The Woman in the Trunk

"Okay," I said. "I need to know how you got from the basement to my mother's side. And, for that matter, standing over Terry with a bloody letter opener," I said, reaching up to pinch the bridge of my nose, feeling a headache coming on.

"Are you okay? Should you be under all this stress? You were just shot in the head," she reminded me.

"Babe, my dad is dead, my mom is alive, and I am suddenly the boss of all bosses. There's no way not to be stressed about this. But I need to hear it, so give it to me straight. How did you find my mom? How did you get her out? Where is Terry's body? I need the details," I told her, giving her knee a squeeze.

Then she gave them to me.Chapter FourteenGianaIt was absurd, of course.

So absurd that I didn't trust my eyes, didn't want to believe what the images meant in the long term.

But there was no denying it, either.

There was the letter. It was a nothing letter, really, some rambling nonsense about some house that some guy named Terry had inherited when a great uncle died. Along with that was a newspaper clipping of a house that had once belonged to the sheriff, that had been used to also serve as the town's only jail. Cells and everything in the basement.

It wasn't until the very end that something became significant.

"I was going to sell it. But I was thinking. That bitch can't up and leave you, take your boys like that. And we both know you'd never get custody. Just saying. It's an option. If you don't like the other one."

It didn't take a genius to know the other option was to kill her.

And, why wouldn't he kill her? That was the most rational—in a screwed up way—answer to that situation.

But, as I now knew about Arturo Costa, he was just a small man with a big ego and a lot of ugliness. He needed to be in control in all things in all ways.

What a blow to the pride it must have been to have a wife that hated you so much that she wanted to run and take your kids with her, likely never to see you again.

He couldn't let her do that.

And he was too little of a man to simply handle it.

No.

He was the sort of man who wanted to make people suffer, who got off on that control.

So while the rational side of my head refused to accept that anyone could lock someone up for years, I had a feeling it was exactly the kind of insane thing Arturo was capable of.

And maybe it wasn't even that crazy.

Every year or so, some story would hit the news about a missing woman being found in some creep's cellar, sometimes having been there for decades, bearing and raising children while never seeing the light of day.

People could do some sick things.

Men who wanted power over women, well, they could do the worst things of all.

Like trapping a wife in an old jail just to know she could never get away from you, would likely be forced to endure visits with you over the years while she sat there, her life rotting away, her boys growing up without her.

I sat in a makeshift cell for just a couple days, and I could feel insanity tugging at the corners of my mind.

I mean, if you had told me just two weeks before that I was capable of using someone's food allergy against them, to kill them, I would have said you were insane.

But people became a little more feral when treated like animals.

Some ingrained killer instinct had kicked in.

I couldn't fathom in what ways my head would be screwed with if I had been kept down there for weeks, for months, let alone years, let alone a huge chunk of my life.

I guess I would find out, though.

What other choice did I have?

Arturo was dead.

If there was no more boss, why the hell would his wife be kept alive when she could clearly could point fingers about her imprisonment?

I wanted to be free.

But, I imagined, so did she.

Maybe I should have gone to the cops.

But if there was one thing I was starting to question, it was their ability to do anything about this reign of terror that Arturo had inflicted upon the city.

Palms could be greased.

Or people could be afraid for their lives, for their loved one's lives, so they didn't go after the Families.

I freed myself.

I could free her.

And then I would be done.

I would be able to rest easy.

Okay. I would probably need a shitton of therapy before I could rest easy. But one day. It was a goal worth working toward.

Decision made, I grabbed some shoes and a couple basic self-care items, so I could look less homeless as I hopped on a train out of the city, then took three more trains and two buses before I finally found myself on the block where I would find the simple red brick building.