle of orange light spearing through the darkness, and Hector appears in the doorway, hands on his hips. “Thank you, Raphael. That will be all,” he says. My legs almost collapse out from underneath me when it doesn’t look like Raphael is going to let me go. But he does. He squeezes my neck one last time, fingers crushing my esophagus, and then pushes away from me, growling under his breath. He charges down the corridor and then out the front door, slamming it hard behind him.
“Why don’t you come and wait with me, Sophia?” Hector asks. I’m too paralyzed by what just happened to even contemplate answering, let alone following after him. He takes hold of my elbow and guides me into the lit room he just appeared from, where he sits me down on an overstuffed wingback chair and hands me a tissue. I wipe my face mechanically, too numb to do anything but breathe.
“I should kill you.”
My head snaps up to find that Hector has sat himself down opposite me. I see the room properly now—the rows and rows of shelves along the walls, jammed with books. The writing desk. The fireplace, in which a fire is crackling enthusiastically. This must be his study. Hector bridges his hands together and crossed his right leg over his left, studying me with those green eyes of his. They looked sharp and calculating in the sunshine earlier, but in the muted light they now look watery and inconstant. Like they aren’t any one fixed color and could easily change with the man’s mood. “I hate being lied to, sweet girl. Why did you tell me you were something you weren’t?”
It suddenly feels like I’m choking on my tongue. He knows. He knows I’m not a virgin. “I don’t know what you mean,” I say. Hector tuts disapprovingly, shaking his head.
“I’ve slept with hundreds of women, my girl. I know what an intact hymen feels like. And yours is most definitely broken.”
I don’t answer. It’s better to keep my mouth shut than to confirm or deny the fact. Hector shifts in his chair, apparently getting comfortable. “So really, I should kill you. I would never normally risk such a liability out there, walking and talking, mentioning my name in places it ought not to be breathed. But, you see, I’m currently under investigation for murder. You may know a little something about that, given Raphael’s interaction with Judge Conahue, perhaps? No?”
He dips his head, mouth open, clearly waiting for me to say something. I don’t. “You can imagine how awkward it would be if the authorities chose to visit my home while one of my men was burying a body out the back, of course. They have very unique ways of finding buried bodies these days. Freshly disturbed earth is a bit of a giveaway. A lucky thing for you, Sophia. A very lucky thing.” A clock on the wall chimes, making me jump. Three a.m. Hector sucks on his teeth, tapping his fingertips together, as though he’s thinking on something. “Selling you is the easiest option for me right now, so yes, I have played along with your little ruse. Raphi’s a hot head. He can’t be trusted to have nice things unfortunately. He breaks them, and then refuses to clean up after himself. You leaving this place is best for everyone all round. But let me tell you, Sophia. I heard what Raphi said to you just now. Raphi is a man of his word. He will look for your family, and he will kill them if he finds them. I am in a position to prevent that from happening. All I require from you is that you keep your mouth shut. You don’t talk about me, ever, to anyone. You don’t talk about my home or my employees. Does that sound like a fair trade to you, sweet girl?”
My throat is as dry as the Sahara, but I still manage to croak out an eager, “Yes.”
Hector nods. “Then we have an agreement. I would advise against breaking it, Sophia. I have eyes and ears everywhere. I also have an uncanny knack of discovering if people have been opening their mouths, when they should be keeping them firmly closed.”
“I won’t say anything, I swear.” I almost can’t believe he’s letting me go with another cartel. Seems to me that it would be easy enough to send me out with Raphael a couple of miles into the desert and have him put a bullet in the back of my head, but I am not stupid enough to question him. He stands up and takes me by the elbow again. “Time for us to wait outside. I don’t particularly like the man who has purchased you. I’d prefer he didn’t have to step foot inside my home. Come.”
Hector is weirdly protective about his home, but then again he’s weird all round. I let him take me outside onto the veranda, where he sits me down on the bench swing. “Please don’t move from this spot.” Hector paces with that deliberate, unhurried gait of his down the steps to where Raphael is standing, staring out into the desert. I’m left to do the same. Without any light pollution out here, the dark black velvet of the night sky glitters with an explosion of stars. I have no idea where the rusted van I was brought in here has gone, nor the men that traveled with us. No vehicles, no other people, nothing. Just us, the house, and the stars. Yet again, I’m tempted to slip silently off. The men’s backs are turned. It would easy enough to do right now, but the fear of what they will do to me when they catch me—because there is no if—is enough to keep my bottom firmly planted on the bench.
I hear the rumble of engines before the lights come into view. It’s hard to tell how far away the convoy of cars is in the darkness, but it seems as though there are many of them. I count one, two, three, five different sets of headlights. My whole body is begging me to get up and run, to flee, to see how far I can get at least, before I’m trapped with yet another group of insane, violent men, but it’s too late for that. Too late for anything but to sit and watch the approaching armada of cars float toward us on the horizon. It’s a full five minutes before they’re close enough to make out the great plumes of dark dust and sand being kicked up behind the vehicles in their wake. There are seven cars, not five. Why so many? Hector said he didn’t like the man who’d bought me. Maybe the feeling is mutual. Maybe the extra muscle is to ensure there’s no trouble as the deal goes down.
I’m on the verge of hyperventilating by the time the cars, a mix of sedans and dirty four by fours arrive in front of the house. Hector walks out to the lead car. A window buzzes down, and he shakes hands with the dark figure inside. Men begin to pour out of the cars. Every single last one of them is Mexican. Covered in tattoos and sporting a variety of weapons, they don’t look any friendlier than Hector’s people. The last person to get out of the cars is grossly overweight, dressed in a cream suit, complete with panama hat. And he’s wearing sunglasses. At three thirty in the morning.
Hector slaps the man on the shoulder, grinning and shaking his hand. They speak in rolling, loud Spanish together, and the men standing around them burst into laughter. The fat man signals one of his guys forward. He’s carrying a brown paper bag—the kind Mom used to put my lunch in back when I was in elementary school. Hector doesn’t touch the bag. It’s Raphael that takes it from the other guy, perhaps his counterpart within this other cartel, and begins withdrawing bundles of money from inside. I can’t see what denomination the money is in, but Raphael lines up ten stacks side by side next to each other on the hood of the fat guy’s car.
Hector casts his eye over the stacks, nods once, shakes hands with the obese man one last time, and then climbs back up the stairs toward me. “You go with him now,” he tells me. “And remember what I said. You open your mouth…” He doesn’t need to finish his sentence. “I hope I never see you again, Sophia Letitia Marne.” And with that, he vanishes back inside the house.
When I turn to face my fate, there are at least fifteen men staring up at me in the dark. The majority of them are leering, eyes already eating up my skin, devouring me whole, though the fat guy doesn’t appear to be even half as interested in me. He steps forward, gesturing me forward with an impatient beckoning motion of his fingers. “Come on, child. I have guests arriving at my home shortly. We have to hurry.”
Another thick Spanish accent. I think doing as he asks is probably the smartest thing I can do, and yet I just can’t force myself. My body will not comply. I want to go home. More than anything in this world, I want to be back in Seattle. The idea of voluntarily leaving with these men makes me sick to my stomach. If I do that, my whole world is going to change. I know that without a shadow of a doubt.
“Juan, go and fucking get her,” the fat guy says, talking to one of his men. I see the sneer spreading on Raphael’s face as a tall, thin man with one hand firmly gripped around a gun stalks toward me. I don’t have the courage to back away. I freeze to the spot, my mind racing. Juan climbs the steps, hooks one wiry arm around my waist and then half-drags, half-shoves me back down the steps after him.
“Put her in my car,” the fat guy says.
And that’s what Juan does. I am unceremoniously bundled into the back of the lead car—a dark sedan with blacked-out windows. Juan climbs in the front driver’s seat, and then the rest of his crew helps the fat guy lower himself into the back with me.
The doors slam, the sound of a shotgun ringing out into the night, and that is it—I am sold. People have taken longer to buy a pack of cigarettes. Juan starts the engine, and we’re moving within seconds. I swivel in my seat, turning to watch as the black, black outline of Raphael grows smaller and smaller behind us.
“So. You’re the piece of pussy who’s been causing all this fuss?” the fat guy asks. He lays a meaty hand against the bare skin of my thigh, grunting with approval. “You may call me Mr. Perez,” he informs me, as though entertained by the use of the English address, instead of the Spanish. “And now, I have some friends who would very much like to meet you.”