A Shattered Hope

Chapter Four

Carla explained how her family's operation worked. They would take girls from all over the country. They would bring them to the basement of their home, which she refused to give the address for, and put them in rooms like the one she was in. There were fifteen rooms. Usually they only kept one girl in each room but would double them up if necessary. They would torture them and get them hooked on heroin before loading them into the shipping containers and sending them allover the United States. They had taken their trafficking operation to New York City in the hopes of starting an international business.Carla had spent four months getting this intel. She never mentioned a number when asked about how many people she had killed or tortured.But judging from the different names she used it the number was quite high. Frank listen intently to her. Her intel was strong. She had numbers of guards outside and inside, where the patrols and stationary men would be, where the containers of innocents were, as well as the response times of backup and the police. "Now that you two are involved it's less likely to be a suicide mission." Carla stated in a matter of fact tone. "I'm in." Frank said knowing full well even with Carla and Red it was still a suicide mission. They might have the advantage of intel but things would change due to the mess that happened the previous night. It was worth it to Frank,however. This would begin to make up his failure on the roof a year previous. It would help to fix his guilt. Or so he hoped. Red seemed on board but he was uneasy with the new Carla. His expression was hard to read because of his mask but his body language was in nearly neon colors. His shoulders stiffened every time she would load a gun.His jaw was tight. He also barely spoke. Frank knew he would be there. Despite his obvious reservations about this Red was angry too.Frank wondered if it was for the same reasons that he was. Was it because they kidnapped her? Because they tortured her? Or was it because they were traffickers and the scum of the earth? Frank didn't have to wait long for an answer though. "Why did you do this yourself? Why didn't you come to Frank or me? Hell even the police?Why do this completely on your own?" Red snapped after Carla had begun to sharpen the knife from earlier that night. Carla set her jaw. She stared directly at Red for a moment before she spoke. "I thought he was dead. And finding you is like pulling hen's teeth. Besides this is my fault." Tears had formed in the corners of her eyes. "I should have exposed years ago. How many woman would have been saved from that hell if I had? How many people would still be alive if only I had done something sooner? I have that on my conscious every god damn day. I have to stop it because I let it continue to happen for this long." A few tears slipped down her face. "They killed my real parents." Her tone changed from anger to grief. "I never looked like my parents or my siblings growing up. But I didn't think anything of it. I had friends that didn't look like anyone in their immediate family. Though I always had these memories of a man and a woman. They were small, fleeting memories that I assumed were dreams for a long time. But it always nagged at me that whenever they would be conjured up that I couldn't shake that those were my parents. When I was sixteen years old I spent the night at a friend's house. My friends were never allowed at my house and it was a rarity that I could spend the night elsewhere.But it was my friend's birthday and I was the only person invited to stay over so my parents let me. They had convinced us, my siblings and me, that all families were like ours. That everyone kept girls int he basement. That everyone had secret nighttime meetings with scary looking people. That digging holes to bury human sized bags in was normal. So I was terrified when my friend wanted me to come to the basement with her. It was off limits to me at home. We went down and there were no rooms with girls in them. Just a small room with a giant couch, a TV and lots of movies. There were so many that I have never even heard of. My parents heavily controlled what we watched.At the time most people thought they were religious fanatics but they were just keeping us under their control. My friend picked a movie that was about human trafficking in Europe, I can't remember the name, for us to watch. And that's when it hit me that something wasn't right at home. What they were doing at home was the same as the bad guys in the movie. That couldn't be right though. We are good people, I thought to myself. I began to question everything that night. I googled human trafficking and figured out just how bad my parents were. When I got home the next day I asked them about the girls in the basement. I asked them why a movie would paint the people like us as bad. That was the first time my father ever raised a hand to me. He backhanded me and grounded me for three days. I wasn't allowed to leave my room. Hell they kept me from school for those three days. I knew I had stumbled onto something at that point.I had never been in that much trouble in my entire life." Carla paused to center herself. It was obvious to Frank that this was not a story she told easily. "My parents left as some point on the second day and I decided to snoop around their room to find out my answers.I searched everywhere I could think of to find out what exactly was going on. In their closet I found a chest, the one you found in my old apartment," She nodded toward Frank. "On top was financial paperwork for people who had different names than my parents. As I dug deeper I found photos of me with the two people from my memory.There were pictures of me as a toddler and an infant. My parents claimed that they had a flood and that all my baby pictures were destroyed which was why they had none. But there I was, as a baby, in the arms of the woman from my memories. Another one I was being fed by the man." She paused again. It looked like she was choking back her emotions. "Then I found a photo from the hospital. The day I was born. It couldn't have been taken but seconds after I was born. I was still covered in blood laying on the woman's chest. That was the moment I knew I wasn't my parents' child. I was the child of someone else. I stole one of the papers with my real parents' names on it. I did some research on the names and found an article from a newspaper that was from a town over. It was about how their car had crashed and caught fire. The police had ruled it homicide but had no idea who would have killed them or where their eighteen month old daughter had been taken to. My real father worked at some factory but my mother was a case worker that dealt with victims of sexual violence. My best guess is that my mother found out about what was going on in the basement and was killed because of it. I'm still not sure if my abduction was an afterthought or not. All I know is that I don't know the whole story. At the time I was too terrified of what might happen if I called them on the carpet about it. Fear kept me from saying anything until I graduated college. Not just what my abductors might do but how it might destroy the rest of the family too. But when I confronted them and told them that I knew they laughed. They didn't even try to hide it. All of my siblings knew the truth. The whole family was complicit in everything. I threatened to expose them if they tried to find me. I knew I should expose them but I couldn't.They were monsters but part of me still loved them. They had raised me. They were the only family I had known. I chose to rid myself of them rather than expose them. So I came here. I figured in a city of so many people they wouldn't be able to find me easily. I was wrong."Carla returned to sharpening her knife. Frank knew she was done speaking for a while. Dawn had broke before Carla had started speaking and now the sun was shining fully through the windows of the warehouse. Red's pacing stopped, "What time is it?" "About7:30." Carla's voice was monotone. "Shit! I have to go. I'll be back tonight." Red exited the warehouse quickly but he paused briefly where Lawrence had died. He shook his head and continued on his way. Frank watched him. He knew full well that Lawrence's death got under Red's skin. He wasn't built to kill or for handling it.When Frank had first met Carla he thought the same thing but now, he knew he was wrong. He'd seen her kill without question or hesitation.It still didn't seem real to him. This woman that sat relaxed into the chair across from him, sharpening her blade, looked like the woman he'd met on the roof all those months ago. But it wasn't her.Not anymore. She was vicious and angry. But also suicidal. Which,Frank thought, wasn't so different from when they first met. The more he watched her throughout the day the more he realized that maybe he was wrong. Maybe she was the same woman. He was just seeing the layers peeled back. He remembered on the night that they met she was angry enough to take a shot at him for pulling her off edge of that roof. She stepped up to him more than once. She had always been angry. She had always been vicious. He remembered seeing her throwing elbows into the face of one of the thugs on the roof that first night. He was already unconscious and she didn't need to keep hitting him but she did. If he hadn't shot him she might have beat him to death, Frank thought to himself. At some point Carla threw Frank a blanket and mentioned them both needing to sleep. He watched as she curled up on a small army cot and fell asleep. He sat on the floor near the table. He didn't expect to fall asleep at all. But his exhaustion took over and he quickly fell asleep.