The Beasts of Juarez, R.B. Schow [books to read for self improvement .txt] 📗

can just assert your will without significant consequence? Well, I want to show you something.”

She turned and looked up at him. He was holding a rather large hunting blade.

“I personally believe that it’s okay to hit you on the head a few times, but only if you’re going to learn. But you are not learning, so it’s not okay to keep hitting you. What will come next will be me cutting off pieces of you. Maybe your fingers, your toes, maybe even your tits. We will see how good or how bad you behave when the stakes are this high.”

“I think you need to understand why you are here and what you need to do to get to safety,” Santiago said calmly.

She felt that swirling darkness inside of her letting up a little bit. Was he giving her a way out of this? Was there also a way to get the girls back? Or was this all a ruse to force her to behave?

“How much do you love your daughters?” Santiago asked.

Sydney started to cry at the thought of never seeing them again, of them being abused by scrupulous men, maybe even killed.

“They are my life,” she said in a tortured tone.

“How much does your husband love those three beautiful girls?” Santiago asked.

Her eyes were streaming, her nose leaking as well. She didn’t need to say anything that her personal anguish wasn’t already saying.

“Most people think the cartels deal in drugs, weapons, and the trafficking of humans over the border. Different cartels handle different trades, and some diversify. Not us. We move humans and that’s it. This new border wall hurt us. Then, when the pandemic caused a full shut down, whatever sex trafficking we could manage came to an immediate stop. There was no way to move them through, not under the former president and his enhanced border patrol.”

“Why do you keep tormenting me with the details of your work?” she asked. “I don’t need to be sold on your persona anymore. You’re a bad guy, one of the worst. I hear you loud and clear.”

“When we couldn’t traffic our stores of people over the border into your lovely, corrupt country, we began to sell them to other countries with less problematic travel restrictions. But now, as of about a week ago, it has become rather easy to get people from America into Mexico and vice-versa. Think of how easy it was to get you and your daughters into Juárez. Other kids were taken, too. Not just yours. And not just from America. We pull children from many other countries. In fact, we have entire warehouses full of them. And now that all the borders are open and everyone is vying for new product, our supply will not only sell fast, but it will also yield a higher price. That is why your situation is so perfect for us.”

“You’re sick,” she said, brushing her tears aside.

“What we are is rich. The safest, most available commodities are always the ones with the smallest profit margins. But trafficking in kids? They are on the radar when we take them, and they’re hard to transport unless you have a network of paid helpers. And the things that can happen to them along the way? The things people do to them? Well, now, that is some truly diabolical shit. Then again, it’s always the diabolical shit that pays the biggest dividends.”

She turned away, unable to even look at him anymore.

“When a person’s depravity sinks that low, when what they do is far more than even monsters like me can stomach, then what you have is a bunch of rich assholes and truly sadistic sons of whores who couldn’t tell right from wrong.”

“Do you even look at their faces?” she asked, no longer biting back her tears.

“Yes, I do, each one of them. And do you know what I see? I see dollar signs. Some kids are worth more than others, but your kids, Sydney…your kids are going to fetch a premium.”

She ached with every fiber of her being to go after him again. She could take getting knocked on the head with a gun, but cut with a knife? That was one of her worst fears, third only to being raped and having her kids taken from her.

“We have become the hub for the sales and distribution of young women,” Santiago said. “Jose is my enforcer and he likes to enforce.”

“I don’t give a damn about your business,” she muttered.

“You think I limit trafficking to just children? They are far more profitable than adults, but a woman like you, even you being an old goat like you are, you have value as well.”

“I’m hardly an old goat,” she said wiping her eyes again, the lids becoming raw to the touch.

“Compared to your eight-year-old daughter, you are,” Santiago said. “There are men who don’t have the taste for children but would pay to play with you for a while before killing you.”

She looked at him, floored by his forthrightness, by his blunt and brutal honesty.

“I bet your husband has not taken care of you in months. He is, after all, a politician. And everyone knows that politicians only take care of themselves.”

“My husband is none of your business,” she said.

“Actually, he’s exactly my business. But I don’t want you to feel despondent. I would like to give you hope that things will be okay. I wanted to tell you this earlier, but you were rude, to say the least.”

“For a reason,” she said.

Touching the bandage on his ear, he said, “It can take time to move a girl like Callie, and children like Maisie and Zoey, from the auction block to the end-user. Days, perhaps.