Page 43 of Fractured Chances

“Fuck, I think I know where she went. Hold on.” Calder rushes to his room and returns with his laptop. “I found something out that was deeply disturbing. We didn’t tell you about it because we weren’t sure how you would react.”

I turn an angry gaze toward him which he ignores. He continues. “Last night she was talking about how there were other ways to help the kids but I should’ve known better.”

He brings up the information on his screen and I freeze as I see how babies are being sold into sex trafficking by a particular foster care. I’ve heard about the foster care facility. People are always talking about it like it’s the greatest thing here. I feel like throwing up but I swallow it, needing to focus on making sure that Julissa doesn’t get caught and killed.

“How’d you even find out about this?” I take some time to ask Calder.

“The devil walked into my office,” he says as he tries not to look at the monitor as if looking at it will kill him.

“Check the news,” I tell him. I know I just checked it but I didn’t see anything about the foster care being under attack but that could’ve changed in a few minutes. “Nothing about Delaney’s Home?” I ask him as I back away from the computer, rubbing at my face to rub the thoughts of those babies of out my head and trying to ensure that the vomit stays down. It’s useless. I make my way to the bathroom where the vomit shoots out from my nose and mouth.

“No,” he shouts back.

As I’m washing the taste out of my mouth, I shout. “That’s where we need to head next then. We’ve got to stop her before she does something that gets her killed and we never see her again.”

I head down to the basement where I soon realize that she wasn’t playing when she left. She is ARMED. She did quite the sweep of weapons. I grab the rest of them which still allows each of us to be sufficiently armed. I then take the stairs two at a time, impatient as the guys get ready.

My nerves are getting the best of me and I can barely even feel my hands, my face, or my toes. I need to go. Now. The guys can catch up to me or something but I can’t bear the thought of Julissa being out there by herself. I can’t stand around waiting another minute not knowing if she is safe or not. So I leave their weapons behind, taking a few with me and I bolt, gunning the engine on my bike.

Chapter 28

Calder

Ihearthefrontdoor slam and it echoes like a gunshot as it reverberates off me. My hands are shaking as I try to get my body and mind to work together so that I can rush out the door. I’m dropping things, mismatching shoes and the room just feels like it’s closing in. I hear my breaths come out as wheezes. As I stand, the room spins. It starts slow until it speeds up so much, I fall into the bed out of desperation to sit so that I can steady myself. But even as I sit, my body doesn’t stop moving, it feels like I’m in a rocking chair and I have no control over my body rocking to and fro.

I swallow against the dryness of my throat as the air starts to leave my lungs. I want to be rushing right now but my body won’t let me. I try to force the process of relaxing, telling myself that I’m here alone. The guys left already. And I know my way to the foster home so I’ll be able to catch up to them and hopefully Julissa.

Trying to sit still as my body goes haywire turns my fingers numb, even though I’m only a little bit conscious of it. I manage to get up and I stare at everything I’m grabbing with intent, trying to focus on one thing at a time so that I don’t fuck up. My brain needs to work so that I can at least find my car keys.

I feel a small sense of victory when I locate them and when I manage to put on matching shoes and actual clothes. I walk like a madman into the living room and I see the bunch of weapons sprawled out on the floor. Great. I intend to grab the weapons and run out the door, get my ass to the rescue. But as I start grabbing them and they fall from my still fidgeting hands, they hit the floor. I find that while I’m aware that the guns could’ve gone off, I don’t react as I think I should. Although I have some sort of sensation of relief that the gun’s safety is still on and I’m glad it didn’t go off, I notice that I didn’t move when I thought it might. I didn’t jump in fright to protect my life. I just stood there frozen.

Out of nowhere, I start wishing that it did go off. And now, that’s all I can think of. Death. Specifically, my death. I feel so useless, so pathetic. I’m shaky, I’m a mess, I can’t think straight, I didn’t save the kids when I could and now I can’t even get my shit together to go save my girl. I’m pointless.

As I hold one of the guns in my hand, my whole life flashes before my eyes. Everything from childhood up until this very moment. From my father and how he hurt me to how that made me see the world, with how awkward and useless I felt growing up, how pointless I used to feel at school, having a crush on Julissa, and not being able to speak to her because I didn’t feel like I was good enough or I would be worth anything to her. Finding my only sense of worth through the thing I used to escape, the only thing I was good at, computers. I think about the fights I got into and going to jail and deciding to turn my life around. And even after I did all of that, even after I had all the money I needed and wanted, helped a few people get to stay in the country illegally if they were good people, people deserving of a little kindness, I still felt like nothing in this world. I still preferred to lock myself away and keep my head down.

And then Julissa comes into my life again. The girl I fought for who I thought would never give a rat’s ass about me, ends up wanting me and it feels amazing. I find out how much we have in common. Although I still felt like I couldn’t compare what I had been through to what she had, being with her made everything look brighter. I didn’t want to ruin what we had found with each other and best of all, she thought I was useful. I didn’t want her to see how useless and weak I was, so I hid what I had been through from her. I wanted to be her man, her strong man, the one that saves her.

And together, all of us took down something bigger than us. We went after people like my father, people I even led myself to believe were worse than my father. I know now that they’re the same. But going after them, especially as a team gave me a bigger sense of purpose and I really thought we were doing something. I thought we were about to change the world. It felt amazing knowing that I could play a part in saving some lives. Saving people from the evil that was rape, abuse, and human trafficking. Damn, it felt so fucking good when we accomplished it. When we took them down. When we knew so many victims had been freed because of what we did. It was euphoric.

But that high quickly came crashing down with the realization that we’d have to run and hide. That we would never be free again. Still, I felt like I’d never been free, to begin with so a new life sounded like a chance to start over, a chance to be reborn, to reinvent myself. I could be someone who was never assaulted as a kid in this new town. I would have left my old life behind, with all the memories. I’d never have to step foot in the same town where I was dead from the moment I entered this fucking world. I would never have to keep seeing my childhood home, the same neighborhood, school, people who knew me growing up. Fuck all that. This was a chance to be transformed.

No one knows me here. I thought I could be anyone and there was nothing to remind me of the old me. I’d finally have the girl and a quiet fucking life. And even though I couldn’t quite shake my addiction to hacking, I was so fucking relieved every single time a client came back relatively clean, clean enough so that I had nothing to worry about. I thought that with each day, the past would fade and I’d start to come into this new life, make new memories, finally be happy. Then Robert fucking Delaney happened.

I raise the gun to my head. All I can see are babies, crying and I squint my eyes shut, so tight that it hurts to prevent myself from thinking about what people could be doing to them after they buy them. I think about how fucking useless I was the day I found out. I think about driving past the place and coming home and wetting my fucking pants before I finally spoke up. I think about Julissa’s bravery and the fact that I’m a pussy for not being able to do what she has.

Then I think about this morning, how I can’t even fucking get my shit together to save her. I can’t even get that fucking right! Right as I’m about to pull the trigger, I hear, “Calder! No!”

I jump and as I turn around the gun goes off. The bang is so loud, my eyes go hazy and my ears block up and start buzzing, shooting pain up the side of my head.

Chapter 29

Axel

I’mintheshowerletting the cold beat down on top of me to wake me and knock those sedatives out. I’m fuming. I’m so confused. I feel used. Like Julissa tricked me into sex and went out to fuck us over. I can’t understand why she felt the need to call me over here to mess with me and drug us! This hurt. It feels like a betrayal. And I’m honestly hesitating to go after her to help her out. Sure, I love the fucking heels off her, of course, I do. But that doesn’t mean she can’t fucking piss me off. I feel played. I was out there minding my own business, surely she could’ve done all that without rounding us all up. It’s like she needed to play out some kind of sick fantasy.

Unless she rounded us all up as some kind of goodbye. This is the moment it clicks.

Last night, she had us all here under one roof and made us feel like it was just us and her. It was a special night.

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