After a sharp, bumpy turn and a long road of what must be gravel, the car slows to a stop. My heartbeat picks up. I hadn’t realized it had calmed at all during the drive. I hear men outside, smell cigarette smoke. They’re speaking Spanish. That’s the one thing of importance to note. Cartel soldiers? Makes sense. Most important question is what am I to them? Their enemy’s wife or the cartel’s princess?
I’m going to guess the former since I’m riding naked in the trunk.
Someone pops the trunk and although dawn has hardly broken, I have to squint after the complete darkness of the trunk. I hear seagulls overhead and smell fish. As I start to move, the man who punched me, reaches in to lift me out.
We’ve arrived at a harbor. A crappy, run-down little harbor nothing like the ones tourists go to. The boats at the docks look like they had their best days a century ago.
I smell dead fish and cigarette smoke as I stand shivering in the cold morning air, my feet bare on the gravel, my body naked.
Someone lights a match, and my attention is drawn to the sound. It’s my uncle.
Without a glance, he walks past me toward another man I don’t know. That man gestures with a nod and my uncle walks to a sedan with tinted windows. It’s parked just beyond a busted streetlamp in the shadow of a building. I can just make out the shape of two heads in the backseat.
The door opens and I see a pair of khaki slacks. I squint my eyes to see who it is and my heart pounds, the alarm in my head sounding the warning to run. The man inside places a hand on the car door to help himself out. The watch. I know it. And I feel the blood drain from my face as Marcus Rinaldi steps out of the vehicle. Both he and my uncle turn to me.
I make a sound and I realize when my body tries to move, to run, that I’m still bound at ankles and wrists while two soldiers hold me still.
From here I see Marcus’s gaze slide over me, watch his grin widen as he takes me in.
The hands tighten on my arms as I draw back.
Stealing my attention, I notice another man leering at me. This one bigger, with stains on the belly of his shirt, lazily walking toward us. I have no reason to think Marcus or my uncle will protect me if any of these other men try to touch me. The opposite.
The man looks me over; places the cigarette he’s smoking between his lips and reaches behind him. When he pulls out a hunting knife, I open my mouth to scream or beg. But he bends down to cut the zip ties at my ankles then puts the knife away.
The sound of a truck engine has us all turning to the lone road that we must have traveled to come to this decrepit place. We watch as the truck pulls up. It’s beat up and the logo on the side too faded for me to read. But it doesn’t matter because when it comes to a stop and the container door is lifted, I see them, realizing what this is. I finally realize what’s about to happen. It makes me fight again, twist against the two soldiers holding me. We all watch, including my uncle and Marcus.
The other man in the car is still a mystery. I can still see the outline of his head from here.
We just stand there and watch the women and girls lifted off the truck. I count a dozen. All in various states of dress, some with bound wrists. All looking terrified as they’re led single file down to the waiting boat which has just started its engine.
One tries to run and a soldier punches her. Just punches her right in the temple. The force of it knocks her sideways. Someone else screams as she staggers, stumbles, tries again to run. The soldier doesn’t punch her this time. He takes his gun out, cocks it, and shoots her in the stomach.
I don’t scream but the others do. In my periphery, I see my uncle take a drag off his cigarette while Marcus watches the scene with cold indifference.
The woman drops to the ground and the others behind her are made to step over her body. She’s still alive, curled around herself, clutching her stomach. Blood expands in a circle around her, as the man who pulled the trigger, nudges her with his foot and then laughs.
She’ll bleed to death. And it will be excruciatingly painful.
That’s when I hear my name.
I turn to find my uncle and Marcus walking toward me. My uncle is talking, still casually smoking. I remember he used to smoke but had told my brothers he’d given it up.
Marcus puts his sunglasses on as the sunlight breaks the horizon. I stiffen when they approach, and I’m dragged forward to meet them.
“She’s a little bit of a handful. You may remember,” my uncle starts, but I’m too shocked to speak, too terrified to fight. Will I be loaded onto that boat too? Then what? What will happen? Will Cristiano find me? Will he bother to look for me? Will he know or even care what happened to me?
Behind them, the car door opening snags my attention. It’s the other man from the backseat. But he’s got his back to me so I can’t see his face.
“You did good,” Marcus tells my uncle, gaze lecherous, the licking of his lips turning my stomach.
Even as my shock at seeing him registers, there’s more in store. It happens so fast. These things always happen so shockingly fast.
Marcus moves his arm behind him and then there’s a click. Just a soft little click. I know my uncle hears it too because his grin falters as he begins to turn in the direction of Marcus. I wonder if he registers what is about to happen, as Marcus raises the gun, leveling it with my uncle’s forehead.
There isn’t any hesitation on Marcus’s side. Nothing but that cool smile on his lips.
It all happens in the span of moments. Split seconds. The man from the car turns, the sun’s shifting position not allowing me to see his face. He’s just a shape at the far end of the lot.
My uncle’s grinning expression morphs into one of terror.
Marcus pulls the trigger and for the third time in almost as many days, blood splatters across my face and into my mouth. My uncle’s body falls sideways to the ground. Dead. Just like that. Dead, while the woman who was shot moments ago still moans in agony as her life slowly bleeds out of her.
Dead. Final. The end.
I look at Marcus, his eyes on my chest travel lower as he tucks the gun into the back of his khakis. An erection presses against the front of his pants. He’s aroused. It’s not from looking at me. It’s from the kill. Violence always aroused him.
The other man from the car says something. He’s speaking English, but with an accent. I still can’t make out his face. The sun is blinding. But when Marcus steps toward me, my attention is fully on him as I try to free myself of the vise-like grips of the soldiers.
Marcus takes a syringe out of the breast pocket of his shirt and pushes the plunger, clearing any air.
“Long time no see,” he says in that voice that always turned my blood to ice. Without warning, he grips a handful of my hair and forces my head to the side to push the needle into my neck.
I feel the effects almost instantly as my knees give out, touching gravel, the soldiers’ hands still painful on my arms.
“Cover her for fuck’s sake,” the man with the accented English says and I feel something over my shoulders. I can almost place the aftershave, but my vision has faded. Voices, too, just sounds I can’t make out. I’m dragged to where I hear the water lapping against the boats, hear the sounds of frightened women. Their warm bodies the last thing I feel against my own before I lose consciousness.