When we entered the clearing, Raven immediately got to work and took up her post. She never told me how the girls felt about her having a relationship with me, leaving the camp monthly, and returning after two weeks. If she had friends, she didn’t tell me. We deliberately kept the girls apart from each other so they wouldn’t be able to organize a coup.
I purposely walked up to Alix and put him on the spot. “Any news to share with me?” I got so close to him that he was forced to take a step back. Of course, I moved in again, just to make him uncomfortable. The beating I gave him was more than enough retribution for what he had done to me on so many occasions, but I would never forget the sound of my woman’s screams, forget the way she woke up in the middle of the night and stared right at the door, like he was coming for her. I’d publicly humiliated him when I made him bloody and made him ask for mercy, but would that ever be enough after what he did to her?
No.
I didn’t care about what he had done to me. I cared about what he had done to her. And sometimes I wondered if I would just snap one day…and kill him.
Alix found his answer. “No. Everything has been running on schedule.”
“How’s your nose?”
He didn’t speak.
I spat right on his face, knowing I hit my mark when he jerked back slightly.
The other guards didn’t react at all and kept their eyes on the girls.
“You’re my bitch now, asshole.” I walked off and headed to my cabin, knowing no amount of humiliation would subdue my anger. He’d provoked me too many times, and then he went after the one thing I actually cared about.
Raven and I fell back into our old routine. I worked late catching up on everything that needed my attention, and when I returned to the cabin, I sat at my desk and worked on my laptop.
Raven sat on the floor, leaning against the bed to watch the TV. She was quiet, rarely talking about her day and rarely asking me anything. I knew she wasn’t upset with me. This place just infected her mood like a virus.
When she was ready for bed, she turned off the TV, brushed her teeth in the bathroom, and then got under the sheets. We no longer shared an oversize bed, but we didn’t mind being pushed together into a single person.
My back was to her, and I continued to work on my laptop.
Her voice was low as she spoke. “How did you get into this business?”
I answered as I typed. “We started as distributors on the street. We would sell a few ounces so we could make rent and buy food. The older we got, the more ambitious we became. We eventually took control of the business we used to work for, and the rest is history.”
“So, after the night when…everything happened…that was what you did to survive.”
“We had no other choice.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
I remembered everything like it was yesterday. “For the first few weeks, we lived on the street. Fender got pneumonia, and we couldn’t afford to see a doctor, so I had to rob some guy…” It was wrong, but I didn’t feel guilty about it. If I hadn’t gotten my brother what he needed, he would’ve died. “We would eat people’s leftover food from the garbage can. We would live outside in the elements, hot and cold. We couldn’t go to the police or do anything else because we knew our father would hunt us down and finish the job. It was a rough two years…until we got into the drug business. We were desperate and ambitious, and the desperation led to the empire we have now. It’s another reason Fender is so obsessed with money because he doesn’t ever want to feel helpless again.” A lot of other terrible things happened to us in that time period, but I chose not to disclose them. Everything I’d already said was heavy enough.
She was quiet, like she had no idea what to say to that.
“I don’t agree with what we do to the girls here, but I’m not ashamed of everything else I’ve done. I don’t feel bad for the people I robbed. I don’t feel bad for being, first, a drug dealer and then a drug kingpin. I don’t feel bad for the lies I told to good people because I needed something from them. When you’re in survival mode, you have to do bad things to live to see the next day. Anyone who judges me can be damned.” At this point, I knew there was nothing I could tell Raven that would make her feel differently about me. We were bound by the journey we both took to be together. We suffered greatly for each other, and that kind of loyalty was unbreakable. So, I told her everything without a filter, just so she could understand me a little better. Understand my brother a little better.
She still didn’t say anything.
The silence stretched for so long that I turned around in my chair to look at her.
She sat up in bed, that pained look on her face, as if she were picturing those dark nights, the street fights, the tears Fender and I both shed when we were scared. “I don’t judge you…at all. I think it’s inhumane to judge someone for what they do to survive. The people who do have no idea what it’s like to be hungry, to be scared.”
I knew she’d lost her mother when she was a teenager, and then she had to take care of her younger sister when she probably didn’t know how to take care of herself. So, she understood my story. Maybe she had never experienced it as intensely as I did, but she understood.
She patted the mattress beside her, telling me to join her in bed.
I still had a lot of shit to do, but work meant nothing to me when I had something more valuable just a few feet away. I shut the laptop then stripped out my clothes so I could join her. I slid into the sheets beside her and pulled her close, our faces almost touching.
She rubbed my chest with callused fingertips, looking at me with a mixture of sympathy and pity. But there was also something else there…admiration. “You’re right.”
My eyes shifted back and forth as I looked into hers, questioning the words she’d just spoken.
“We are the same person.”
I stepped out of the communal cabin and noticed the torches. They were lit up around the perimeter of the clearing, less bright because it was still light out. In the summer, the light wasn’t really gone until at least eight in the evening. But the symbolism of the torches was enough to instill fear in every woman sitting at one of the tables.
I never took part in the ceremony. I was either in my cabin or elsewhere. I was in charge of this camp when Fender was away, so I rarely busied myself with tasks that involved the prisoners. The only reason I had been Raven’s guard in the first place was because we had lost a guard recently and we were shorthanded.
It was crazy how life worked out sometimes.
I stopped on the porch and looked at the torches. Alix wore the garb of the executioner, a mask covering the bottom part of his face while his hood was pushed down. He lit the final torch near the noose then began to stride down the aisles between the tables, looking for the victim they had already chosen.
It was cruel.
Alix kept moving and walked right past Raven. Whether I was around or not, he was smart and didn’t look at her. He was afraid of me—always.
He should be.
He moved down a different aisle and stopped behind a woman who was probably approaching fifty years of age. I recognized her face because she was one of the first women to have come here, and when Raven liberated the camp, she was one of the few who didn’t make it out. She started to tremble and shake, like she knew Alix was right behind her. Her eyes immediately moistened with tears.