“Women weretools for him to control, as well as manipulate others. Out of every shipment of women brought in by his suppliers, he always took first pick. Most of them were young. Some of them were probably not even of legal age, not that it would have made what he did better or right.
“At first, he left me behind.”
Two words were all it took.
At first.
Anger began to stir within him. That meant she had eventually attended his selection process.
“I knew what he was doing because he spoke openly of it in front of me. However, I didn’t have to see it, and that gave me distance. The idea angered me, but it happened elsewhere, and I didn’t have to face it.”
With her desire to put Guillermo behind bars, or even underground, seeing that would have been the greatest challenge she faced. The guilt she didn’t have to say out loud. It dripped from each word that spoke of her attempts to avoidthinking about it, even if, as an undercover agent, she needed to ignore it to get to her endgame.
“One day, he finally took me with him. No warning. No time to prepare myself for what I was about to see. Suddenly, I stood at his side as women and children, even a few young men, were herded out of a semitrailer like cattle. If they didn’t move fast enough, someone lashed out at them. Might be a shove, a baton. In an instance or two, particularly with the men, a pistol to the temple. If someone refused…” She stopped. Her body trembled against him. “They were shot on the spot.”
Fuck. He could only imagine the shock and horror she’d kept hidden as he slaughtered innocents. Could he have done it? Probably not.
“Do you know what changed when he began forcing you along?”
“No. If I had to guess, maybe I slipped up, and my disgust for his actions bled out. Maybe he felt like he was losing his invisible leash on me, and this would assert his dominance in whatever way he could.
“The first time, I held it together until we returned to the compound. Then I found a place to hide. Somewhere I could purge the absolute disgust I felt. Not at him. At myself. For standing there, watching it happen. All I could do was turn myself off and pretend I was watching a movie. Trick myself into believing the hero rode in, took out the villain, dismantled his operation, and saved the day.
“I did nothing, Triumph. How is that possible? How could I stand by and not at least try to protect them?”
He hugged her tighter to his side, his chin atop her head, his lips against her hair. “You had to. What do you think would have happened if you’d stepped in? You would have been another body lying on that floor. Or worse. And no one would have escaped the fate intended for them. Your sacrifice wouldn’t havechanged their outcome. But what you did? It probably saved lives, in some twisted way.”
“But I should have done it anyway. Isn’t that what other people will say?”
“What people, Glennon? Who will ever know what you did? The CIA? They abandoned you. At best, they would put another agent into his ranks, and the cycle would continue because the results were what mattered. Not the lives of the agents. Not those faceless people they read about in your reports. At least you saw them in their final moments. They had a witness. Someone who felt something at their sacrifice, even if they never knew it.”
Her single huff of sardonic laughter tore at him.
“Witness? Fucking right I saw them. He would strip them down, then test their pain tolerance by pinching and slapping their breasts. He’d put them on their knees. Make them perform oral sex on him. If they could get him off in less than five minutes, they got to live. If they couldn’t…” She took a deep breath in, then blew it out with force. “Occasionally, he kept the fighters, particularly if he had a client looking for that, but usually they would be given to the rest of the men to use, one after the other, and they were allowed to do whatever they wanted until the women broke.” Her voice went tight. “Those women were often better off dead, and in a few cases, I’m not sure they weren’t before they finished.”
How did this woman survive nine years of this behavior? Unable to contain it, the anger began to spill over. He tucked the arm not holding her behind him, his hand forming a fist, squeezing tight, and imagining he held Guillermo’s throat in it as he watched the life drain out of his eyes.
“Did Guillermo force you to watch that as well?”
“Yes. Often. It was an intimidation maneuver. A way of showing me what my fate would be if I crossed him without actually saying it.”
“And yet, when you were discovered, he took you to another location. You said the house was empty. Obviously, soldiers lived there, but he was nowhere in sight.”
“I know. It doesn’t make any sense.”
The pause weighed heavily.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” he asked.
She nodded, the movements jerky.
“Give it to me, Glennon. Let it out. It’s the only way you start to heal.”
She took a shuddering breath.
This took such courage, and the pride he felt helped rein in some of his disgust and anger.
“Every time there was a delivery, it excited him. When we’d get back to the compound, he’d want to fuck, even when he had just tested the product. It got him off that he’d been inside one of them, didn’t clean up, then made me take care of him back at the compound. He was violent. On a good night, he’d merely fuck my ass, hit me hard enough to leave bruises. On bad nights, he’d cut me. Let me bleed until the slice clotted. On the worst nights… those, we never made it back to the house. He bent me over the back of the truck ramp. Fuck me in front of his men. Or if he was extra displeased with me for some reason, he’d let them fuck me.
