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We were talking, of course, about the girls who had gotten out of the bust we had done earlier in the week—eight of them in total, and seven of them, by now, were at least in some way getting back to their old lives, the lives they’d lived before they had been forced into sex work. I knew Morgan and Alex were exhausted, and rightly so; getting them back in touch with their families, as well as setting them up with the appropriate therapy they’d need to survive all of this in one piece, it was a hell of a lot to take on.
But there was still something nagging at the back of my mind, and that was the girl who was still locked up in her room right now. She had been cold and harsh with me when I had tried to talk to her before, and I got the feeling she was going to be a tough nut to crack. There was something about her attitude that reminded me of myself, back when I had still been drinking—those walls, still sky-high, ready to fight off anyone who came close to her.
"I should get some rest." Morgan yawned. "Get home and let the sitter off …"
"Yeah, for sure," Alex agreed, pressing a kiss against her head. "I’ll drive us. Let’s get out of here. You’ll be okay here by yourself, right, Paulo?”
I nodded.
"I’ll be fine," I assured them. "You two go."
They said their goodbyes and headed for the door, leaving me in the quiet of the mansion once more. This place had been purchased with the Caroni family fortune, specifically for the purpose of housing the girls who Morgan and Alex broke out of sex trafficking. It was made up with safe rooms, security, and all the immediate comforts they needed after they got out, before they could be safely placed back into their old lives, or begin the path to making new ones.
Alex and Morgan lived with their daughter a few streets over, and that, for the most part, left me alone in this place of an evening. Which was fine by me. I knew someone needed to stick around to keep an eye on the security guards, make sure everything was in order. We got the occasional pimp trying to come by and pick up what he thought belonged to him, and I was more than happy to put them the fuck down in the process. Make sure they knew exactly what we thought of them, exactly how little we took them seriously. I wasn’t going to let anyone come by here and break the sanctity of this place, not when we had worked so hard to make sure it was as safe as it possibly could be.
It had been Morgan’s idea, shifting the focus of the family onto something more worthwhile than the mafia fortune Alex’s father had amassed over the course of his life. After she had been forced into a marriage against her will, she’d decided that she wanted to help other women who were being used and abused in that way. In the last year or so, since the birth of their daughter, they had begun concentrated work on destroying what remained of the pimp-run brothels across the city, taking out anyone who was still using girls against their will to make their money. The cops, as corrupt as they were, couldn’t be trusted to handle it, but the firepower and strength the Caroni family had on their side was enough to get these girls a fresh start, like they deserved.
Well, most of them, anyway. I stared into the flickering flames of the fire, and my mind drifted to the woman up the stairs right now, the woman who wouldn’t even give us her name. Some of them take a little longer to realize that they’re actually out of the mess they’ve been trapped in for so long, and there are others who just can’t accept it at all, who push back against the thought of ever being free, and wind up falling into the same traps they’ve been in all this time. We do what we can, but the most important thing was clearing this city of pimps and making it so there were no more men left who could exploit these women, no matter what.
I wondered how long she had been in this business, how long she’d been trapped as part of this world. She couldn’t have been more than thirty, but there was a darkness in her eyes that told me she had seen so much more than she ever should have for a woman her age. I wished there was something I could do to get her to talk, get her to accept the help we were offering her, but I could tell it just wasn’t going to come that easily to her, no matter how hard we tried.
Normally, at this time of night, I would have been sipping on a scotch, taking my day-drunk into a full-blown hammered state. Just this time last year, in fact, I would have been doing just that, and I tried not to think about how much of a mess I had been during that time. I was still getting used to making it through the day without getting hammered, but I was starting to wrap my head around it, building new schedules and routines that didn’t involve doing everything I could to sneak a nip of vodka whenever someone wasn’t paying direct attention to me.
But I had to keep myself busy in other ways now, instead. I rose to my feet and headed for the stairs. I wanted to check on her. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt some kind of draw to her, as though I saw something of myself in this woman—something of myself in the way she looked at the people around her, as though she felt like she had reason to doubt us. After everything she had no doubt been through, maybe it shouldn’t have come as that much of a surprise. It was clear she had been through hell, just to end up in the mess she had been in when we had found her, and it wasn’t as though that was going to lift from her shoulders quite so easily.
Heading towards the living quarters we kept up for the girls who had just arrived here, I reached her door—it was the only one that was closed, so I knew at once where she was. Hesitating outside of it for a moment, I wondered if I should just leave her be.
I heard a noise inside—the bed creaking, and a long groan. I pushed the door open slowly, hoping she was asleep, but instead, I found her curled up on the bed, facing the door, eyes wide and face covered in sweat.
She glowered at me as soon as she laid eyes on me.
"What the fuck do you want?" she demanded, sitting upright. There were dark rings under her eyes, and her skin was pale and clammy. She was shaking violently, and I knew at once that she was in some kind of withdrawal.
"Are you okay?" I asked her, taking a step towards her. She pulled back, as though on instinct.
"Of course I’m not," she snapped back.
"You withdrawing from something?" I asked her straightforwardly. If she had been using something heavy, then it was better that we knew about it now, so we could get her the treatment she needed. She looked surprised when I asked her that, as though she hadn’t expected me to notice it.
"Yeah," she muttered, wrapping her arms around herself. She was shivering hard, and I wanted to go over to her and give her a blanket or something, but I got the feeling that my presence might just spook her more than it already had.
"What did you use?" I asked.
"Coke," she replied bluntly. I nodded.
"I can get you some Valium, if you need it," I offered her, and she glowered up at me.
"I don’t need Valium," she replied, slowly, as though I might be having a hard time hearing her right now. "I need coke."
I grimaced.
"I can’t get you any of that," I replied, apologetic. She slumped back down in bed, pulling the covers over herself again.
"Then you can leave me the fuck alone," she snapped back. "I don’t want to deal with you right now."
I paused for a moment before I left, wondering if I could convince her to let me stay, just a little longer. I knew how harsh it could be, those first few days of sobriety after you had been using for a while, and there was nothing worse than having to deal with people when all you wanted to do was crawl into a hole and be left alone. But she was clearly in a bad state, and there was something in me insisting that I do what I could to take care of her.
"I’ll check in on you in the morning," I offered her. She didn’t reply, squeezing her eyes shut, as though she was trying to shut me out.
