If you believe in that kind of shit.
As I walk into the warehouse where my father houses many of his victims, though, I’m not sure I do.Because what sort of fucking god would allow things like this to happen?We walk out onto the catwalk and I look over the holding rooms below, my eyes jumping from one to the next and cataloging the girls inside.There are just as many now as there were before, which means no one has shipped out yet–or, in theory, been sent to the auctions at the dance halls–but that doesn’t make me feel any sunnier.
Because there are hundreds of girls down there, and I don’t know where they came from or how they got here.I just know that they’ve found themselves in a situation no girl should be in, and the worst of humanity are now holding their strings, deciding where they’re going to go and what’s going to happen to them.
It’s wrong on so many levels, and I can feel the boundaries I usually maintain melting away.I’ve spent so much of my life working to hold the world at a distance, finding ways to skate through situations without being affected by them, but these girls are taking my defenses down brick by bloody brick until I feel every sling and arrow as a hit directly to my heart.
When Lucien told me he thought there was a sex trafficking ring in New Orleans, I heard it as a fact.Another enemy to take down.Another operation to destroy, from the inside if I could.I heard numbers and names and locations, and I didn’t connect them with real people.When I was stuck inside the ring myself, it got a little bit more real.I wanted to save the girls I could see in there with me.I wanted to kill the men who were abusing them and get them all home to their families again.
But walking above them now, finding myself in a position to actually make decisions that will affect their futures, and facing a father who expects me to treat them as nothing more than cattle, ripe for slaughter...
I don’t know when it happened, but it’s destroyed my ability to remain disconnected.
A lifetime spent learning how to not care, and one day of watching over these girls and seeing other people decide on their fate and I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew about how to stay cold and uncaring.
I’m exposed, now.A beating, bleeding heart who can’t stand to even think about the girls below me being hurt.
And I’ve never felt more vulnerable.
I fucking hate it.
So I do the thing I’ve been doing for my entire life.I draw myself up, tip my chin up, and start to build my armor again, sliver by sliver.Once I have something that feels like it might hold up for more than a day, I turn my mind to the next most important thing: a plan.
Because I might be a walking, talking set of emotions right now, and I might be dying inside at the thought of any of these girls being shipped out to unknown shores, but that doesn’t change the fact that I might be the one and only hope they have.
And once I adopt people, I don’t let them down.
I see my father watching me, and force myself to keep walking, a mask over my face and my eyes devoid of emotion.If I’m lucky, he thinks I’m just perusing the merchandise.Thinking about where they’re going and how we can make the process smoother and more efficient.
Because if he realizes what I’m actually thinking, I’ll find myself down there with them.
And no one will be able to save us, because no one else has a way in.
I get across the catwalk and head downstairs, looking for anything that looks like it might be an office.I’m worried about the girls in this warehouse, but I still have other things I need to figure out, like where the fuck Aislyn Brennan is and what my father has planned for her.She may never have passed through this particular warehouse, but surely if I can find an office with records for the entire ring, those records will include all the girls who’ve passed through.
I pound down the stairs, pausing only when Samantha comes across my path and shoots me a look that says she doesn’t believe I should be anywhere near this warehouse.I draw myself up to my full height and stare her down, honestly hoping she’ll say something.
Because I’m dying to shout at someone, and that bitch has been getting on my nerves since fucking met her.
She narrows her eyes at me and doesn’t say anything, though–more’s the pity–and passes me with her face turned to the ground.
“Coward,” I mutter.
Then I keep moving.I need a shipping office or something like it, and then at least fifteen minutes to go through every record I can find.
***
These people really need to take a class on computer security.
I mean they probably don’t expect anyone to be able to break into their offices and get to their computers in person, and that’s valid.But once I’m sitting in front of a computer, I find exactly no safeguards to keep me from getting into every single record they have.
And Christ, the records.
Hundreds of girls have come through here.Thousands, maybe.And they’ve kept records of every single one.Their names, their families, where they were stolen from, and then where they went.The names of the clients who bought them.
The amount they paid.
The moment I start looking, I want to bleach my eyes.And my brain.I’ve seen a lot of bad things, but I don’t want any of this information in my head.I know it’ll haunt me until the day I die, unless I can find a way to save the girls.I manage to gloss over it at first, focused on looking for specific names, but when I continually fail to find those names, it starts to get to me.
