“What does that mean?” Arsen asked, wiping his sweaty palms on his thighs.
Jericho sighed. “No missing persons reports from the city. No DNA matches. No fingerprint matches. Jennika wasn’t the type to kidnap a kid. If she was, there would have been more. She acquired the three girls she abused through the foster system. But there’s no trace of Ever there, either. I hate to say it, but he was probably trafficked into the country.”
“Trafficked,” Arsen echoed, not because he didn’t understand but just because the word made him a little sick.
“There’s a big trafficking problem here. She had him chipped like a dog. She had some very shady, known associates with ties to organized crime. She never even bothered to name him. He named himself. If she had legally adopted him, there would have been a paper trail. We’d have a name or something to trace. But there’s nothing.”
Arsen’s chest was tight. Ever had been with Jennika so long, he had no recollection of his parents, where he was from, when his birthday was. He only knew his age because Jennika had let it slip. How old was Ever the first time she abused him? He must have been so tiny and so scared. Arsen felt a little like throwing up.
“Why?” he heard himself ask.
Jericho frowned. “Why?”
Arsen met Jericho’s gaze. “Why did she…buy him?”
Jericho shrugged. “The two most common reasons for trafficking are forced labor and sex work. The former is mostly adult women, the latter is women and children. I think Jennika wanted a domestic servant who she could abuse without interference. So, she bought one.”
“She pimped him out to others,” Arsen said. “She beat him and sold him to men who hurt him.”
“I know,” Jericho said quietly.
A sudden heat rushed through him, his fists clenching and jaw tight as he said, “And we can’t even tell him who he is.”
“We’re going to keep looking. All we know from his DNA is that he’s of southeast Asian descent. The two most trafficked regions are Thailand and Vietnam, but that’s still millions of people. You might need to prepare Ever for the very real possibility that we might never know where he came from.”
Arsen hurt for him. “What if his parents have been looking for him all this time?”
Jericho sat forward in his chair. “I’m not going to lie, it’s possible they’re the ones who sold him in the first place. It happens. More often than it should.”
“What kind of parent sells a child?” Arsen said, disgusted.
“You know what kind. Desperate people. Evil people. We’ve seen this before. Hell, here in the U.S., there are baby brokers and people ‘rehoming’ kids on Facebook. We know kids are worth a lot of money to the wrong people. It looks like Ever might be one of those kids.”
A sudden wave of panic welled in Arsen’s chest. “What am I supposed to tell him? That he’ll never know who he really is? That he might never meet his family? Is it even legal for him to stay? You can’t send him back to a country he doesn’t know. How does that even work? What happens to an undocumented person if they don’t even know where they’re from? Do they just guess? He wouldn’t have any family or money or speak the language. He’d be all alone.”
Jericho raised a hand to silence him. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Nobody even knows he’s here.”
“But he can’t stay a ghost forever. What if he wants to get a job or a driver’s license or go to school? He can’t stay in the loft for—.”
“Arsen!” Jericho cut him off sharply. When he looked at him, he said, “We’re not going to let anything happen to him. You know the connections we have. If we have to, we’ll buy him a whole new identity. He can be whoever he wants. There’s nothing that can’t be faked so that he can stay here.”
Arsen looked Jericho in the eye. He needed him to really hear what he was about to say. “I won’t lose him. No matter what it takes.”
“I know, kid. But don’t get ahead of yourself. Go get your boy and have lunch.”
Arsen’s shoulders sagged. Jericho wasn’t his enemy. He nodded and stood then left, shutting the door behind him. He walked to the sink and scrubbed his hands before trudging up the stairs. When he got to the top, Ever smiled, poking a finger against the glass. Arsen couldn’t help but press his finger against Ever’s, heart tripping as he giggled.
Whatever expression Arsen was wearing must have been bad because Ever’s laugh died quickly, his own expression replaced by a look of dread. Arsen entered the room and smiled, but Ever wasn’t buying it.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, fear creeping into his tone.
“Nothing,” Arsen assured him, trying to brighten his smile before he looked away. He couldn’t lie to his face.
He would tell him after they ate.
“Liar.”
Arsen’s head snapped back to Ever, whose face was a storm cloud. Was he…mad? “What?”
