84

A woman brings me food and water. Each time she keeps her eyes cast down and is let inside by a different man. He stands at the door with his hand on the key in the lock as she clears out one dish to swap it out for another.
I eat a little bit of the stale bread but leave the cold meat. The scent of which makes my stomach turn. It looks to be leftovers someone else didn’t finish. I drink all the water, which I’m grateful is bottled.
I realize the bucket beside the bed is my toilet. My cuffed arm just allows me access to it and when I have to pee, I try not to think of the camera.
I’ve spent two nights here, I guess, assuming that I was knocked out only for a few hours. When I woke up it was already dark. I can hear noise on the street if I concentrate. I think we’re in a city, but this house or at least my room up high enough and must be tucked out of the way enough, that I have to strain my ears to hear it.
It’s the morning of the third day that I hear different voices.
David’s is one. He’s speaking English. The other one I recognize too. I heard it the morning Heathcliff kidnapped me and took me to that pier.
“Cover her for fuck’s sake.”
I shudder at the memory of Heathcliff’s blood splattering across my face and remember the scent of the jacket that someone had draped over my shoulders. The door opens just as I place the voice.
Felix Perez stands in the doorway of the decrepit room. He finishes what he was saying, a smile easy on his face when he takes in first the surroundings and then me.
He steps inside and David follows.
Felix looks different than I remember him, but it’s been so many years. He’s still as short, just a little over five and a half feet. And he’s losing his hair. I notice when he walks inside, glancing at my bucket before crossing the room to look out of the window, that a bald spot has begun to form at the crown of his head. I wonder if he realizes it. Do men realize when they start to go bald? I mean, it’s not like they see that part of their head.
He has his jacket draped over his shoulders. His suit is a worn-out beige, the style about a decade old. It looks like a knock off. Like him. An imposter in a stolen role. He’s also grown softer around the middle. I notice the paunch when, he turns back to face me.
So different from Callahan in every way.
Callahan.
My heart sinks a little deeper at the thought of him. He’s gone. I’ll never see him again.
“You were at the dock,” I say.
He nods.
“Did you have Heathcliff killed?”
“Do you miss him? I thought you’d be grateful.”
“You ordered it.”
“I didn’t need both him and Fernando. Fernando was more useful at the time,” he says, glancing at David with a sly grin, making me wonder what that exchange is about.
“Are you hurt, Cousin ?” Felix asks.
His question causes my focus back to him and he’s cocked his head to look at my face. He has his hands in his pockets. A heavy watch and gold chains crowd both wrists. I remember how much he liked to show off anything gold. Remember how my dad found it so distasteful, found Felix distasteful, like Heathcliff.
The one comment that still comes to mind was about how real men didn’t need to prove themselves with displays of wealth or status. That only those who didn’t belong needed so hard to fit in.
“I don’t know that we’re technically cousins,” I say. Probably not the smartest thing to say.
“By marriage.” He shrugs a shoulder. “I thought you might appreciate having family in your time of need.”
“Are you demented?”
He smiles. “You are ungrateful?”
His accent is strong.
David clears his throat. “We good?” he asks.
Felix shifts his gaze to David only momentarily. “Are you hurt, Cousin?” he asks as he comes closer. Without waiting for my reply, he takes my jaw in one hand and tilts my face up to his before brushing hair back from my forehead.
“Some bruising,” he comments. “It’ll take the price down, of course. Damaged goods.”
I tug my face out of his hands. “Don’t touch me.”
He grins, grips my jaw again, tighter this time. “Does she have all her teeth?” he asks and gestures to David with a nod of his head. David takes hold of both sides of my head while Felix pries my mouth open. I’d bite off his fingers if I could, but I can’t at the angle they’re holding me.
He makes a satisfied sound.
“Not a virgin though,” he says, still peering inside my mouth like I’m some animal. “Virgins bring in more money.”
“That’s on your father-in-law,” David says. “Nothing I can do about that.”
“Sick man,” Felix comments casually. Did everyone know what Uncle Heathcliff had done to me? Did they just stand back and let it happen?
“Anal virgin?” he asks, releasing my mouth, pulling his fingers away before my teeth snap shut.
I tug at my bound arm but of course it’s no use so I draw my head back as he starts to discuss the possibilities of selling that particular part of my anatomy, and spit in his face.
He stops talking, that smug grin instantly wiped away.
My heart races even as I try for a victorious smile.
David mutters a curse. Felix first uses the back of his hand to wipe off my spit on his right cheekbone, then backhands me so hard with that same hand that I fall back on the bed. My head crashes against the wall, then the metal railing, the blow stunning me.
I feel the warmth of blood rolling down my cheek.
He straightens, adjusts his jacket over his shoulder, his expression of rage morphing back into a false smile. For a single instant I see the real Felix Perez. And it terrifies me.
“Apologize!” David orders me.
Felix raises a hand. “No need,” he says. “I expect no less from an Esmeralda. They’re animals. I’d pour the contents of that bucket over your head but then I’d have to smell you.” He checks his watch. “Speaking of, we’re on a tight schedule.”
“We have a deal?” David asks.
“What deal?” I ask.
They both ignore me. Felix punches some numbers into his phone and turns it around to show David, who nods.
Felix calls to one of the men at the door, the one with the keys. He undoes my cuff from the rung of the headboard and re-cuffs my arms behind my back. He lifts me to stand, almost making me knock the bucket over as I do.
“Where are we going?” I ask Felix or David or anyone who will answer. I’m marched out of the room, noticing the apartment we’re in, where two more men sit in the kitchen eating hamburgers. The TV playing in the background is in a language I don’t understand.
Sounds like German.
I’m taken down the stairs, the man simply dragging me along when I trip or don’t move fast enough, before we’re outside.
It’s noisy beyond the alley where an SUV is waiting. It blocks my view of the street, of the people walking and the cars driving by, oblivious to what’s happening here in this dark corner of their world.
The windows of the SUV are tinted an opaque black. I can’t even make out how many people are inside.
I’m barefoot. I hadn’t really thought about it when I’d been in that room but the puddles of water on the street chill me as one of the doors is opened. I’m lifted up and placed in the back seat.
Felix climbs into the passenger seat and turns around as I’m strapped in by a woman who looks a lot like Amma who Fernando employed to prepare me for our wedding. She’s sitting between me and one other passenger. A girl.
He glances at me, then over to her. “I’m sorry she smells, sweetheart. She wasn’t bathed, I’m sure. You know those thugs.”
I look at the girl in the shadowy car, the red lights blinking illuminating her only momentarily.
She has long blonde hair, I see that. And huge crystal blue eyes. She leans around the woman to peer at me but doesn’t speak and her expression doesn’t change. Just huge, frightened eyes on me.
“She doesn’t smell so bad,” the girl says flatly, her accent American.
“You’re too sweet, my little doll,” Felix says, reaching his arm back to caress her face.
She shrinks back a little, but one cluck of his tongue and she leans her face into his hand. She’s young. I see it now when the light from the street shines on her face. Fifteen or sixteen maybe and small.
I want to slap his hand away. I want to make him stop touching her.
“I’ll miss you,” he says to her. She turns her head to look out the window.
“What do you say, Lizzie?” he asks.
Lizzie?
I peer more closely.
She turns back to him, same huge eyes a little shinier in the light.
“I’ll miss you too,” she whispers but inside that whisper, I hear a hint of steel. Just a hint.
Felix smiles then as quickly as he’d struck me, he shifts his grip to twist a fistful of her hair painfully pulling her toward him.
The girl makes a sound but nothing else.
“Again,” he commands.
“I’ll miss you too, Felix. Very much.” No steel this time. It’s melted away. I guess ten years will do that to you.
“Good girl,” he says, releasing her.
She looks down at her fisted hands in her lap. The woman between us unhooks something from her belt, unravels it. It’s a leather strap, about six inches long.
She raises it, crashes it down over the girl’s hands.
I gasp, shocked.
The girl makes a sound but catches herself, swallows it down and releases her fists, laying them flat on her lap. I watch the angry red line form across the tops.
“Better,” the woman says. The girl remains silent, but I catch how her eyes shift to mine momentarily. She must be afraid to get caught. They’ve trained her.
Felix looks at me. He gives me a grin. “Get comfortable. We’ve got a long ride.” He turns back in his seat and switches on the radio to a station playing Spanish music.