‘You’ll get out of here. I promise you.’
The voice is so soft, so melodic it’s tugging at my heartstrings.
Long ago memories start to surface, and like a movie playing before my eyes, I find myself unable to do anything but watch.
I don’t know what she looks like, but I know her heart. I know her voice, and the words that come from her very soul.
I know her.
Lucero. Mi luz.
‘Have you ever been in love?’ I find myself asking her.
Looking around, I note I’m in a small cell. Three concrete walls, a metal grid and desolate coldness surround me. There’s only gray—different shades of gray that only enhance the loneliness and desperation I feel clawing at my soul.
‘Love?’ she scoffs. ‘Love is for those who have a choice,’ she continues, a sadness underlying her tone. ‘It’s not for people like us.’
‘What if it could be?’ I ask. I barely recognize my own voice. It must be because it’s been too long since I’ve spoken out loud.
It’s only with her that I get to remember that I used to be a person—that I am a person. It’s only with her that I remember I’m still alive.
But even that comes at a price, and the knowledge that we are to be forever separated by a wall, by circumstances and by fucking life doesn’t help. If anything, it makes me even more desperate for more of her—more of anything I can get of her.
Even the sound of her rhythmic breath can soothe me, giving me a purpose to wake up in the morning and not succumb to this wretched state I find myself in.
‘What are you asking, Raf?’ Her breath hitches, a small sound but one that doesn’t go unnoticed. Not when I’m attuned to every little vibration that comes from her direction.
And as I drag myself to the wall, leaning against the cold surface and placing my ear against that one barrier that keeps me away from her, I wait.
Inhale. Exhale.
Hidden by the howling of the wind as it makes rounds along the cell blocks, her breath is barely audible. Still, there’s something inside of me that refuses to let anything interfere with the evidence of her presence.
Closing my eyes, I force myself to bottle my feelings, not wanting to alienate her with my strange desires. After all, who but a madman would have fallen in love in these grim circumstances?
Yet she is it for me. My one respite from perpetual pain. The only one who can calm my clamoring soul and stop my invisible wounds from bleeding.
‘Before. Before you came here,’ I revise my question, holding my breath as I await her answer.
‘No.’ The answer is curt and straight to the point, and a million feelings attack me at once. Relief, sadness, but more than anything a deep pleasure at knowing she’s never given her heart to anyone before.
‘Have you?’ The question comes after a pause, as if she tried to fight with herself whether to ask it or not.
‘No,’ I whisper.
Not until you. Not like this.
But I don’t say that. I no longer say anything. I just rest my back against the wall, my eyes closed as I try to imagine her before me. Just a few meters away from each other, yet we’re worlds apart.
Both prisoners, both subjugated and condemned to a life that no longer belongs to us.
Yet that doesn’t stop me from taking comfort in her presence—the mere fact that she exists. She’s the only thing that still keeps me going.
Sweat envelops my entire body and my muscles start spasming uncontrollably. I try to ground myself, but everything is too sudden.
Images flash before my eyes, incoherent words sounding in my ear before a deafening silence ensues.
‘I love you,’ she whispers.
The memory is distorted, and I don’t think I can trust it.
I can feel her. I can feel her in my arms—a mirage, but a welcome one, nonetheless.
My hands move up her body, tracing the curve of her waist before settling on her ribcage. She’s naked, her bare skin on top of mine.
Her breath on my cheek, I inhale the freshness of her scent, the nearness that at one point had proved impossible.
‘I love you, too,’ I murmur in her hair, slowly thrusting in and out of her—making love to her body and her soul. ‘Luz. Mi luz,’ my voice becomes frantic as I feel her walls close around me, milking me until I find my release inside of her.
Her voice—that sweet, sweet voice I’d fallen in love with—sings in my ear as she reaches her own climax, her soft moan caressing my very being, marking me as forever hers.
I hold tightly on to her—to the illusion of her. But it doesn’t last.
It never does.
The more I grasp at her form, the more she dissipates until she becomes nothing more than a phantasm haunting my mind.
‘No, no, no,’ I keep chanting, my voice harsh and seemingly far away. But the more I struggle, the more I scream to the top of my lungs, the more I realize that I’m losing it—I’m losing her.
And as I open my eyes, the sunlight peering inside the room, small particles dancing through the air and greeting my tired gaze, I know she’s already lost to me.
A lone tear makes its way down my cheek and I can’t even brush it aside, my hands and feet tied to the bedpost in an attempt to keep me leashed.
I stare at the ceiling, replaying the scenes in my mind, a deep disappointment settling inside of me when I realize that she’s gone.
She’s truly gone.
‘Look who’s awake,’ Carlos remarks as he enters the room. ‘I didn’t think you’d ever come out of it.’
‘How long?’ I croak, my throat dry, my voice hoarse.
‘Almost twenty-four hours. It’s getting worse, Raf,’ he notes grimly, coming to my side to untie my binds.
‘It always gets worse before it gets better,’ I add drily. ‘I’ve made it this far, I’m not going to stop now.’
‘Doc was worried. He said he doesn’t know if your body can take it for such prolonged periods of time.’
Since my body has become used to a certain time between doses, every time we increase that interval, I go into withdrawal. This was no exception, and I know I will continue to feel sluggish for a few days to come as my body slowly starts accommodating to the new schedule. Still, doc might have a point. The more I delay my doses, the harder my body seems to take it. But quitting is out of the question.
‘It will. It has to,’ I reply resolutely. ‘I know what I have to do, Carlos. And I’m not going to stop until Michele’s dead and buried. I’m not going to stop until he feels on his own skin what he did to me—what he took from me,’ I take a deep breath. ‘I promised her,’ I whisper, looking away.
‘I know you did, Raf. But if you’re forcing your body like this…’
‘I need to be at full capacity so I can beat him. I know him, Carlos. He might be an unstable son of a bitch, but he’s not stupid,’ a bitter laugh escapes me. ‘He’s anything but stupid. And to beat him, I’ll need to be at my best.’
‘She wouldn’t want this for you,’ he mentions as I get up to stretch my aching limbs.
I turn sharply, leveling him with my gaze.
‘She made sure you got away to live, not waste your life…’
‘No,’ I interrupt him. ‘This will be for her too. I need to know her death wasn’t in vain. I need…’ I take a deep breath, shaking my head. ‘I’ll go take a shower,’ I mumble, not wanting to dwell on the subject anymore.
Carlos purses his lips as he looks at me, clearly disapproving.
Turning my back, I decide to ignore him and everyone I encounter on my way to my room.
And as I take off my sweaty shirt and pants, stepping inside the steaming shower, I allow the residual adrenaline to pour through me.
The pain, though, is as vivid as ever.
It’s always the same cycle.
I go through a withdrawal episode where I hallucinate she’s next to me, where I fucking feel her skin next to mine. Then there’s the period of time following the episode when I have to live with the realization it was never real.
That she’s gone and nothing will bring her back.
I steady myself against the shower stall, my breath coming in short spurts, my senses too fucking full of her.
Letting my head rest against the tiled wall, I pretend for a moment that she’s on the other side. I pretend her voice talks to me, asking how my day’s been. I pretend I hear her sing, that sweet fucking tone that could bring me to my knees.
And as I fist my hard length in my hand, stroking myself, all I can imagine is her. The tightness of her pussy as she would welcome me into her body. The way she’d be so snug around me, her walls clamping down on me with the power of her orgasm.
My eyes snap closed, my lips parting as I keep pumping, using my imagination of her to help me take the edge off,
‘Fuck,’ I curse when I feel my balls draw up, a flash of light appearing before my eyes as I come in thick spurts.
My strength threatens to leave me, and I barely manage to scramble out of the bathroom, crashing face down on the bed.
Reaching under my pillow, I pull a small necklace from its safe place, lifting it in front of me as I watch the light hit the golden stone, the tiny gemstone shining brightly and bringing back painful memories from before—when it hadn’t emitted any light in the pitch darkness of my cell.
‘Why are you giving me this?’ she’d asked, almost reverently as I removed the necklace from around my neck. ‘It’s the only thing you still have from…’
From my old life.
‘Do you know what stone this is?’ I’d asked her, taking her hand and laying the necklace in her open palm.
One whispered no, her breath fanning over my cheek as I’d felt her close to my body—not seeing but feeling.
‘Garnet. It symbolizes victory.’
‘Victory…’ she’d repeated, her small hands cupping the stone and trying to make out its shape.
‘There’s also another meaning,’ I’d added sheepishly, my fingers brushing against her hair.
‘Really?’ The excitement in her voice had been evident. Just as evident as the sigh of pleasure she’d released when I’d fumbled to place the necklace around her neck.
‘Eternal love,’ I’d whispered against her nape, letting my lips touch her skin, inhaling her essence and carefully storing that precious memory of her.
‘Raf…’
‘Shh. I want you to have it. When you feel that you can’t bear it anymore, think of me. Just like I think of you.’
That had been one of the few times I’d been able to touch her, feel her… In the darkness of my cell, with my eyes sealed shut, purple and swollen, she’d been there, worrying about me, caring for me. I can almost make out the contour of her form, but her expression is forever out of reach. Yet her features are eternally engrained in my mind even from the few times I’d seen her in daylight—her blonde hair and pale skin, the way her mouth curved up as she tried to help the other slaves.
Closing my eyes, I tighten my fist around the garnet necklace, the pain threatening to overtake me.
When the one year mark had passed, I thought I was doing better. But instead of healing, every day seems to be a battle with myself to stay on course—to finally pay my brother back for all the suffering he’s caused me.
And for her.
I’d promised Lucero once that I wouldn’t give up. That I’d escape and get revenge for what Michele had done to me. But I’d promised her many things.
I’d promised her I’d save her.
I’d promised her we’d find a way to be together.
I’d promised her forever.
But I failed her.
Even if it kills me, at least one of those promises I will keep. The only one I still can.
‘You’re not getting away this time, brother,’ I mutter to myself.
Time and time again I’d stepped aside, ignoring his psychotic tendencies and making excuses for him.
Until he put me on the auction block and killed everyone.
Sick laughter bubbles inside of me as I think back to my last interaction with Michele. How he’d looked into my eyes unflinching, giving me that twisted smile of his while he’d taken a drag from his cigarette. One moment we’d been talking, the next I’d awoken miles away from New York, not a person anymore—just cargo.
‘Soon, brother. Soon.’
