Page 24 of Black Waters

Immediately, I regretted my question. I put my hands up, beseeching her to stop tormenting me with a past I could not amend.

She nodded. “Okay, Marina will let you rest.”

My mom speaking of herself in the third person reminded me of how some adults speak to a child. And then it dawned on me… The puzzle pieces kept finding their way home. I quietly said, “Reenah,” realizing a child might have pronounced my mother’s name wrong.

I heard her gasp. “He remembers me?”

Crash’s nanny. Jesus Christ.

In a saddened amazement, I answered. “Yes, he says… you were the only light—” Thinking of how unlucky Crash was to lose her and how lucky I was to have her, I choked on more tears. “Only light in his life.” My mom became inconsolable. I leaned toward her, rocking our boat. “Mom? What is it?”

She moved her body as if trying to find a movement to help her through a deep, deep anguish. “I had hoped—” She sobbed. “I’d hoped he had forgotten about me.”

I hugged the bravest woman in the world. “How could he? You are light, true light, Mom.”

Her shoulders buckled. “No, I wasn’t there for him.”

“Was that your fault, though? I mean, how’d you end up with Dad?”

My mother wiped at her streaming tears. “Harold—Crash… Crash’s mother wanted me gone. She-She hated me.”

“Was she mean to you?”

“Just wanted me gone. And once her son passed, her husband felt he couldn’t deny her some peace of mind.”

“Oh, god. I’m feeling sick again. Tell me dad didn’t buy you.”

My mother begged. “Please understand! He had no choice! Harold would not have let me go if I wasn’t purchased by someone who could assure him I would be silenced. Your father paid thousands for me the night I was to be killed.”

I fell back onto my ass. The boat rocked again. “What? You were going to be murdered?”

“What do you think happens to sex slaves when they are no longer of use? You think they are set free to go to the authorities? Reether, you’ve been sheltered from a world that is real and happening to innocents every single day. When your father found out about me, I had been there for a few years already, and he was afraid of what would happen to me if he told the police. He knew they would never make it in time because Harold has connections there too. Your father saved my life, the same night he saved Whitney’s. I told him about the baby I had just started caring for and about her fate. He said he knew of a couple who wanted a little girl, that the wife couldn’t have more children—a couple with the means to purchase a little baby. When Harold refused the offer, your father matched the price—doubling the original offer… and she was sold too.”

“That is the tug of war, isn’t it? Proof of an illegal adoption?”

“Yes, the Russians can ruin Whitney’s father’s whole career, and he in return could bring down a mafia and high-dollar paying—” My eyes pleaded for her not to use the words sex slaves again, so she said, “Investments. Whitney’s existence—like many children’s—exposes a multi-million-dollar enterprise. Her father’s fame is a double-edged sword. It’s what’s keeping her alive, and it’s what may get her killed.”

I could not stop my trembling.

When our boat pulled up to our dock, my father was silently waiting for us by our back entrance. Dad seemed to know what had been discussed out on the water. He wouldn’t look at me directly, seemingly ashamed of buying a woman and child. I walked toward my lavish home, never so thankful for his and my inheritance and what it did for two young women, and hugged my father with a gratefulness that had me crying like a little boy.

The thought of what my mother had gone through haunted me, made me crazy. I kept imagining her being passed around… Then I thought of Constance being killed in a non-accidental car crash, Whitney’s childhood fate, and now her possible coming death. I needed revenge, so I went looking for it and found so much more.

Discreetly following a yellow Lotus eventually took me to the man who borrowed and abused my mother. In the pelting rain, I snuck around Crash’s home. It seemed to be more of a well-protected compound. I searched for a weak spot so I could get to the man I wanted dead—violently so. Since Crash had taught me how to hold a gun, load a gun, and I still had a memory bank of movies to go off of, I somehow thought I would be able to get past well-trained thugs and kill their master.

Nothing went as was planned by my peanut brain.

While the rain soaked me and the surprisingly well-trained thugs hauled my stupid ass up to their demented and twisted boss’s impenetrable castle, I realized I was a moron and about to die. With a guard on each side of me, holding my upper arms, I looked around the outside of the extravagant home and wondered how many humans and drugs were sold to finance such a lifestyle.

At the head of the circle driveway and from the shadows at the entrance of the three-story home, I saw a lighter spark and then smoke coming from a cigarette. “My boys say you wish to speak to—let me get this straight—‘the asshole in charge’?”

Apparently, Mr. Thompson had heard me yelling while I was being efficiently apprehended. I was still giving out demands as they relayed my unwelcome intrusion to him over their radios. “I think I made myself pretty clear,” I said with way more courage than I felt.

He laughed. “A brave dumbass. Okay, I’ll bite.” A silhouette appeared with a red glow from the end of his cigarette. He was still under cover, avoiding the rain, when his voice lowered. “What do you want?”

“Revenge.”

That earned me a solid punch to my unprepared gut.