The Body #1: Santo and Fiorella

Epilogue 2 (Janie): The Same Mercy

***Trigger warnings for discussion of trafficking***

Somewhere in a remote, secluded forest...

Keeping Tanya in my sight, I tossed a shovel at her.

"Get digging."

"I don't know who you are --"

"Are you under the impression that we're about to become friends and we need to exchange names?"

She blinked at me, finally realizing that we were, in fact, not about to become besties.

"I just had a baby a few weeks ago."

"Well aware. Now get digging."

"You're OK with leaving my baby motherless?"

This bitch. After what she'd done...

"First, I already know he's been given to his adoptive family." 

No way would Lucio allow the former Head's son to remain in the Body and someday make a play for power. Instead, the baby boy had been given to an adoptive family that was in no way connected to the Body, who lived in another country, and who had no idea of the child's background or origins. That was kinder than what Dario La Forte would have done to a baby of a former Head.

"Second, with the kind of person you are, leaving your child motherless would be an act of mercy."

That raised her head up. "I have no idea what --"

"Don't try to play me. My girls and I have been tracking you and your girls for a long, long time. Five years, as a matter of fact. It's taken us a while to figure it all out, and there are a few more we need to take for a drive, but we've finally identified the last of you in your little ring. And once we've made the ID, it's a simple matter to eliminate the problems."

"You know." A simple statement surrounded by a wealth of resignation. 

"I do," I said. 

"How did you --"

"You can dig while I talk."

She began, and so did I.

"Do you remember Chiara? From about five years ago? Well, I met her on my wedding night, when she was about to fuck my husband. My brand-new husband. So the next day, I had my girls track her and that night we invited her to go for a little ride with us. Invited may not be entirely accurate, but I'm not in the mood to quibble about semantics. Anyway, one of my girls brought her to me at a place very similar to this and I told her to start digging."

I'll tell you whatever you want to know!

"I was only planning to give her a little scare to ensure she stayed away from Lucio."

There's six of us that I know of. But there could be more. I think this is bigger than I know.

"But the longer she kept digging, the more she kept talking and the darker the secrets she started spilling. And she told us that there were mistresses planted all through the Bodies, living with higher ups and finding out their secrets to feed back to other Bodies. A little spy ring of mistresses who had access to secrets whispered across pillows, to desk drawers easily picked, to computers that were easily hacked."

She paused and I cracked my whip. "Don't stop."

"But what the mistresses were most interested in weren't even the secrets. There are quite a few humanitarian efforts the Body engages in. Soup kitchens, food pantries, women and children's shelters. And it was in that last one that the mistresses found the most opportunity to make a great deal of money."

Tanya was quietly weeping now as she dug her grave.

"So the mistresses convinced their men that they wanted to help those less fortunate. And they began working at the shelters, helping the poor, the abused, the ones searching for some help. And the mistresses were very good at their jobs. They found apartments and jobs for the women and children in the shelters. They had a whole network to help with moving and relocation."

Tanya was now sobbing but I kept cracking my whip if she slowed down. She should be sobbing.

"But these people who were pretty much alone in the world, who were desperate to believe they were finally going to get help and get out of the shelters, were finally going to have a happier future, weren't being taken to where they were told. They were being sold. Trafficked. Traded to evil men and women, facing horrible, grim futures."

"Please don't --"

"Tell me, Tanya, when the people you sold realized what was happening, how many of their pleas for mercy did you heed?"

I cracked my whip at her head. "Answer me!"

"None," she whispered, but in the silence of the night, I heard her.

"And I'll show you the same mercy you showed them."