“Is this for her?” Alejandra strolls inside my office with a box in her raised hand. She places is on my desk with a smirk. “Interesting. I’ve never seen you like this.”

“Like what?” I ask, feigning ignorance.

“Lovesick.” She grins mischievously.

Alejandra is like a sister to me, and she used to be the only person in the house who’d dare to talk to me like this. But now that Alice lives here too, there are two women under my roof who’d call me on my bullshit.

“It’s just a small gift. Nothing weird about it,” I say casually.

“I know you, Seth Wayne.” Alejandra turns around and walks toward the door. Before she leaves the office, she looks at me over her shoulder and says, “Just be careful. Falling in love is dangerous shit.”

Before I can protest, she pulls the door close.

I turn my attention to the box that Alejandra has placed on my desk. I reach out and slide it closer over the glass. It looks good, I guess. I don’t know much about gift-wrapping. It’s a classic white box with a black ribbon on it.

Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to this extent. Judging by Alejandra’s reaction, this gift is probably not a good idea.

We fell asleep yesterday, and Alice was gone when I woke up. So I thought about her, lying there alone on my bed, which suddenly seemed too big for just one person. I wanted to make everything up to her, and I thought about getting her something.

Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to go online shopping right after sex. All those feel-good chemicals gave me a ridiculous idea and, like shitty friends on a drunken night out, pushed me to just do it.

When I was making the payment on the online store, there was a check box to get it gift-wrapped. In that moment, it seemed like a good idea, for some reason.

I don’t know why I can’t just tell her.

The guilt is obviously killing me, making me do things that are completely out of character.

When Alice asked me if I was ever going to let her go, I thought about telling her the truth. But the way she worded the question gave me a loophole. My answer was technically honest, but I managed to hide the real answer.

I will definitely let her go once it’s safe. The problem is, it’s never going to be safe enough for her to go back out there.

Maybe I can eventually trust her to always have bodyguards with her whenever she goes out—like Alejandra does—but she won’t get her freedom back.

She won’t get her old life back. Ever.

I tried to convince myself I did it for her own good. If she was going to be stuck here anyway, she might as well believe in the best-case scenario for as long as she can. There’s no use worrying.

But all I did was give her false hope.

Most distasteful of all? A part of me is actually happy about having an excuse for keeping Alice close to me.

It’s sick that I’d even think about her plight like that. I should know better, having seen first-hand how captivity destroys people’s souls.

I still remember my first brush with Walter’s victims.

But let’s start from the beginning, from the time I got to know Walter.

When we met in prison, he was the leader of one of the stronger groups. In there, you need to belong to survive, you need people standing behind you to fight those who hurt you. Otherwise, people would just walk all over you.

So Raphael and I, we started hanging out with Walter’s boys, who were running a little black market from inside their cells. We started out at the bottom of the hierarchy, doing the shit all the higher-ups hate. Eventually, we got trusted with bigger and bigger responsibilities, until eventually we were two of Walter’s most trusted men.

One day, when he got released, he gave us a piece of paper with his number on it. He said, “I know you two want to live like Boy Scouts when you get out, getting real jobs and being productive and shit. But I also know how hard it is to get any legit work out there with a criminal record. If you ever want to work for me, just give me a call.”

I got out before Raphael did, but only by a few months. It didn’t take long for us to realize how right Walter was. It was impossible to get a job.

Many job application forms required the disclosure of criminal history, so we were already ruled out of most interviews. Even if they didn’t find out about us being ex-cons early, they’d eventually conduct background checks, and then we’d never hear from them again.

So we were fucked. We had no money, no job, and were about to be homeless, having exceeded our welcome on various friends’ couches.

Guess who we decided to call? That’s right, our old friend Walter.

Raphael and I knew he was doing some real shady shit. But we chose to ignore it. We never talked about what it was that Walter was actually doing.

It was the only way we could think of to earn some living, and we didn’t want something as trivial as morals to get in the way of that.

We did know a few things, but not enough to implicate us in anything. We knew he was running an asparagus farm, and we knew many foreigners were living and working there.

We didn’t communicate with them, though, because they couldn’t speak English. And we didn’t want to anyway. We didn’t want trouble. We just wanted to work. The job was actually a good fit, and the pay was really good, better than any entry-level vacancy we could find.

All we had to do was patrol the perimeter of the premises, preventing anyone from getting in or out. That was it. No questions asked.

But everything changed one rainy night.

I was already feeling like shit, but the oppressive weather made me feel even worse. Fat drops of water covered the ground and seeped through my clothing. It was fucking cold.

I was walking my usual patrol route when I saw him. I didn’t actually see the workers much. Most of the time, there was a high concrete fence and bushes that separated us from them. I only saw them when they first arrived, usually by the truckful.

Maybe I should’ve suspected them for transporting people in the backs of trucks. But like I said, I didn’t care, if caring meant risking the only job I could get.

The man’s skin was dark from having spent much of his time in the sun. I remember taking note of the way it contrasted with his white hair.

He was older than the others I’d seen; maybe in his late forties. He was thin—extremely so. That was the first time I saw someone I’d actually describe as emaciated.

“Hey!” I yelled at him.

He jumped and turned around when he saw me, but I wasn’t just going to let him run away. I went after him and quickly wrestled him down until he was lying flat on the wet soil, rain pelting down on his skin. He was soaked through, and I was starting to get just as wet.

“You’re not supposed to be here.” I pulled his hands and held his wrists behind his back as he lay down facing the ground. “Are you lost”?

“No,” he said.

“I’ll take you back.”

Despite my attempts at ignoring everything that was going on around me, it was easy enough to figure out one thing: the people working in the farm were illegal immigrants. I thought Walter probably hired them because they were cheaper, paying them low wages and giving them food and accommodation.

Wouldn’t this guy be in danger if he were to get outside? How was he going to make it back home? Would his family be able to find him again?

“No!” He screamed and struggled weakly, rainwater getting into his open mouth.

“You need to go back,” I insisted.

“No! Please, please,” he pleaded. “I can’t work. I’m sick.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” No wonder he looked so frail. If he was really sick, it would be best for him to stay inside and wait for the weekly doctor’s visit. Taking a stroll in the rain was probably not the best thing to do for a sick man.

“Let me go,” he said.

“The doctor should be coming on Thursday. It’s only two more days. You should just wait for him,” I said.

“No,” he said. “No doctor inside. I need doctor.”

I let him stand up after securing his wrists with a pair of shiny handcuffs. He was shivering in the rain. As he got up, I noticed one leg of his pants had been pushed up in the scuffle, and there was a black plastic thing around his ankle, the red light on it blinking.

“What the fuck is that?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“Who made you wear it? What is it for?”

Before the man could answer, I heard the explosion of a gunshot and the thud of something blunt hitting the ground. Next thing I knew, the man had collapsed into a heap on the dirt, mud staining his tattered clothes.

I wince.

There’s just no fucking way I could remember that moment without feeling the weight of a thousand regrets crushing me.

I’m a lot better now but, on bad days, I still ask myself a lot of what-ifs.

What if I didn’t stop him—would he have made it out safely? What if I knew what the whole farm was about from Day One—would I have worked there anyway? What if there was some way for me to save the guy, some way for me to prevent a senseless death, and I didn’t do it?

These memories flow into my brain now, flooding me with shame and anguish. I was on the side of the guy who casually murdered a man like it was just another Tuesday.

Yesterday, Alice was completely naked in my bed, except for that ugly thing, that same kind of tracker around her ankle. I felt a pang of regret when I spotted it, but it was quickly replaced by the urgency of lust.

I hate to think she feels just as trapped as that guy, who was willing to risk his life to get out. Because Alice can never go outside again on her own, I think it’s only fair that I give her whatever I can to make her life easier. Unlike me, she didn’t ask to be involved in this.

So I’m going to give her a chance to regain a little bit of her freedom. I know it’s going to make my position more vulnerable than it already is. But what can I say? I have a soft spot for Alice.

I grab the box on my desk and walk out my office to find Alice. I take deep breaths, hoarding air like it’s both my armor and ammunition.