I plunge the wet rag into the soapy pail of water and squeeze it out between the canary yellow gloves covering my hands. Moving back across the huge master bathroom on my hands and knees, I scrub Sylvia and Raymond’s floor. The marble radiates a chill through me, keeping me cool as I rock my body back and forth, pushing all my weight onto the rag, washing each square inch clean enough to eat off of. But I wouldn’t recommend it. Not when Raymond has such a disgusting habit of pissing at the foot of the toilet and then leaving it there in dark, gross puddles of yellow.

I push the thought from my mind. The last thing I want to think about is Raymond’s piss, or anything else that comes out of him for that matter. I prefer to think of him like a Ken doll. All abs and no… package. Even though he’s gone out of his way to grind up against me like a Chihuahua in heat a couple of times, refusing to let me indulge in the idea that he’s only half a man.

Dragging the heavy bucket of hot water back toward me, I continue cleaning the floor exactly how Sylvia wants it done. She’s very particular about how I clean, how I cook, what I buy, how I talk. It’s endless really, and at times it’s exhausting. However, I know that without her I would be dead.

Literally.

An unwelcome mosaic of thoughts overwhelms me. They kick down the door I try to keep them behind and intrude on my mind just like the men who broke down my family’s door that night. I freeze as the memory grips me tight in its grasp, forcing me to watch, yet again, as the men my father screwed over in Colombia stormed our house.

I hid underneath my big brother’s bed, scurrying behind his huge duffel bag full of old, smelly gym clothes. I cowered in the corner, hidden from the men who took turns raping my mother above me. I cried silent tears as she struggled, and felt the weight of the mattress as it pressed down over me while they violently fucked her. Two other men waited for their turn, holding my brothers nearby, making them watch.

My older brother, Alejandro, screamed at them and tried to fling himself free. He wanted to protect her, but the men just beat him down until he was on his hands and knees, bleeding onto the floor. Miguel, my younger brother just cried. They slit his throat first. They beat Alejandro until he stopped moving and then cut his next. My mother screamed, she stopped fighting them once they killed her babies. She didn’t even try to defend herself when they opened her throat and let her bleed out into the mattress.

They left, laughing and zipping themselves up, wiping the bloody edges of their knives against their pants. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. For hours I stayed curled up, my family slaughtered, completely frozen in terror. My mind played tricks on me, told me that maybe they knew I was there. Maybe they were just waiting for me to come out of hiding so I could meet the same fate as my mama. My body ached and my muscles tensed, but still I didn’t come out. I barely even breathed.

Finally, the door fell open and I heard the loud, heavy footsteps that could only belong to a man enter the house. I shook uncontrollably as I tried not to move, waiting for the next man to find me. I was praying so hard, I didn’t fully understand the noises I heard at first. They sounded like the squeals of a pig, but then I saw his shoe. My father. He had come home and seen what his betrayal had cost him. What it had cost us. When I came out he was crying. I’d never seen him cry before. My tears had all dried up. I looked around at the bodies of the people I loved—my mother, my brothers—then my eyes locked on my father.

“I hate you,” I whispered.

“Ella, I’m so sorry,” he pleaded. “I’ll get you to safety. I’ll make sure you’re okay,” he promised, but I didn’t believe him. We had always grown up knowing my father’s life of crime paid for our clothes and food. Just like every other family in Colombia, we knew that the Úsuga Clan ran the country, and that to try to cheat them was certain death. Yet, my father only thought of himself and it took away everyone I ever loved.

“Mmm-mmm, there’s nothing like seeing a girl down on her hands and knees. How about you flip that dress up over your waist and give Daddy a lil’ peek of that fat ass, Ella?”

A long, spine-seizing shiver tenses up my back muscles and shakes me back into the present. I don’t need to glance over my shoulder to know the obnoxious man standing behind me is Raymond. At twenty-eight, he’s much closer to my age than to Sylvia’s. However, that’s the whole point of having him around, I suppose. He’s her little boy toy. Although most days she treats him more like a pet than a man.

“You’re not my ‘daddy,’ Raymond. Please let me be. I need to get this done for Miss Sylvia.” I don’t take my eyes off the floor as I urge him to drop his swinging-dick swagger routine.

“I might not be your daddy, but you can call me Daddy,” he muses. “Wouldn’t you like that? I know I would. One of these days I’m gonna have you bent over just like that and have you begging me for this cock.”

I shake my head in disgust and glare at him over my shoulder as he tilts his head and contorts his voice to a higher pitch.

“Ohhh, Daddy, fuck me harder,” he mocks me.

Anger spreads like wildfire over my cheeks as heat burns up my back. This is how my father saved me. He had me smuggled over the United States border to a woman he only vaguely knew. She had a lot of experience bringing immigrant girls to America. It has only been her weak loyalty to my father that has kept her from selling me the same way she’s sold the other girls over the years. Although she reminds me almost every day that I can easily be taken off her hands, bought by strangers who would own me as a sex slave. Sylvia brought me into her house and into safety when I was only fifteen years old. Now, at twenty-one, I’ve been her unpaid servant for six years.

I already dealt with her last boy-toy. Raymond is the second one I’ve had the misfortune of meeting. “Go away.” I shoo him off, but he doesn’t budge. His stupid smirk is pasted to his overly tanned face.

“What’s going on in here?”

I watch with satisfaction as Raymond jumps guiltily about a mile high. His shaggy blond hair falls across his forehead and he tries to push it back casually as Sylvia storms in across the bedroom toward him.

“I was, uh, just coming in here to take a shit, but this one”—he points down at me—“is washing up.” He shrugs as the foul lies pour off his even fouler mouth.

“Raymond! I don’t have time for this.” Sylvia swats him with the handful of paperwork she’s holding in one of her hands. “We’re meeting our new ‘human interest’ liaison in San Diego and I don’t have a single thing to wear. Especially since this fucking idiot picked up my dress in the wrong size.” She holds up the exact Dolce and Gabbana dress she ordered me to get for her and flings it around angrily before tossing it at me. It lands over my head and Raymond bursts out laughing as I slowly tug it off.

“Look, Ella, I know English isn’t your first fucking language, but I would expect you to understand me by now! You were supposed to get this dress in a size eight, not off the fucking rack. So, throw this in the back closet with the other crap you’ve messed up. You’re such a pain in the ass. I swear, I should just get whatever money I can for your pathetic ass. If I’d known you’d be this fucking stupid, I would’ve never helped your father out.” She rolls her eyes as her words deliver the slap to my face I know she wants to.

“Yes, ma’am,” I answer passively. I know she’s the one who messed up the size, but I will never say that out loud. She has an entire closet of shoes and clothes that she’s deluded herself into thinking she could fit into. And yet, she always manages to put that blame on me when they don’t fit.

I stand up and gingerly pick up the dress, avoiding eye contact with her. I know better than to push her buttons. Sylvia really wouldn’t think twice about getting rid of me. She’s told me that for years. I bite my tongue and remind myself that my life could be worse. I know that. I’ve seen some of the girls who have stopped in here, children really. They spend a few nights only to disappear into the seedy underbelly of sex slavery.

I step past them and make my way out of the room, keeping my eyes downcast onto the floor. I know my father sent me off so I wouldn’t be killed like the rest of my family, but there have been so many days, so many years now, that I can’t help but wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off dying with them.