Claiming Felicity (Ace Security #4)(72)

At first everything seemed fine. She and four other women—girls—had met at a local bar. They’d been given new clothes and more money than they’d ever had in their entire lives. They’d gotten in a truck and been driven north.

But somewhere along the way, things had changed. The man who had been so nice to them in Fresnillo disappeared, and was replaced by a sullen older man who didn’t speak more than two words to them.

When they got close to the border, they were ordered into small crates. Maria had been locked inside that small wooden box for hours. She thought she was going to die in there, but she hadn’t. Looking back, she almost wished she had.

She was brought here to this apartment, where she met Maldad for the first time. She had no idea what had happened to the other girls who had traveled from Fresnillo with her, but she supposed it didn’t matter. They were probably locked in a room, much like hers, forced to do the same things she’d been forced to do.

Maria had fought at first, but eventually had given in. Maldad owned her. He was free to do whatever he wanted to her, and it was his right to let anyone else he wanted do whatever they wanted with her.

And he had.

They had.

She’d been beaten and abused so horribly over the years, she was merely a shell of the idealistic young woman she’d once been.

But then a week ago, Maldad had arrived, unexpectedly. He’d unlocked her door, and instead of raping her, he’d shoved a bundle of blankets at her. He’d then thrown a US passport and a pile of money on the floor next to the dirty, stained mattress and said, “Go home, girl.” He always called her “girl.” All the men who visited her called her that. No one ever asked her name because they simply didn’t care.

“Go home, girl,” he’d said. “Take the baby and don’t come back. Ever. Don’t tell anyone where you got him or what happened here. If you do, I’ll find you and kill you. Slowly and painfully.”

He’d left as quickly as he’d arrived, not caring about the small infant he’d shoved at her any more than he cared about her.

Maria gazed down at the infant. He was adorable. His brown hair was long for how old she guessed he was. He was chubby, in the way only healthy babies could be. Maria’s brothers and sisters had never looked as good as this child did. They were always hungry at home, never had enough to eat, and their dull eyes and protruding bellies showed it.

But they’d been loved.

Just as this child was.

Maria could see it from the expensive onesie the infant was wearing and from the glow of his perfect skin.

The first day, he’d smiled all the time and had no fear of her. Only a child who had never been hurt by others would be so free with his affection.

She’d been too afraid to leave her prison at first. She was scared it was a trap and if she set foot outside her room, Maldad would pop out of nowhere and hurt her for trying to escape. She’d tried to get away once before, a week after she’d been locked into her prison. A week after she’d been repeatedly raped by Maldad and his friends. They’d laughed when she’d cried and begged for them to let her go. To stop hurting her. The punishment for attempting to escape was a hundred times worse than what she’d endured the first week. She never made the mistake of trying to get away again. She learned her lesson the hard way all those years ago.

But after a while, the baby had gotten hungry. And dirty. And Maria didn’t have anything to make a diaper out of except a torn T-shirt one of her visitors had left behind. So she’d carefully made her way out of her unlocked room into the kitchen. No one was lurking out there to beat her for stepping foot outside her prison. There wasn’t any baby food, but she’d managed to mash up peas from a can in the pantry. There was some evaporated milk, which she tried to dilute and give the child, but he wasn’t having any of it.

Desperate, Maria had finally worked up the nerve to leave the apartment and walk down the street, with the baby in her arms. She wasn’t going to leave him alone and chance one of Maldad’s friends showing up and hurting him.

She bought some formula, a small box of diapers, and a box of cereal from a gas station.

The baby didn’t exactly love the meal, but he was probably so hungry that he didn’t have the energy to complain too loudly.

The way the baby’s eyes constantly searched the room, and the way one of his little hands kept opening and closing, as if looking for something, or someone, unnerved her.

Wanting, no needing, information about the outside world that had been denied her for so long, Maria had been watching the Spanish channel on the small television for hours. She learned that she’d been living in the small apartment for three years. She’d gone from an innocent eighteen-year-old eager to escape the poverty of her homeland to a twenty-one-year-old who dreamed about the simple but safe life she used to lead.

With the infant fretting in her arms, Maria watched the news with fascination. So many things had changed in the last three years. But when a story came on about a missing child from Colorado, she froze. Maria stared at the television as a picture of the infant flashed on the screen. She tuned out the words from the reporter as more pictures were shown.

Pictures of his distraught parents.

Pictures of his uncles.

But it was the photo of his twin brother that caught her attention.

The missing child everyone was looking for was currently in her arms, crying. And he had a twin. His constantly moving eyes and his grasping hand made sense now. He was instinctually missing his brother and searching for him.