She was half afraid to actually believe it.
But the blood splatter that had covered the carpet hadn’t lied.
For two years she had lived in terror. Terror of what was happening to her and a terror of what she knew could be worse, a terror of what was coming.
The last two years had not only left her under a man that lived to terrorize her, but it had also opened her eyes to what she had once thought was a loving family. What she had thought was a regular home, she now knew to be a controlling reign of power. Her father had always been strict, mostly with her mother and herself. Now she knew why.
She was to be a pawn.
While her brothers were off with their friends, going to school, football games, and going with her father to work, she had been at home with her mother, learning about how a house was supposed to be kept. She had been allowed to go to school, but then she was to come straight home.
A pang went through her at the thought of her mother. Although being sold by her father for the family debts was bad enough, knowing that her mother hadn’t wanted her anymore, that she had picked her, it was more than she could bear.
She glanced out the window the scenery flying by them. Scenery that she hadn’t seen in two years.
Two years.
She glanced to the man besides her.
She didn’t know what to make of him.
Something settled in the back of her mind, but she was in no shape to figure it out. Her mind was a muddled mess, a combination of anxiety, adrenaline, and a lingering fear.
In the last two years she would have never thought that a man like him would become her savior. Rosita had often talked while she cleaned. Telling her stories of the other house that she worked at. The boys that lived there.
Her boys.
She had often thought that they were just that, boys. The way Rosita talked you would have thought that they were much younger. But the man sitting next to her was no boy.
He was a man.
A man that had killed Ernesto to save her.
Ernesto was dead.
She still couldn’t grasp the idea.
Was that why she felt safe with him? That she wasn’t questioning whether she was just jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
She knew too well what happened when you trusted someone. After all, even family could turn their back on you.
She would never get that time back. Never be that child again. Never go back to the child that had hoped for a better life.
She didn’t even know if she had a life.
Where did she go from here?
What did she do now that Ernesto was dead?
Did she have to have a funeral or something for him?
What if he wasn’t really dead?
Her heart started pounding at the thought, her vision closing around her.
“Whoa! Fuck,” Marcus called out as the truck swerved. A door slammed, but she couldn’t seem to move. Her heart pounded, her eyes locked in front of her, the yellow dotted lines becoming blurry, as her breathing came in ragged pants. But before darkness could claim her, he was there with his hands on her shoulders, helping her to lean back in the seat.
“Easy. You feel like you’re going to throw up?” She tried to nod at him, but she had a feeling that her head barely moved.
