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Maria
After my meeting with Blade and Crusher, Crusher leaves, but Blade stays. He tells me I did a good job and unlocks the handcuffs again. We sit in silence for a little bit of time, during which I wonder what is next for me. Will Crusher believe me? If he doesn’t, what will they do to me? All I was able to be was honest, and I feel like I did that. So why do I now feel so uneasy?
My stomach rumbles audibly.
“Are you hungry?” Blade asks quietly. “Do you want, like, a sandwich or something?”
I nod. “I’m starving, actually. A sandwich would be great.”
He goes upstairs, leaving the door open behind him. For the first time, I realize that he’s left me completely unguarded. Even though I’m naked, I could leave this place right now if I wanted to. But weirdly, I don’t want to. I know what I’d be running from – a generally good person and some of the hottest sex I’ve ever had – but where would I be running to, anyway? To my father, and his repressive, oppressive rules and regulations? To a life where I couldn’t be what I wanted? No. I don’t want that. I want to be free to be myself. And weirdly, I feel more like myself locked away in this basement than I ever have in the past at my father’s house.
Blade comes back with a ham sandwich and a glass of water. I eat, and as I do, I begin talking. Not about anything in particular; just talking, generally. It’s kind of intense, the relationship that we’re beginning to form. And it has taken on such a weird pattern: days filled with discussion and even laughter, nights filled with passion and me being more submissive than I’ve ever been in my life to his utter and complete dominance. But it’s a pattern I have come to like and almost appreciate.
“What will you do with my father’s cartel now?” I ask him, abruptly changing the subject from growing up with my weird-ass family.
Blade takes it in stride. “I honestly don’t know, Maria. That’s gonna be up to Crusher and the rest of the leadership. I’ll have a say in it, but ultimately, what Crusher says, goes.”
“Are you going to kill him?”
“I don’t know,” he responds honestly. “Maybe. Frankly, it’s very likely that’s the outcome.”
“I see.” There is a touch of ferociousness in my voice that I hadn’t expected. I’m not Daddy’s little girl by any stretch, but I know what my father has done, and it’s just wrong. I’m so tired of being bound by his expectations of me, only being able to be what he wants me to be instead of what I want. I’m fed up with being his special little project, which is all I’ve been to him since Carmen left. It’s my turn, goddammit.
I finish the sandwich, and Blade takes the plate upstairs, leaving the door open again. I don’t move – partly out of fear, and partly out of desire. I don’t really want to leave. Again, where would I go? But I also notice that he seems to be testing me. Blade doesn’t seem like the kind of person to be forgetful, but this is twice in the last twenty minutes that he has just left the door wide open for me to escape. I want to show him that he can trust me. I want to show him that I’m not afraid anymore.
I want to show him that I care.
He returns downstairs again, and I lay down on the bed.
“It’s been sort of a long day for you, hasn’t it?” he asks me gently.
“Yeah,” I reply, nodding. “That meeting with Crusher really took a lot out of me.”
“Crusher has a tendency to do that to people,” he agrees, adding, “He did that to me the first few times I had encounters with him, back when I was just a kid looking for a job.”
“How did you learn to deal with it?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I just sort of... did. Crusher is a good man, Maria. A fair man. He’s not going to mistreat you, so long as he thinks you’re telling him the truth. That of which, I think he’s going to believe you. But I’m on my way out to find out now.”
“You’ve got a meeting?”
“Yeah. We’ll figure out what to do from there. The thing that has me worried is what happens if this mole you talked about turns out to be a part of the Blood Ravens’ leadership.”
“What will you do if he does?”
“We’ll deal with it,” he says curtly, seeming to not want to entertain the notion. “We’ll deal with it the way we deal with everything else – as brothers.”
“Fair enough.” I yawn a bit and lay down in the bed. “I think I’m going to take a nap while you’re gone. Let me know how it goes, would you?”
I’m shocked to see a genuine, honest to God smile come to his face. “You bet,” he replies, in a voice that I’m not used to.
He sounds almost caring. Maybe he’s starting to feel something for me, too. I can’t be sure, but it certainly seems that way. With the way he’s been talking to me lately, opening up, and the way he acted around Crusher, making sure that I was safe seemed to be high on his list. I wonder... could he be feeling the same way I’m feeling?
***
I WAKE UP A FEW HOURS later to the smell of some kind of dinner – chicken something and pasta sauce. I hear the familiar thumping down the stairs, and into the room comes Blade, bearing a bowl of pasta with chicken and green peppers. It’s not necessarily my favorite dish, but I’m more impressed that he could even cook as simple a dish as this. I’ll have to make him some tamales sometime.
“I have some good news for you,” he says in his gruff tone.
“What’s going on?” I ask as I dig into the food. “Did Crusher believe my story?”
“You’ve made a believer out of him, if that’s what you’re wondering. But I have to know, Maria: are you still okay with us taking your old man down? Because ultimately, that’s what this is going to take, you know. That’s where all this is heading. And that’s especially true if he’s put a spy into our ranks. If he has turned somebody – if that turns out to be true – he’s going to have to pay even more than if he were just infringing on our territory. So I have to know: why are you doing this? Why are you betraying your own father?”
I stop eating and stare at him. He’s really asking me this. I suppose now is as good a time as ever to tell the truth. Between bites, I begin by telling him my past.
“Let me tell you a story, Blade. It’s about a little girl who learned from her mother and from her religion that there’s a fine line between good and bad, between heroes and villains. A girl who learned from a very young age that her father was not one of the good guys. I knew my dad had his problems. But I also knew that I wanted to stop those problems from arising. I don’t want to see people hooked on drugs, and I hate people who make a profit off of them. People like my father.”
“And me, Maria,” he says softly. “I’m one of those people, too.”
“But you’re not, Blade,” I reassure him. “I’ve seen how you act with me. You may not be perfect, but there’s a huge difference between being a sinner and being evil. You might not be a saint, but my father – he’s evil. Or, at least, the things he does are evil.”
“What’s the difference between him and me though?”
“You have the capacity to be kind, to see beyond yourself. I’ve seen it. My father... he’s never loved anything in his life more than himself. That’s why he drove my mami to tears almost every night. That’s why he started first on Carmen, then on me, to take over his business. It’s not because he wants the best for us or cares what we want for ourselves. He only cares about one thing and one thing alone: himself. That’s why from a very young age I wanted to become a lawyer: I wanted to take down gangs like his.”
“I thought you wanted to be a public defender,” Blade says cautiously, recoiling just a little bit.
“I do,” I say slowly. “Everyone deserves protection. But what got me interested in the law was ways to bring down this ‘empire’ my dad has built for himself. It just seems completely crazy to me that he can operate in the shadows and have no one coming after him.”
“Well, he’s got people coming after him now,” Blade informs me. “We’re planning a strike against him. And we need your help to do it.”
“What do you need from me? I only know so much.”
“You know what your dad’s schedule is for bringing in shipments of weapons and drugs, is that correct?” he asks, and I can tell now that he’s not playing around anymore.
“Sort of. I know he has a regular shipment that comes in on Tuesdays. I could show you on a map where it comes in.”
“That’s the kind of thing you’re going to have to show to Crusher and the boys. Crusher is putting a lot of trust in you. And so am I. Tell me, Maria, if I were to let you out of this room, let you put your clothes on and walk around the house like normal, would you stay?”
“What do you mean, would I stay?” I ask, confused.
“I mean, would you run away? Would you try to escape?”
“Oh.” I hadn’t honestly thought about it. I mean, I had thought that I could escape when he left the door open, but I didn’t. “Blade, you know you left the door open a few times today.”
“Yes, I know,” he says, nodding. “That was a test.”
“I figured.”
“So, if I let you roam around the house, can I trust you to stay?” he asks again. “Because if you don’t, you know we’ll hunt you down and kill you. And that won’t be my call to make, even if I wanted to stop it.”
“I know,” I reply. “Honestly, Blade, I can’t say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind. But if I wanted to escape – if I really, truly wanted to get out of here – where would I go? The cops are all crooks. I can’t go back to my father’s house – he’d murder me if he found out what I’ve told you already. So I have nowhere else to go.”
“I know you don’t. That’s by design.”
“Then you know that I’m not going anywhere. Even if I wanted to... I’m yours.”
He nods and goes out of the room for a moment. When he comes back, he has my clothes. “Put these on, and you can come upstairs for a second helping of the pasta, if you want.”
“I don’t think anyone would want a second helping of that pasta,” I tease him.
“What’s wrong with my pasta?” he asks, pretending to be offended.
“It’s literally pasta and sauce with chicken. No spices or anything.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It is,” I tease him again.
At that moment, I realize something. Despite the fact that I am in his thrall – quite literally his prisoner – I feel free, and more so than I’ve ever felt before.
I follow him upstairs and into the kitchen, going over in my mind the wonder of it all.
I’m free.