Page 52 of The Sicilian Bastard
Araceli
You're a rat. Rat. Rat. Rat.Luciano's sneered words rang over and over again in my head. They repeated when I pulled myself off the ground. They played on a loop as I went through the motions of cleaning myself up. I barely looked in the mirror. I didn't want to see that broken girl staring back at me. They were continual when I dialed a number I thought I would never be dialing again. As the phone rang, the incessant playback grew louder and louder.
"Hello?" His raspy voice sent violent tremors down my spine.
"Tio Rueben?" My ears were ringing, covering the childlike quality of my voice.
"Si?" He paused then. "Araceli? Where are you?"
I closed my eyes from the onslaught of memories his voice brought on. The hands. The smells. Their breaths. I wanted to puke, but I had nowhere left to go. I had to face the consequences of my actions. I was a traitor.
"I am in New York at the Falcone estate." There were mumblings in the background before my Uncle Reuben came back.
"What are you doing in New York? Never mind, I'll be there in less than thirty minutes." The phone clicked in my ear. I couldn't figure out if my uncle was angry with me or not. What I did know was that pretty soon I wouldn't be Luciano's problem anymore. By the end of the day, I'd probably be dead. A question swirled in my head. How was my uncle getting here so quickly?
True to his word, Uncle Reuben picked me up at the gate within twenty minutes. As soon as I got into the vehicle, my hands were zip tied. Time had not been kind to Reuben Castillo. He was older than before, his grey hair starker against his pallor. He'd gained more weight. For a man who loved being in shape, he had sure let himself go.
"We've been looking for your body everywhere. Then low and behold, you're not dead but here hiding out, with the enemy. Your father is not pleased." My uncle laid a hand on my thigh and I shivered with disgust. He was a snake and his touch made me want to scrub my skin off.
"Let's get this party started. Are you going to kill me now, or will my father want to be there?" I kept my voice peppy and perky, like a cheerleader who wanted to cheer all day long with no rest.
"Oh, there won't be any killing. Not anymore. Your father pulled the gun too early. He can't get rid of you. I wish we could, but you seduced too many. That's what you're good at, right,niña? Seduction." He dipped his voice and rubbed his hands up and down my yoga pant-covered legs. Monster. They called Luciano a monster, but the Castillo men took the cake.
"Why am I not dead?" I gritted out.
"We need you. The Columbians want you. They don't care that you're a rat. Once you get to Columbia, you won't be speaking to anyone they don't want you to."
I held back the bile rising in my throat. The Columbians were ruthless. I was terrified of them. So were any people in the States. No one went against them because their retaliation made what my father did in his spare time look like child's play. Everyone gave the Columbians what they wanted because to disrespect them would be to get your entire operation wiped out. If Luciano thought he was scary, he'd never met the head of the Columbian cartel. I met him once. He forced his cock down my throat and refused to give me air to breathe. I passed out and when I woke up, my father was clucking his tongue at me in disapproval. He told me I was worthless and that I had lost his business with the Columbians. I was a wreck for weeks after my father punished me. There was a lot of manipulation that was forced on me over the years. I never saw it until I finally got away.
"If I got to Columbia, I'll die." My voice broke from the tension.
"We don't care about that. I'll make sure you're alive until the deal we need goes through. Once that's finished, they can have you. We'll have a lot of fun in between now and then, though. All right? Just like old times." Uncle Reuben leered at me. He scooted closer to me in the car and pawed at my breasts.
I leaned my head away and tried to breathe steadily through my nose. I didn't want him to know he affected me at all. It would help him get off if I did. There was no getting out of this. I had no more hope. That one year that I didn't remember the cartel and everything that was done to me was a reprieve. I was never meant to live a normal life. Even with the Picones, I wouldn't be able to have anything normal. They were monsters who hid their faces.
"Sir, we're here." A soldier looked on with disgust marring his face as my uncle pulled his hands out of both our pants.
I wasn't sure if the soldier was disgusted with me or with Reuben. They probably thought I asked my uncle to touch me. I mean, in their eyes, these men could do no wrong. They were heroes with their moral code, one they made up. That's how it had always been. I was the victim but treated like the harlot. I was told I pranced around the inner circle asking for it. When I was a child, I was told that sitting on laps,besoson the cheek, even a hug wasasking for it.
My mother, God rest her soul, would always say to me, 'Mija, what are you wearing? There are men out here.'I was then forced to change my clothes. I never really understood it until my birthday that fateful year. It didn't matter what I wore. Spaghetti strapped sundresses, jeans, and a t shirt, shorts, tank tops, hell, even braless with a dark shirt, I was shamed. I was told to change. I was looked at like a whore. Me, a whore. At the age of six? It made sense when I lived it, but when I got out, when I went out into the world and lived a different life, I knew I wasn't a whore. I knew I had been told something over and over again until it seeped into my skin. Until I could feel the words etched into my bones. No child should have to go through that. Even when I conformed and changed, even when I stopped hugging and didn't sit on laps anymore, I was still used. I was still taken advantage of. I was still ruined. The inner circle groomed me from the time I could walk and talk to be their little doll.
I sat woodenly on the plane and thought back to everything I wastaughtas a child. Everything they had ingrained in me. I was a victim of circumstance. I never grew up in a happy home. I was never raised with two loving parents with a two-car garage in suburbia. No, I had been in survival mode from the age of six. I was still in survival mode. No one could save me. No one but myself.
The flight wasn't that long, and we landed in Vegas. My father's compound was located on the outskirts of Red Canyon National Park. There weren't any other houses around it. I don't know who the Castillos paid off, but the compound had been there, hidden, for centuries. In any case, it was a place where no one would hear screams. My father rarely dumped bodies in the national park. That could have been the tradeoff. He had some sort of respect for the environment, which was a crazy notion. A gangster loving the environment even though their very essence was a direct detriment to the world. Especially women and children. My father loved selling women and children. I didn't find out until I was older, but he sold several of my friends to his business acquaintances. I stopped letting people become my friends after that.
After I was born, my father sold the rest of his daughters to people around the world. He told my mother one day he only needed one girl. He wanted several boys, though. I was never enough. I wasn't a man. I wasn't strong. I wasn't beautiful. We pulled into the compound. My childhood home pulled into view. It was a mixture of stereotype and dissonance. My father thought he was sophisticated, but he was more banal and sad than anything else. The compound was three-story, with a glass enclosed pool.
As Uncle Reuben dragged me through the house to my father's office, my eyes took in the same oriental rugs on the floor. They were old, and according to my father's classics, something he thought the rich and elite would have in their homes. I, however, thought they'd have one, not four in each room. We passed the kitchen and I noticed the dining room had been converted into a sprawling weight room with mirrors all over the back wall. I recoiled. This place gave me bachelor pad vibes if the bachelor was sixty years old and living life in the eighties.
We entered my father's office and there he sat. He was on his throne. One leg was thrown over the arm counting money like some kind of bad guy in a cheesy horror film. His desk was littered with plastic baggies, rubber bands, and cases full of Glocks. My father loved his guns. He still had powder on his nostril which told me he had snorted recently. That didn't bode well for me. If he took a hit, he would soon be paranoid and hard of hearing.
He knew I was in his office, but he kept counting his money like I wasn't even important enough to greet. I guessed that was exactly how unimportant I was. I was no longer the cartel princess. I was only Araceli Castillo, stripper and Luciano Picone's woman. Wait, I wasn't his woman anymore. I was my own woman. There was no one waiting for me. No one was willing to rescue me. No one who would hold me.
"Here she is, unharmed as requested, el jefe." Uncle Reuben prostrated for my father.
He was always a kiss ass. El jefe looked up from his counting and dragged another baggie towards himself. He motioned for Reuben to help himself. Then he laid out a line, rolled up a dollar bill, and snorted it up his nose. The sounds of their snorts and moans of ecstasy tried to drive me back to the times when they would double team me after they got their fixes. The Picones may be mafia, but they didn't taste their supply. Not that I saw.
"Niña." El jefe was looking at me now. His cold, dead eyes frosted over and I knew this was the end. I backed up into the wall, my body trembling from fear. His eyes roamed over my body, making me break out in goosebumps. I felt sick. I wished I'd never left Luciano. There was safety there. Sure, he didn't want me. Sure, he didn't trust me, but I could live in his city away from him and alive.
