“Hey! Hey!” The man points at me, rounding the van. The one trying to sell these women. I ignore him.
“Do you know what the fuck he’s trying to sell you?” I look to my dad, who follows the man around the van. He glances at the women, his face seeming unaffected by their terror. He knew about this?
“I’m not doing this. I won’t be a part of this,” I tell him, shaking my head. I’ll kill, rob, beat the shit out of, and even bury someone alive, but I won’t have any part in trafficking women.
“Problem?” the guy asks, looking to my father and then to me. I run my hands through my hair, stepping away from the van as if it’s holding a ticking bomb.
“Yeah, there’s a problem. We won’t be buying,” I sneer, my hair falling back into my eyes.
“Romeo,” Father warns me, as if I’m embarrassing him.
“This is good, these are good!” the man shouts, his face pulling into anger.
“Are you kidding me?” My head tilts to the side with disbelief.
“You can do whatever you want with them. Sex, drugs, anything you—”
I pull my gun from its holster ready to kill this guy and do the world a favor. His two men draw their guns, aiming right at me.
Tony and Leo pull theirs from their holsters and point them as well and it’s instantly a giant shitshow. Maybe I could have pulled my father to the side and told him what I thought of this exchange, been more collected and cool about the whole thing but… fuck that. I knew my father was going to bring me into the worst possible situation, and he did.
The man reaches inside the van, jerking a woman out until she falls on her feet. He takes a gun from one of his men and points it at her.
She weeps, her long hair covering her face like a dark curtain of mud and tangles. Her fingers digging into the ground as her knees shake with terror.
“You take one, or I kill her!” he threatens. My eyes pop to his. “You disrespect me, and my product. You take one.” He pulls the chamber back and aims back at her, women inside of the van scream and hold on to one another. “Or I kill her!” he repeats.
My heart races inside my chest, my palm sweaty and finger caressing the trigger. If I shoot him he’d still manage to shoot her, and one of his men will shoot me, or the man would shoot me and his other goon shoot one of my uncles or father. Either way, someone is getting shot and killed if I don’t accept this woman.
I lower my gun, my lips pressed into a fine line. I can’t say it. I won’t say I’ll take her.
“Sold,” my father says, reaching out and pressing his hand on the man’s gun, lowering its aim to the ground.
The man lifts his shoulders as a way to relax himself and hands the gun to his goon.
“Good.” He smiles and looks to my father.
“You’ll see, you will like and you will contact me for more,” the man says, in short words. His English shit.
Dad pulls out his phone, the screen lighting up his face like a ghost in the night. One that hunts under bridges and buys innocent women.
“The money has been wired. Now I think you’d better leave before I lose my temper for your disrespect at my son,” Father says with a sharp tongue, his nostrils flaring. Shock has my mouth parting, he’s standing up for me instead of being angry. This is a first. I was sure he’d tell the guy to just go ahead and kill me.
The man gives a curt nod and gets into the passenger side of the car, the doors close to the van concealing women whose faces are probably on missing posters in markets and telephone poles around the world.
When they’re gone, just the lights from my car and my father’s town car giving off a low glow.
“Take her,” my father demands, his voice angry. My eyes snap from the girl to him. He wasn’t angry with the seller, he’s angry with me. I knew it.
“No,” I tell him.
“You got us into this by opening your fucking mouth, you take her. She’s yours.”
He reaches down, grabbing the girl by the arm and raising her to her feet. She whimpers, her body nothing but bones under a cheap dress. He shoves her into me, and I catch her. The feel of her cheap dress under my fingers, and the smell of body odor causing me to want to drop her on the spot.
“I said take her,” he growls under his breath.
“Why would you agree to meet a man selling women? Does Kieran know you’re in trafficking?” I shout, the vein in my neck drumming to the beat of my heart.