I shook my head and cursed him, life, my mother for instilling in me to help others, and… did I say life?
I got in the car after he told me he’d text me tomorrow on the time and place as soon as he got it, and I drove off. I couldn’t wait to soak the stench and memories of today away.
This whole situation was messed up beyond measure, and I hated to say it, but this time it wasn’t my brother’s fault. It was mine.
For a long time revenge became my drug of choice, my addiction. It fueled me for a while, but now I felt it suffocating me. Close to six months ago, when I was picking up paper products from a restaurant depo for Ice, I happen to stumble on something that I wasn’t supposed to see. I was scared half out of my mind because of what I saw. I knew if I did anything about it, my life would be in jeopardy. I decided to seek wisdom from someone I trusted, and, instead, I got a dose of cowardice and selfishness that I didn’t expect.
“For once in your fucking life, Ayana, listen to me,” my so-called badass brother scolded. “Just don’t say or do anything. It’s possible they didn’t see you; then you’re safe. But the moment you open your mouth to the authorities, your life is forfeited.”
I thought Terrence was full of shit. I mean, seriously people report things all the time anonymously, right? Well, I listened at first, but I continued to think about what I had seen and felt sick as if I had done the crime myself. After seeing the unsolved case of the crime I witnessed on the news a few days later, I felt even worse.
Then as fate would have it, I saw it happen again, but with another girl. Okay, I’ll admit fate had nothing to do with this. After I saw the girl get murdered, I continued to drive around that area every day looking for the killer. I wasn’t sure what I would’ve done if I saw the man again, but what I didn’t expect was to see him hurt someone else. What would you do if you were in my shoes? You’re at the same place around the same time and you saw the same thing happen again. Questions go through your mind, fear, anxiety, but then what do you do? Well, let me tell you – I didn’t just walk away.
I watched the girl get beat pretty badly, and then watched, as she was strangled, just like the other girl. When the piece of shit was done with the girl, he left her there to die just as he did before. I waited until he was out of sight and I went to check on her. I thought she might be dead and if she was, I would have just left, but she wasn’t. She was barely holding on, but she was alive. I picked her up, struggling a little, but she weighed nothing at all, and carried her to my car.
I didn’t know what to do at that point. I thought about dropping her off at the hospital. You know, have it be a good citizen type of story, give them the ‘ol “found her on the side of the road” bit. But I didn’t. Instead, I called my brother, told him what I had done and that I needed a safe place for her to heal.
After about thirty minutes of him yelling at me, calling me every unpleasant thing he could think of, he told me where to take her.
Easy peasy, right?
Well, what I didn’t know, and found out the hard way, was the girl that I saved happened to “belong to” a very dangerous family in the city. The doctor ratted my brother out after he figured out who the girl was. Apparently, she had some bar code on her neck that represented property of this family, the Santos Family. I knew what this family was capable of, and I knew I couldn’t do this on my own.
The Santos family was from Central America. They weren’t as big as other mob families, but they had some connections. What I found out about them that turned my stomach and sent me on this crusade was the fact that they dealt with women trafficking, mainly young innocent girls. This family would take these girls, sometimes from their homes, but mainly from the streets, string them out, sell them, pimp them and use them for whatever sport they wanted.
The part of the family business I stumbled on was underground fighting. It was a ring of different men in the underground world participating in this fiasco. They would pit half-naked women against each other fighting until someone passes out, tapped out or died. The ones that tapped out or refused to fight were beaten senseless and killed.
That’s what happened to that other girl I witnessed being strangled and what happened to Noelle. Noelle didn’t want to fight, but she was placed in the ring anyway and she tapped out. They had no patience for quitters and women that lost them money, so their punishment was death; however, I saved Noelle from death.
When I told my brother all about the family, he freaked out. Apparently, so did his crew. They forced him into hiding in order to keep him safe. There were a few attempts on his life, drive bys and gang related shootings, which Terrence knew Santos orchestrated. The doctor only knew his street name and no one in my brother’s world knew too much about me; those that did were sworn to secrecy, so I was safe for now.