Valentina
I opened my eyes and realized that the men were gone. When I blinked my eyes open, I was staring at the ceiling. Which meant that I was lying on a bed, with a jerk I sat up and touched my clothes, thankful that I was fully dressed. At some point, when they were dragging me out of the truck, with my wrists tied and my mouth gagged, I had passed out from exhaustion.
Anything could have happened in that time, but it felt like nothing had. Other than that, I was trapped inside a dimly lit motel room.
My body ached as I moved. I had been lying scrunched up inside the back of that car for hours, while I could hear the men deciding where to take me. I’d tried screaming the whole time, kicking the walls of the trunk with my heels. My shoes were broken now, and I saw them lying near the bed. Whoever had laid me down here, had bothered to take my shoes off too. What else had they done? Suddenly, I felt like I’d been touched, like I could feel the rough hands of a strange man on my body.
In a panic, I slipped my legs off the bed and ran to the door of the room. It was foolish of me to assume that I could just escape. I pulled and tugged at the lock, hoping it would give way, but of course, I’d been locked in. Chances were that they had assigned people to guard the door outside, to make sure that I didn’t manage to escape. I looked around the room to see if there was any way I could get out or anything I could use. The phone had been ripped from the wall. I could tell by the large crack in the dingy wallpaper by the bedside table. The windows were all covered with bars, even the small one in the tiny bathroom.
I wanted to scream. How could I have allowed this to happen? I should have never come back here. I should have remained disappeared as I had planned.
I walked back to the bed and found that someone had left a tray on the bedside table. A sandwich in cling wrap and a bottle of water. I wanted to rebel and not eat, but my stomach was doing somersaults with hunger. If I abstained from food and water, I knew I would pass out again. And the last thing I wanted was to be unconscious. I needed to keep my wits about me.
So, I sat down on the bed again. The bed that my captors had provided for me, in a small motel room in the middle of nowhere.
I tucked some strands of stray hair behind my ears, and I was confident that I looked a mess. But that was the last of my worries right now. Mascara and eyeliner were streaming down my cheeks, but who cared?
I removed the cling wrap from the sandwich and took a bite. Tuna and sweetcorn, my absolute least favorite kind, but I was so hungry in that moment that I wolfed it down and tore open the cap of the bottle and chugged down all the water too. When I was done, I was panting as I sat there on the bed.
Everything was fine till I got on that flight. I hadn’t been back in ten years, and I shouldn’t have come back.
It had taken me ten years to build the life I had made for myself in Connecticut. In those first years after I ran away; I had worked part time jobs, enrolled myself back in school and paved my way through a teaching degree. When I got my first job as a kindergarten teacher, it felt like I had finally rid myself of all the dust and darkness of my previous life.
I didn’t miss home; I didn’t miss Papi. The only thing I missed, was Jesus…but he had soon become a distant memory too. A fragment of another life, the kind of guy I would never find again, and I wished him well.
I led an ordinary life in Connecticut now. I was renting a small one-bedroom apartment, going to work and coming home to the television and pre-cooked meals. It was a boring life, in black and white, but it gave me the peace I’d been searching for ever since I turned eleven. When I saw Papi beat one of his men to a pulp, and throw his limp body off a bridge.
I had looked up to Papi until then; I had been shielded from his work, so to me…just like to every other little girl, my father was my hero. He was a hero until I saw what he did on the bridge that night. I started asking questions, and I realized what he was doing to Jesus and other boys like him.
I was happy for Jesus when he was recruited by the Rogue Rebels MC. I couldn’t have asked for anything better for him, then to escape the life that Papi had carved out for him. But once Jesus left the gang, I knew we would have no future. Papi nor the gang would ever let us be together. Not while we lived in the same city, not while he rode with the Rogue Rebels.
I wanted him to go, but that would mean that I would have to leave too. So, I ran. I escaped and came to Connecticut, to a small sleepy town where nobody knew my name and where I knew Papi nor his goons would ever find me.
It was difficult to be away from Jesus, to be away from the love that I had just discovered, but this was the only way we could both survive in this world. I made my peace with it a long time ago, but now I was back, and I had no idea where he was. Chances were that Jesus wasn’t even with the Rogue Rebels anymore, that he wasn’t even in the city.
And now, I was a prisoner, and my life was at stake. As was Papi’s.
I wished Papi hadn’t written to me; I wished I hadn’t found out that he was sick. Then, I wouldn’t have got on that flight, and I wouldn’t have stepped foot in this messed up city again. That way, the Muerte Viviente, would never hav
e found me or kidnapped me.
xxx
I knew the men were Muerte Viviente because of their tattoos. They were all of the skulls of the dead. They were covered in them, and I noticed them the moment the group of three men walked towards me at the airport. I had been trying to stuff my bags into the trunk of the cab I had hailed, and before I could react, two of them had grabbed me, while the third lifted me up by my feet. The people around us just stood there watching. They didn’t even move a muscle to try and help.
Within seconds a screeching car had pulled up, and the men threw me in.
I screamed and struggled in the car, while the men pinned me down to tie up my wrists.
“Your father owes us money,” one of them had growled, while another stuffed rag into my mouth so that my cries would muffle. I wanted to say something, to plead with them to let me go so that I could see Papi. What kind of debt had he run into?
“He’s owed us for four months now,” another one chimed in, with a devilish grin on his face while the third ran a finger up and down my left cheek. I screamed, my throat chaffing from my cries.
“He’s not going to be able to pay,” he said, right into my ear and I could smell his beer-breath, and it made me nearly choke.
I didn’t stop struggling, even though my wrists were tied up. How did they know I was coming? How did they know to keep a watch on the airport? But the Muerte Viviente knew everything. If they believed that debt was owed to them, then they were going to make damn sure that it was paid. Even if it meant by taking my life.
When my muffled screams grew too tiresome for them, they stopped in the middle of the highway and dragged me out of the car. I tried to run when they pulled me out, but I was no match for the three Muerte Viviente men plus the driver. They grabbed me and stuffed me into the trunk, while my mascara ran in a heavy dark stream down my cheeks.