I’m just starting to look for patterns in the clients when a knock on the door sounds.
“Come in,” Cillian says, and the way his demeanor changes is impressive. Before he was easygoing, accommodating even, and now he’s... hard somehow, a no-nonsense type.
“You wanted to see me?” A sweet voice, and another beautiful woman, but I can tell how nervous she is. Scared too, when she notices Eian and me.
“Cillian, Sara, step outside,” Eian says, his eyes locked on the young woman, unrelenting. “Sit,” Eian says as he stands, and points at his chair then goes around the desk and sits in the big one.
“Is something wrong?” she asks as she follows orders. Her accent is pronounced—I’d say she’s Latina but couldn’t tell you the country—and shit, she’s about to start crying already.
“Luisa, you came here looking for a job on this date.” I point to her file. “Why did you do that?”
That’s all it takes.
She crumbles in her seat, sharp cries bursting out of her in waves as she covers her mouth with so much strength I’m afraid she’ll suffocate herself. Instinct takes over and I place a hand gently on her back and rub soft circles.
“It’s okay, just tell us the truth.”
When she looks up, I see she doesn’t believe me, and who could blame her?
I look at Eian and open my eyes wider, telling him to back me up here.
“If you tell the truth, I won’t hurt you,” he says after a long moment. There’s no hiding how fucking angry he is, but that’s not something I need to worry about now.
“See? Just tell us how you got here, why you’ve stayed, and what they asked you to do.” She nods but she’s still sobbing, so even if it’ll make Eian even angrier... “Take your time.”
She nods, and after a few minutes her breaths start to even out a little.
“They came to my village,” she says at last. “They promised good work here in the States and brought us here, but—” She breaks off on another sob. “They put us in cages. I just wanted to work, help my family.”
“I know you did, Luisa,” I murmur and keep petting her back, even as I feel this urgency to have her get to the point. I know I can’t know what she’s been through, and that the least she deserves is kindness and patience.
“They took me away from everyone else and two men came. I don’t know their names, but they told me I would work here and earn the money I was promised, that all I had to do was tell the people here that I really wanted this work and to stay here for-forever,” she stutters, and I see the heartbreak.
“Can you tell us anything about these men? How do they know you’re still here?” Eian’s sharp voice barely seems to penetrate her despair.
“O-one of the m-m-men, he comes here.”
“What does he look like?” I can’t stop myself from asking urgently.
“He looks d-different than before. He has a beard and different hair. Every week he comes and he?—”
“You don’t have to tell us that if you don’t want to,” I murmur, and offer her my other hand. When she takes it, I know it’s not enough, that it will likely never be enough, but...
“He’s the boss of the other one,” she says urgently. “I know he’s in charge from how they talked, and the other man, he called him something, but he has a ring on a chain that says something else.”
I can barely keep up with her, the way she stops and starts so quickly.
“What does the ring say?” If it’s a class ring then maybe I can cross-reference people in power in the city with a class year.
“Brett,” she says simply, and my brain halts to a full stop. There’s no Brett University, is there?
“Brett?” Eian asks sharply.
“Yes.” She nods rapidly. “B-R-E-T-T. The letters are all a little apart, some more than others, but his name is different.Almost the same. Brent I think, with the N.” My lungs collapse on themselves and I can’t move fast enough to grab my phone.
My stupid, trembling fingers make it harder to spell right, so it takes way too fucking long, but finally the online search shows results. I click on images as soon as the option appears and then choose the first one before thrusting the phone in front of Luisa.
“Is this the man? The one who’s the boss? The one who comes to see you every week?”
