I start to sob. I should have thought of this. Centuries ago, they used to confirm a maiden’s virtue before she could be sold off to a husband. And now Hector is going to find out I’ve lied to him, and I’m going to pay the price. I should have just kept my mouth shut. I cry out as Hector’s finger probes deeper inside me. It hurts. The horror of my situation has my whole body clenched tight, locked up and rigid, which makes what Hector is doing to me pinch and burn even more.
I hold my breath, my fingernails cutting into the skin of my palms as I wait for it to be over. For him to call me liar. For more pain to arrive. I’m praying for Matt to come in here and save me, but he won’t. He can’t. No one can.
“She’s telling the truth,” Hector announces. What? I can’t…it takes a moment to register what he’s saying. He believes me? He withdraws his finger from inside me, and even that stings. Lifting his hand, he takes his index finger and slowly slides it into his mouth. “She’s sweet, too. She has a sweet pussy.”
My stomach roils, making dark threats. If I had absolutely anything left inside me, I would throw it up all over the bed.
Hector gives Raphael a conciliatory slap on the shoulder. “You know the rules, my friend. Virgins belong to me. Maybe next time you should fuck them before you bring them home, huh? That way there would be no doubt.” Raphael’s lips are pulled back into an ugly sneer.
“Hector, she is mine! I—” Hector snaps his right hand out, backhanding Raphael across the cheek. It probably didn’t hurt all that much, but the action silences Raphael in an instant.
“I don’t repeat myself for anybody, Raphi. You know that. Please, remember yourself.” Raphael clenches his jaw. He nods once, staring the older man directly in the eye. Hector ignores him; he faces Ramona, maintaining a cool, effortless calm. “Get some pictures taken. Post them immediately. Make sure she gets sent to one of the cartels. I don’t want her opening her mouth about the judge to any of our other clients. Highest bidder wins out. I want her gone within twenty-four hours.” He storms out of the room, wafting a sickly sweet cloud behind him as he goes. I close my legs slowly, pushing down the layers of the dress, crying silently.
I’m to be sold. Like a piece of meat, an object, nameless and unimportant, I am going to be sold.
ALEXIS
Ramona disappears and comes back a while later with a small point-and-shoot digital camera. I’m less than compliant when she tells me she wants to take photos of me. I start kicking and screaming, and she counters my refusal with two heavy set women, who hurry into the room and pin me down on the bed while she forces something—a pill—down my throat.
The two women keep me pinned to the bed, grunting as I try and wrestle free of them, until Ramona’s happy that whatever she’s given me will be taking effect soon. They leave, then, and Ramona smirks as I try launching to my feet, only to find that my arms and legs are made out of rubber. I hit the ground hard, but it doesn’t seem to matter. In actual fact, nothing really matters anymore.
She makes me pose in my yellow dress, dead eyes staring straight down the lens, and then she makes me strip. She tells me how I’m to stand or sit, how I’m to hold myself, and she snaps off picture after picture of me, the flash burning another flare of color into my retinas each time. When she tells me to sit on a wooden chair and open my legs for her, I come to my senses long enough to refuse, and she slaps me around the face.
“You’d better just do it, white girl. You don’t want to make this hard on yourself,” she says to me, her voice softening. It’s as though Ramona is both the good cop and the bad in this scenario, which makes it hard to know how to react to her—I never know which side of her I’m dealing with at any one time. She gets her way in the end. I open my legs and close my eyes, and the flash doesn’t bother me this time. I think maybe she’ll tell me she wants to take the shot again, eyes open this time, but she doesn’t. Maybe the people who will be viewing these pictures like when a girl’s shame is evident, along with the most private parts of her body. Maybe that’s what excites them.
“Don’t worry,” Ramona says, as she hovers in the doorway, half in, half out, her job done. “You’ll be out of here really soon. The men who are gonna bid on you, they take good care of their possessions. If you’re good to them, do as your told, you won’t want for anything. It’s a better fucking life than you would have had here with Raphael.”
She says this as though she might know from personal experience what a life with Raphael might be like. I have no choice but to put the yellow dress back on. Ramona leaves me alone in the bare room, my clothes, the clothes I wore in another life still quietly stinking of vomit in the corner, and me curled up in the middle of the bed, too empty and too nothing to even cry anymore.
I eventually fall asleep. I don’t dream, which is a small blessing. It’s dark when I’m woken up—by a silhouette standing in the doorway. Raphael. “You fucking lying whore,” he spits.
I sit bolt upright on the bed, my head spinning. The drugs from earlier have mercifully worn off, but now I feel sick. Adrenalin washes through me in a powerful tide that jumpstarts my heart, sending it into overdrive. Where is Hector? Ramona? Without them here, I don’t feel safe. Not that I’m safe with them here, but at least they would protect their goods, as it were. “You’ve been touched before. I know it. I can fucking smell it on you,” Raphael snarls.
He takes one step into the room, and I push back on the bed, my hands and feet scrambling for purchase against the sheets. “I’ll scream,” I whisper. My voice cracks—so much fear, so much adrenalin—and I think perhaps he might not have heard me. “I’ll scream,” I say again, this time louder, more confident. Raphael snorts.
“Scream all you like. It won’t get you anywhere. You’ve been bought and paid for now, bitch. And from what I know of your new owner, you’re gonna wish you’d never been born. Get ready. They’re already coming for you.”
Ramona’s warning—be good and your new owner will be good to you—was apparently a waste of breath. If Raphael thinks whoever’s bought me is a bad person, then I am totally fucked. “Come with me,” he commands. I get to my feet, my head spinning from lack of food and panic, and follow after him as he leads me back down the stairs. In the corridor, he stops abruptly, turning on me. My head smashes against the wall as he pins me by the throat with one powerful hand. “You should know, Sophia Letitia Marne, that I have a very long memory. And I hate being fucked around, especially by whores. I don’t like not getting what I want. You got a sister, huh? Any family? I am going to find your family, Sophia, and I’m gonna make them pay for your little lie. You hear me? And then, when I’ve fucked and killed your mother and all of your sisters, I’m going to send you pictures. And you’ll know that their deaths were because of you.” He spits in my face, then—a huge, wet ball of saliva and phlegm that hits me on the mouth and cheek. “Just wait and see if I don’t,” he whispers.
A door next to us opens, sending a rectangle of orange light spearing through the darkness, and Hector appears in the doorway, hands on his hips. “Thank you, Raphael. That will be all,” he says. My legs almost collapse out from underneath me when it doesn’t look like Raphael is going to let me go. But he does. He squeezes my neck one last time, fingers crushing my esophagus, and then pushes away from me, growling under his breath. He charges down the corridor and then out the front door, slamming it hard behind him.