Page 3 of Her Defiant Warrior

“Shut up!” Jase said at the same time. “Let’s go. We gotta help them.”

“We can’t,” Renzo said.

“Yes, we can,” Jase said emphatically. “There is no way that Mom will put up with this shit. She’ll report them.”

He pushed open the door and went in. The wave of sound almost knocked him on his butt. There was no rhyme or reason to how the orphans were divided up into the five large cages. Each cage had a thick chain and padlock locking the doors shut. Big kids and little kids were put together, boys and girls were put together. There were blankets strewn about the cement floor, but no pillows. He saw a crib in each cage, but only the littlest of babies were crammed in them. The smell of urine and shit was almost as bad as the crying, pleading, and screaming.

“We’ve gotta let ‘em out. Look for a key,” Jase demanded as he turned to his younger brothers.

“No,” Renzo said flatly. “It’ll cause chaos. We need to show Mom and that guy with the camera. Then they’ll see what’s really going on.”

Jase looked over at the cage furthest from the double doors. Two older kids were clutching at the bars. One of them was pounding his head against a bar, and there was blood dripping from his forehead.

“Okay, then we’ve got to get them, quick. That kid is bleeding!” Jase said as he ran toward the cage with the wounded child.

“I found them,” Malik said.

“What?” Renzo and Jase said as they saw Malik jogging after them. The keys were hanging from the back wall. All three of them stopped in front of the cage with the bloody boy.

“Jase, you go get Mom and the reporters. She’ll listen to you. I’ll go in and try to calm them down,” Renzo said.

Jase nodded, but then he saw something out of the corner of his eye, in the next cage over.

“Stop that,” Jase yelled in Portuguese.

A boy, maybe five years old, swung a naked baby by her arm. She wasn’t making a sound. Then he dropped her and laughed. The baby, no toddler, tried to lift up on her hands and knees, but she fell flat, her injured arm unable to hold her up. The cruel boy shoved at her with his foot. Another kid, a girl this time, grabbed at the baby’s curly black hair.

“Merda,” she shouted in her face, then spit in the baby’s face.

“Leave her alone!” Jase yelled again in Portuguese as he shook the cage door.

An older girl from the cage next door chimed in. “Little puta. Her mama is nothing but a rotten cop’s whore. Kick her again.”

“Just wait until I get my knife back,” another boy from two cages over said. “I’ll carve my initials on her forehead. Then she won’t be so pretty.”

What the shit?

Jase spun around and looked at Malik. “Open the cage!”

Malik fumbled. The first key didn’t work and it took Jase everything he had not to grab them from his brother. Finally, Malik found the right key and Jase pulled the chain away and yanked open the steel door to get inside the cage.

The first little boy laughed and crouched down in front of the toddler. “One day your pai will see his ugly daughter if he doesn’t die in prison first. What will the big bad policeman think of his princess then? Your mãe was nothing but a whore and your pai was a butcher.”

Now the baby girl was scrambling away from the two bullies. She was trying to cover herself with one of the few ratty blankets in the cage. Jase saw red when he saw the little boy pull back his leg, and he could see the little shit was going to kick her again.

Jase grabbed up the girl just in time.

Please Jesus, say I didn’t hurt her more.

As the boy kicked air, he ended up falling on his ass. Jase wanted to kick him, but the little girl was his top priority.

“Get Mom,” he yelled to Malik. Jase stomped out of the cage, cuddling the girl to his chest. “Close it up,” he barked to Renzo.

His brother was already on it.

Jase strode to the farthest corner of the room and slid down the wall, shutting out everything but the little girl in his arms. He moved the blanket away from her face and body, carefully using the blanket to wipe the spit off her forehead. He wanted to get an idea of how badly she was injured.

Her face was gaunt, her cheekbones were high and sharp. She wasn’t crying; instead she was looking up at him with no expression at all. It was as if she was someplace else. Jase looked down and saw an enormous bruise on her side where she had been kicked. There were a lot of little bruises on her arms and legs. When he looked closely, it looked like she had been pinched by tiny fingers.