I drank myself halfway to death, hoping it would spare me from suffering down the other half of that path, once someone found the backpack and told Pablo about my botched attempt at an escape.

It was the best I could do. I’d tried to go back down to the pantry, hoping that by some miracle the bag would still be there. Pablo had grabbed me by the waist, kissed the crook of my neck, and murmured:

“Come on, Gordita, just stay with me.”

I watched him all night, scrutinized his every move, deciphered every whisper someone whistled into his ear, analyzed every twitch of the lines on his face. And yet, whenever he looked back at me, he smiled.

When he asked why I was crying, I told him I had something in my eye. When he asked if I was okay, I always lied. In fact, the only truthful thing I said all night, was when he asked me if I wanted to dance, and I told him I couldn’t because I felt I was about to barf.

I felt sick to my stomach, not just from all the drinking, but because my mistake might get someone killed. That someone was Mafer. The note she’d left me was still in the backpack.

Sure, it was just a symbolic little piece of paper, an innocent game of Tic-Tac-Toe, hardly proof of anything in a lawful world. It carried no names, no confessions, no instructions, nothing that could clearly link Mafer to my escape. But I knew she’d be the first person they’d suspect of having helped me, and I remembered telling Pablo about our daily games of Tic-Tac-Toe. For these lawless men, that note was proof enough.

If Pablo found the backpack and everything inside it, it meant a death sentence for Mafer. If only I could have gotten to the maid’s quarters and warned her about what happened, maybe she would have had time to pack up her things and leave, or at least come up with a convincing excuse to save herself. Pablo’s hand held on tight to my wrist like a shackle, and I was utterly hopeless.

The best I could do to spare myself from the torturing feeling of guilt was to drink – drink until I forgot what had happened and stopped thinking about what I could have done to prevent it.

On that night, I forgot many things.

•••

I woke up tangled in satin sheets. My head hung limp over the edge of a large bed, strands of my hair stroking the bottom of an empty bucket beneath my chin. I crossed gazes with a tiger skin carpet, as its dead, glassy eyes stared back at me.

“Pablo?” I called out, struggling to lift my heavy head.

The bathroom door opened, and he walked out in a cloud of steam, a white towel wrapped around his lower half and a toothbrush sticking out from the corner of his mouth.

“Good afternoon, Gordita,” he answered. “Are you awake?”

“No, I’m fast asleep, you moron,” I groaned. “Did I sleep here?”

“No, you just materialized before my eyes fifteen seconds ago,” he muttered as he rolled his eyes at me. “You moron.”

I coughed, my throat still hoarse and burning from all the cigarette smoke I’d inhaled the night before. I barely managed to stop myself from spitting my guts out all over the pristine sheets that covered my almost-bare skin.

“Did we have sex?” I mumbled, pulling up a fallen strap of my bra.

“No, not in the state you were in.” He shook his head, and turned around to spit out a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink. “I found you face down in the grass and had to carry you up to bed.”

“Oh,” I sighed, both in shame and in relief.

He plopped down onto the bed and rolled over to my side.

“At least you didn’t beg me to tie you up,” he said with a sly grin.

“Tie me up?”

I started to panic. Why would I ask Pablo to tie me up? Did I drunkenly tell him what I had done? Did he know about the backpack? I checked my wrists for ties or for dents in my skin where they once could have been. Was I going to be restrained? Tortured? Murdered?

“Yeah,” answered Pablo, “Don’t you remember that date when you got drunk and you said you wanted me to tie you up?”

“Oh thank God,” I breathed.

“What?” he chortled.

“Nothing.”

“Are you okay?” he tittered, with a slightly confused look on his face.

“Just hungover,” I replied curtly. “Where’s Mafer?”

“Who?”

“My maid,” I muttered.

“I don’t know where she is,” he shrugged. “Why?”

My heart started to race – again. Just a few times more and it might have given up for good. I took deep breaths through my nose, so that Pablo wouldn’t notice I was nervous.

I needed to see Mafer, just to know that she was okay. Just to check whether whoever had found my backpack had already figured out that I’d tried to escape last night, and that this time, Mafer was involved. Just so I’d have peace of mind, knowing she hadn’t yet been locked up in a room, beaten, tortured, or even worse, that she wasn’t already dead.

I needed to find Mafer and talk to her alone, so that we could try and solve the mess I made before it was too late. But Pablo couldn’t know that.

“I, uh– I just need some clean clothes.”

With a quick call, a few words in Spanish, and a simple nod he addressed to me, Pablo had unknowingly helped me take a step in the right direction, to cover my tracks and keep Mafer safe.

When she showed up, just a few minutes later, Pablo didn’t move. He stayed right where he had been laying on the bed, and didn’t even bother covering himself with something else than his bath towel.

Mafer walked over to me and handed me a pile of neatly folded clothes. A dress, some clean underwear, and some pretty sandals on top. Neither of us managed to speak out a single word, other than a painful, breathy ′hi’. The best we could manage was a silent conversation of discreet hand moves, guilty lip bites, stealthy glances and sorry smiles.

Without a single word exchanged, I understood that Mafer had figured out my escape had failed when she had found the watch I’d left on her nightstand. She seemed heartbroken that I hadn’t made it out, yet comforted that I was still around.

Pablo watched us carefully, barely even blinking. And as long as his piercing eyes weighed over me, I couldn’t find either the way or the courage to let Mafer know that she was in danger.

I tried to mouth a few words whenever Pablo looked away – ‘I fucked up’. ‘They know’. ‘They’re coming for you’. ′Run’. Mafer didn’t understand. She didn’t get the message. She just frowned a little, hardly enough for anyone to notice the microscopic twitch of her brow.

Mafer and I had been standing for a good minute, facing each other in awkward silence. It was too long, too strange, too tense. Pablo was going to find out something was up. I needed to find a way to get rid of him for just a few minutes, while I told Mafer what had happened.

“Pablo, can I change in here?” I asked, and cringed at how false the innocent tone of my voice sounded.

“Sure,” he chirped, casually crossing his legs and settling deeper on top of the bed I so desperately wanted him to move off of. “Make yourself at home.”

“Aren’t you going to leave?”

“You want me to leave and your maid stays here?” he scoffed, one eyebrow arched. “It’s not like you need her help. It’s a sundress, not a frilly Victorian gown with seventeen layers of petticoats.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “She’s already seen me naked.”

“Yeah, well, so have I,” he shrugged.

“I thought you didn’t like to ogle.”

“And I thought you didn’t like that I didn’t like to ogle,” he muttered, scrunching his face in confusion at his own words. “So I changed for the better, and now I’m all fine with ogling.”

“I’ll get back to work,” Mafer whispered.

I opened my mouth, and clenched my jaw before I could tell her anything I might regret saying out loud. She bowed her head, like she always did in front of Pablo, and walked out of the room.

This might have been my last chance to talk with her, and I had to catch up with her before someone else did. Rather than argue with Pablo about whether or not he should be ogling, I chose to ignore him and slip into my clothes as fast as I could.

“I like that lingerie,” he said as he watched me wrestle with the clasp of my bra. “The color suits you.”

My face boiled with a toxic mix of a hundred negative emotions, and my cheeks were probably just as red as the lace of my panties.

“Shut up,” I mumbled.

“You women are so complicated,” he sighed. “Don’t you want compliments? Why do you keep changing your mind?”

“I don’t have time to argue,” I groaned, still struggling to put on my dress.

First, I put it on the wrong way round. Next, I got my head stuck in one of the sleeves. Pablo kept on making random comments, about my butt, my hair, or asking me if I needed a toothbrush. It was a desperate attempt at getting my attention, but I had better things to do than to give him a piece of my mind. As soon as I put my shoes on, I darted towards the bedroom door.

“Where are you going?” he asked. “Why are you in such a hurry?”

“None of your damn business,” I answered under my breath, probably too low for him to hear.

“Are you hungry?” he shouted from the bed. “Should I get you some lunch?”

“No.”

“Alright,” he muttered. “I’ll see you at dinner, then.”

I slammed the door behind me and rushed down the hallway, but Mafer had already left.

I checked everywhere. The maid’s quarters, the floors above – every single corridor, every room I could get into, every closet and kitchen where she might have been. I checked all the doors, and tried to force my way through those that seemed locked.

When there was no one around, I’d call out her name, just to check if she might be trapped in one of those closed-off rooms, and each time, I found myself faced with the same paradox. Although I wanted nothing more than to hear her voice, I always hoped she wouldn’t answer. There would be nothing worse than to find out that Mafer had been caught. Whether she answered or not, the outcome would always be a painful one.

I couldn’t even ask for help. If everyone knew I was desperately looking for Mafer, that would make her suspicious too. I was like a hamster on a wheel, running around in aimless circles, until my legs ached and my heart threatened to burst.

“Emilia,” said a voice behind me.

It wasn’t Mafer. It was a man’s voice, one I knew well enough to recognize just from the sound of it. And although I had a long list of people I was trying to avoid, this one was probably the very last person I was hoping to come across.

“Gustavo,” I answered, as I slowly turned around.

He took a step towards me and wrapped his fingers around my arm. I recoiled just a second too late, both in disgust and fear.

“I’m going to ask you to follow me to my office,” he said. “Nothing major. Just a quick security briefing.”

“Right,” I breathed, trying to hide the distress on my face. “I’ll go find Pablo.”

“Emilia, darling,” he muttered, tightening his grip around my wrist. “I don’t think you’d want Pablo to know about this.”

“Shit.” The word escaped from my lips like a hiss.

“Deep shit,” he whispered.

•••

Gustavo was right. I was in deep shit.

His office was the same as I remembered it – a room as tight as a jail cell, yet with a ceiling as tall as prison walls. A suffocating cloud of cigar smoke lingered in the air, and dim rays of sunlight filtered through the half-shut blinds.

My sweaty legs stuck to the leather armchair I was sitting in. I nervously shifted in my seat, all but crushing my hands between my knees. On the other side of the imposing mahogany desk and its towering piles of files and papers, Gustavo’s office chair squeaked as he leaned back.

“A little bird told me you’ve spent the day running up and down the maid’s quarters like a headless chicken,” he mumbled, crossing his arms as he stared down at me. “What was it you were looking for?”

“Nob– nothing,” I stuttered.

He cocked one eyebrow and scrunched his nose. He carefully examined my facial expressions, so much that I forced myself to stop thinking, lest he was able to read my mind.

He reached under his desk, his gaze still stuck to me, and pulled out something I both expected and dreaded to see. It was a small black backpack, the one I’d left in the pantry. He slowly pushed it towards me.

“Were you looking for this?” he asked.

“No,” I murmured.

“Have you ever seen this backpack before?”

“Never.”

“You’re not a very good liar, are you?” he sighed.

My bottom lip began to quiver, and I shook my head. My throat was so tight it strangled the words I tried to push out.

“Let’s see what’s in here, shall we?” he said, his voice tinted with a taunting shade of cheerfulness. “A passport. A Hungarian passport, actually, in the name of Emilia Mária Ko-vacks.”

“It’s Ko-vatch,” I corrected him, and regretted it immediately.

“Save your breaths, honey. You can speak when I ask you to,” he spat back.

The heinous look on his face disappeared as fast as it had shown up, and he quickly got back into character.

“Pablo should have listened when I told him to keep this safe and away from you,” he said as he waved the passport in the air. “And look where that got us. Now I have a scar on my ankle and he’s stuck with a crazy whore trying to break loose.”

He kept on ranting for a while, about how he couldn’t drink for two weeks because of the antibiotics he was given, and how he had to tell everyone a big hunting dog bit his leg, when really it was just a little bitch.

“What else?” he mumbled as he pulled out clothes from the tightly-packed bag and foraged around for some more evidence. “Some warm clothes, water, and a bit of money. Not a lot of money. That wouldn’t have gotten you very far, you know.”

I could barely hear the words he said. My mind was focused on what my eyes could see: a little piece of paper, sticking out from in between the folds of a sweater he’d pulled out of the bag, threatening to fall out onto the desk. Mafer’s note.

I felt like my heart was balancing on a tightrope. I swallowed my spit and massaged my neck to break down the lump in my throat. I only managed to exhale once he had stuffed everything back in the backpack, including the note.

“What would Pablo say if he saw this?” Gustavo sighed, and shook his head.

“Does Pablo know?” I asked, as I finally lifted my head up.

“Not yet, anyway. Why, do you want me to tell him?”

“No.”

As long as Pablo didn’t know, I still had a chance. Gustavo didn’t even seem to have noticed the note yet, and perhaps Mafer was still safe.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He smiled. “You can thank me later for saving your ass. Or you can thank me now, if you’d like. Up to you.”

“Did you just bring me here to show me the backpack?” I mumbled.

“No,” he answered softly. “I brought you here to ask you if you wanted it back.”

“Really?” I breathed, as my eyes widened in disbelief.

“Well, nothing in life comes for free.” He grinned. “You’ll have to pay for it.”

“Pay for it?” I echoed. “How much?”

His predatory smile grew wider, and the same gut reaction that had once compelled me to jump out of a moving car made me stand up and try to run out of the room.

Gustavo didn’t want money. He had tons of it, more than most people could even imagine. He wanted me.

*** Major Trigger Warning ***

Please, please, please feel free to skip ahead if you feel uncomfortable reading this.

It’s not worth it, said the racing pulse that pummeled my temples. Get out of here. The door was locked, and yet I still pushed down on the handle, a dozen times at least.

“Sit down, Emilia,” he said sternly, still sitting in his chair. “Take a breather. Think this over.”

I let out a pitiful, shaky whimper, and pressed my forehead against the closed door. There had to be another way. My mind raced to try and find a solution, but I was trapped like a rat. It seemed like I didn’t have a choice anyway.

“You know where this is going, right?” he murmured.

I knew where it was going, and I didn’t want to go there. But if quietly complying was the only way I could get that backpack, hide it, and save Mafer, then I had to do it.

I slowly turned around. Gustavo still had a smile on his face, and now his hands were under the desk. I teetered back to the armchair, holding onto shelves and furniture to stop myself from collapsing.

“I’m an honest man, I won’t lie to you and tell you I’ll be either quick or gentle,” whispered Gustavo. “But I will give you that backpack, and I won’t say a word to Pablo. Isn’t that what’s best for us both?”

My head spinned as I spiraled down. Was it worth it? Could I close my eyes and try not to think of it? Could I handle a few minutes of suffering to spare myself from a lifetime of guilt?

“So, do you want it or not?” he groaned.

“Where?” I mumbled.

He slammed the palm of his hand twice on the surface of the desk, right in front of me. He stood up from his chair, and I did the same. I didn’t dare look at him. I kept my eyes riveted on the backpack, and sank my teeth into my bottom lip.

He walked up to me. With one hand, he held my wrist twisted behind my back, and with the other, he pulled away my clothes.

Spit dribbled down the back of my thighs, tears dripped from my burning face, and I stopped feeling anything. Not the cold, hard mahogany desk pressing against my head. Not his harsh, calloused fingers digging into the sides of my hips. Not the vile words he grunted into my ear. Nothing.

My mind was far from my body and the abuse I was letting Gustavo put it through. Just like when Pablo had pretended to shoot me in the basement, I watched the scene as if I wasn’t a part of it. I chose to look away.

I tore my soul away from its physical jail, and stood in a corner of the room, staring out the window, watching the birds dancing above the garden. It was the nicest thing I’d ever done for myself.

The sunset outside was beautiful, colorful, wonderful. I hoped that once this was over, I’d remember what the sky looked like, rather than the pain I might have felt.

Only once Gustavo stepped away did I find myself back on the desk, struggling to gain back control of my shaking limbs. I wiped away the tears that had stuck to my cheeks, and wrapped my arms around my own body.

My mind was still hazy, and I barely noticed what was going on around me, aside from Gustavo bending over to pick up a shapeless piece of red lace he’d ripped off of me.

“You won’t need these,” he sneered, as he shoved them into the pocket of his jacket, smirking like a hunter posing with his trophy.

*** End of major trigger warning ***

When he handed me the backpack and walked away to open the door, I was still trying to teach myself how to breathe again. My eyes still stung as I walked out into the hallway, holding the bag tightly against my chest.

Pale as a ghost, I made my way to the other side of the house without even noticing it. Thoughtless steps had taken me back to the lavender room. The floor was spotlessly clean, the bed neatly made, piles of clothes folded in a corner of the bedroom, and the window had been fixed and left open to let in some fresh air.

I knelt down, or maybe fell to my knees, and started pulling things out of the bag. I threw the warm sweaters on top of the other clothes, shuffling them all together so no one would notice they’d ever left this room. I put the money and passport away in the vanity’s drawer, and even emptied the water bottle in the bathroom sink.

I wished I could have showered and washed off layers of my skin with scorching hot water. But the green tiles of the bathroom and the memories of the room made me feel even sicker than I already did.

Behind me, the door slammed shut.

My heart sank into my stomach and I threw myself towards the door. I put all my weight against it, turned the handle like a madwoman, and crashed onto the floor of a quiet, empty corridor. It was just a gust of wind.

I quickly walked back into the bedroom, threw the empty backpack under the bed, and grabbed Mafer’s note from the pile of fabric. I took one last look at it before I crumpled it in my fist.

The winning move.

It hardly felt like a victory. I was still stuck here, and now I had one other burden to carry until the end of my days. At least Pablo wouldn’t find out about my escape, and Mafer could stay safe. I tried to convince myself I’d done the right thing, but I couldn’t help it. I felt as disgusted as I felt disgusting.

I hobbled out downstairs, and into the garden, where Pablo quickly walked up to me. He placed his hand on my arm, the same one that was still holding Mafer’s scrunched-up note, and I pulled it away.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I lied.

“We’re playing beer pong, and Juan is losing miserably,” he said. “It’s pretty fun. Wanna join in?”

“No.”

Pablo huffed like an upset toddler.

“Alright,” he shrugged, a slight frown on his brow. “We’re going down to the fire pit for some drinks in a minute. Will you wait for me there?”

“Sure,” I sighed.

He smiled, and ran back to the patio, where Juan was screeching that it was his turn to play. I dragged myself through the garden and towards the glowing flames of the fire pit, the only light left in this early night.

I stood next to the fire, close enough that I could feel its heat on my ice-cold skin. For a moment, I thought of throwing myself into the flames, thinking that maybe that would soothe all of my pains. Instead, I dropped in the small piece of paper I’d been keeping safe in the palm of my hand.

I watched as it caught fire and turned into ashes. What once was a message of hope now meant nothing. There were no winning moves. Save for Mafer, I’d already lost everything.

“Trying to destroy some evidence?” snickered Gustavo as he walked up to me. “I have a lot more, you know.”

I felt a pit in my stomach grow as I turned around to face him.

“Maybe I’ll burn the rest of it too, then,” I muttered.

“Good luck with that,” he laughed. “It’s all safely stashed away.”

I noticed him licking his lips as he put his hand in the pocket of his jacket, and I felt a taste of bile burning in the back of my throat.

“Pablo would kill you if I told him what you did,” I spat.

“Perhaps, but we both know you won’t tell him,” he shrugged. “And even if you were stupid enough to do so, when it’s my word against yours, I will always win.”

I would have wrapped my hands around his neck and thrown him in the firepit if only I could even bring myself to touch him.

I couldn’t even stand being near him. The mere sight of him felt like a stab in the stomach, and filled my mind with tormenting images of what had happened just a few hours earlier in his office.

I could hear shards of guffawing laughter exploding in the distance, coming closer to the fire pit. Gustavo was still staring at me, his eyes undressing me as brutally as his hands once did.

So I walked away, not really knowing where I’d go, since there wasn’t a single place in this house where I’d feel alone and safe.

Pablo caught up with me halfway across the garden, holding me back with an exasperated glare and a tight grip around my wrist.

“What is wrong with you tonight?” he growled.

“Nothing,” I muttered.

“Why have you been running from me all day?” he scowled.

“I didn’t run away,” I cried.

Pablo’s head tilted to the side, and the deep line of a frown dug into his forehead.

“What do you mean?” he mumbled.

I could barely hide my panic from him as I hopelessly tried to wiggle out of his grasp,

“Gordita, what do you mean?” he repeated, his voice even firmer than the hold he kept around my arm.

I sighed and looked up to the sky, hoping that it would help to stop the tears from falling from my eyes.

“Do you believe what I told you about Gustavo?” I whispered.

“That again? Gordita, let’s not go there, please,” he groaned, and rolled his eyes at me “It’s in the past now, and you don’t need to keep lying about–”

“I’m not lying.”

“Gordita, I’ve been trusting Gustavo with my life for over a decade,” he spat. “I can’t even trust you with my phone.”

I took a deep breath and lifted my chin. Even if I didn’t have much left to lose, admitting what I’d done still felt like jumping off a cliff. It was all or nothing.

“If you could trust Gustavo, don’t you think he would have told you that I tried to escape yesterday?” I said.

“You escaped?”

I nodded, and Pablo answered by shaking his head, as anger began to burn up his eyes and face. I tried my best to finish saying what I needed to say before I fell apart, even though I struggled to come up with the right words to tell him.

“Are you trying to set him up?” he seethed.

“No,” I breathed.

“Are you sure? Why else would you be telling me you escaped?” Pablo hissed.

My shoulders twitched, like a miserable shrug.

“Because he–”

I tried to tell him, but I choked on the word every time I tried to say it out loud. I took a deep breath, whispered a quick apology, and Pablo stayed quiet. It took a good minute for me to find the courage to speak again.

“Do you know what he made me do in exchange for not telling you?” I whimpered.

Pablo’s grasp softened, but his expression grew more hateful. He shook his head, but not as an answer to my question. I looked him in the eye.

I don’t know how I did it. At that moment, I was both the most vulnerable and the strongest I’d ever been.

“Do you believe me yet?” I asked him.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” he said.

“Check in his jacket,” I gulped. “Right pocket.”

Pay For It

0 Comments