I nodded to Tom to let him know I understood and exited the small room and walked through the next door down that led into the interrogation room. As I entered Javier’s eyes snapped to mine and a slow triumphant smile spread across his lips.
“¡Fuerte belleza! How wonderful for you to come visit me. I was starting to lose hope you would come. What took you so long?” I knew this was a game and I had to play it correctly if I wanted the information on the girls in Mexico. I reminded myself that this man valued strength and wanted my attention. I would make him work for that attention. I closed the door and looked over the lawyer while I walked to the empty chair across the table from the men and sat down.
“Believe it or not I had more important things to do than speak to you, Mr. Revera.” My attention was still directed towards the lawyer and I held my hand out to shake his hand. “Hello. I don’t think we have been introduced,” I purred in my flirtatious voice, “My name is Tiffany.” The lawyer looked surprised but took my hand automatically. From the corner of my eye I saw that Javier was looking at our joined hands with a frown on his face.
“Edwin Slate, pleasure to meet you ma’am,” the lawyer replied.
“Edwin is just a boring lawyer,” Javier interjected. “And why didn’t you introduce yourself as special agent?”
“Because I am not one. I do not work for the FBI, Mr. Revera.” I watched shock briefly register on his handsome features before he schooled his face back into a neutral mask. Point one to me.
“Please call me Jefe. Everyone does.” Like that was going to happen.
“Why am I here, Mr. Revera? The FBI said that you insisted on speaking with me, but they didn’t tell me why.”
“We are here to finish the conversation we started before we were so rudely interrupted.” He reached up to stroke his own lips while he said this. Clearly intending to remind me of when he did the same to me.
“And why would I do that? You have no power over me here, Mr. Revera.” That caused anger to spark within his eyes and he dropped his hands below the table. This was not a man who coped with a lack of control well.
“I have information. Information about the drugs and guns that the cartel is going to move in the next couple of days. Information that you could use to stop their movement into the United States.” He was jockining for power. Searching for something he could use as leverage to get what he wanted.
“I already told you. I am not FBI. I do not care if you bring truckloads of drugs and guns into the country. You are going to have to do better, Mr. Revera,” I said the last in my best disappointed teacher voice. His jaw clenched, and he remained silent.
I pushed my chair back and smiled politely at the Edwin, “If that’s all. I have other things to attend to. It was good to meet you Mr. Slate.”
“What do you care about?” Javier blurted out and I slowly turned focus back to him and sat back in the chair. I could see that Jefe wanted to know the answer to that question like a druggie wanted his next hit. For some reason, I was becoming an obsession to this man. With his obsession Javier had just handed me the upper hand. I had the power in this small interrogation room.
I let the anticipation stretch for a full minute before answering, “Girls. I want to know about the missing girls that we didn’t find in the warehouse.”
“Why do you care? As you say, you are not FBI. Why care about a couple of girls but not metric tons of illegal drugs flowing into your country.” Holy shit. Metric tons? What kind of operation had we stumbled into?
“That’s not how it works, Mr. Revera. I have already answered two of your questions and you have failed to answer mine. You do not get any more answers from me until you tell me about the girls that were taken from night clubs.” The muscles in Javier’s jaw bulged as he ground his teeth together. He hated that I was taking control of the conversation, but he needed the answers to his questions. All I had to do was wait him out.
“The girls you speak of, were at the warehouse but then they were smuggled across the border to Mexico. The cartel plans to sell them at the end of the week. American women go for a premium in Mexico. Every hombre wants their very own little white American whore to punish.” He paused to see if I would react to his insult but when I didn’t even blink he continued. “Now tell me why you are so interested in my girls,” Jefe barked while eagerly leaned forward in his seat.
I held his gaze as I told him a basic and horrific truth about myself. “I care about them because I am one of them. I was sold as a sex slave when I was ten years old.”
Javier’s anger turned into excitement as he processed my words. A sick knowing smile spread across his face and bile started to coat the back of my throat, but I refused to look away in shame. Strength. I had to remain strong if I was going to get a location out of him, and I guessed that we were nowhere close to being done. I would have to fully humiliate myself to learn this secret from him.
“Where are the girls now?” I asked.
“Mexico City,” he replied without hesitation. He wanted answers about me more than he wanted to protect his organization right now. “Who are you? If you are not law enforcement, then why did you let Creeper kidnap you?”
“I am actually in between jobs right now, so I can’t give you a job title. I worked with the FBI in the operation to find and raid your warehouse because you kidnapped my friend’s little sister.” I let out a slow breath before asking the big question. “Where exactly are the girls being held in Mexico City?”
“No, no, no. You have already told me that is what you really care about. As soon as I tell you where the girls are being held, you are going to walk out of this room. It is going to cost you to get that answer.”
I had figured as much and remained quite as I waited for his request. He let the tension build for a few moments before getting to the point. “I was so impressed by the courage you showed last night. You walked into a room filled with rough men after being kidnaped and dared to stare me down. Then you didn’t seem phased by Creeper’s … administrations.” He paused, and I had to swallow back a gag as I remembered what he was talking about. “Then you didn’t bat an eye when Mac held a knife to you with the clear intention of slitting your throat. You didn’t show one ounce of fear, my fuerte belleza. Not, that is, until the F. B. I. burst through the doors to save you. One look at them and you were shaking like a leaf. I saw it with my own eyes. Tell me, my strong beauty, what were you so afraid of?”
I dropped my eyes and looked down at my hands to add gravity to his question. I needed to make sure that he would give me the information I needed if I told this story. This wasn’t something I ever wanted to talk about again. I spoke the next question to the table to show how much I didn’t want to give him the answer he wanted. “If I tell you, you will tell me the address of where they are keeping the girls along with any details we need to know about the location?”
“If you give me a complete answer that fully explains what you are scared of, then yes. I will give you everything you need to rescue those girls too.”
I looked up into his eyes and asked, “Do I have your word, Jefe?” He smiled at my use of his nickname. I was letting him think he had taken back control of this conversation. That he was playing me instead of the other way around.
“Si fuerte belleza. I will tell you.”
I let my gaze fall on the double-sided mirror as I debated how to tell this story. I knew that Liam was behind that glass watching and listening in his quite analytical way. Would he still want to work with me after he knew the whole story? Would he tell Ethan and the rest of the team? Was I throwing away my chance at working with his Whistler team, with Oliver, by exposing this truth? Would Oliver turn away from me when he found out the truth?
Even if I I lost everything I had been trying to gain by working with Whistler, I knew that the possibility of helping Molly, Julie, and other girls like them was worth it. I had to do this. It was part of my penance.
I dragged my gaze away from the one-way mirror and locked eyes with Jefe. I would not show shame in front of a man like is Javier Revera. “I already told you that I was sold when I was a child. What I didn’t tell you was that I was sold to a consigliere.” I saw that he understood that I had been sold to the Sicilian mafia. “This man was cruel and obviously had a liking for little girls. The years that I spent under him were enough to strip me down to my most basic survival instincts.”
“He broke you,” Javier stated as he moved to lean forward in his seat like an eager child. The palpable excitement that Javier was displaying over hearing about the torture I had to endure as a child turned my stomach.
“Yes. He broke me,” I admitted while trying to focus on the faces I had seen within the photos of Molly and Julie. “When I was thirteen the head mob boss himself noticed that I was intelligent, even though I lacked schooling, and offered me a way out of the consigliere’s house. I jumped at the chance. He bought my loyalty and dedication by taking me away from my molester, but he also always had a way to force my compliance through the simple threat of returning me.” I added that part for Liam. While it didn’t excuse my later actions, I hoped it would at least help in explaining them.
“Under the mob boss’s tutelage, I learned all the ins and outs of how to run a large criminal organization and became one of his most powerful assets. I was the young girl that every man dismissed and could gather or steal any sort of information the boss wanted. I was his secret weapon.”
“You are a criminal?” Javier asked in an approving tone. “I knew we had connection. You are more like me than you are these FBI agents.” I tried not to wince as that comment tore through my soul. He was right. I was a criminal. But I was forced into that life and found myself trying to explain my actions again.
“Yes, but at that point I didn’t know any other life. The boss kept me completely isolated and his treatment of me was better than the consigliere, so I did anything he wanted just to keep him happy. That changed when I attended college. The boss sent me there to hone my computer skills and to learn how to invest his dirty money. For the first time in my adult life I was surrounded by normal, mostly ethical people and it changed everything. I slowly understood that my actions were hurting people and I was part of the problem.” Javier sat back in his seat with a small frown on his lips. He did not like my attack of conscious.
“I started planning a way out. I knew I could never beat the boss if I tried to go directly against him, but I thought that maybe I could outsmart him. I planned to just disappear one day. Take a chunk of his money and go into hiding. When everything was almost in place for me to escape, I was sent on a routine job and I met a man. He was a new recruit for the mob and I was completely taken with him. He was smart and funny and kind to me. I was twenty-one years old and fell head over heels in love for the first time in my life.” Javier’s attention had turned approving again. I assumed he liked the added drama of romance in my twisted life story.
“Mmmmm, this man. He excited you?” Javier paused to lick his lips and continued in a low dangerous voice, “He could make you cum, didn’t he?”
Bile rose in my throat again at the comment. He wasn’t wrong, but that had been the only time sex hadn’t been complete torture for me. I hated that he was tainting it with his sick questions. But then again, my memories of that time were already tainted with betrayal. I reminded myself that I had to tell this story without flinching and carried on in an emotionless voice.
“Yes. He was the first, and only, man I slept with consensually.” Javier let out a low hum under his breath that vibrated through the room. “I trusted him explicitly and told him about my past and shared with him my plan to escape. I asked him to come with me, but he stalled and told me to wait. So I waited. And one night I got word that that he had crossed the boss. He was being tortured and would be killed soon.”
“Ah, woman to the rescue again? You like playing hero, don’t you?” Javier questioned. It was like he had to interject his commentary into my story. He didn’t like being a passive listener. He had to try to take back control of the situation.
“One woman, against the entire mob? How would you suggest I could have pulled that off, Mr. Revera?” This comment caused him to sit back into his chair and he lifted a hand, indicating that I should continue. “No, I knew I had no hope to save the man I loved by myself. Instead I turned to the only people that I knew the boss feared. The Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Javier had a visceral reaction to this. He quickly stood causing his metal chair to scrape across the hard floor and he took several steps back from the table.
“You turned rat?” Javier asked with clear disgust in his voice. I was no longer an interesting thing that he wanted to play with. Turning rat was the absolute worst thing that a person within a criminal organization could do. Any respect that Javier held for me because of the courage I had displayed instantly disappeared and was replaced with contempt. I understood the reaction and still carried a small amount of shame for taking that course of action. I had grown up on a very specific set of rules outlined by the mob and not turning rat was rule number one. But once I got some distance from the situation, I had asked myself why I should feel any loyalty to my abusers. It was just the one rule that wasn’t broken in the world where I grew up. And I had snapped that rule in half to save someone else.
I gave Javier time to process my admission. I was betting that he would still want to hear the end of the story. He would need to hear what caused me to falter last night. I sat patiently and worked to keep my face calm and emotionless. Finally, he returned to his chair and sneered at me, “This mob boss should have had your throat slit.”
“I figured he would,” I admitted in a nonchalant voice. “I knew that talking to the federal pigs would cost me my life. I just decided that the price was worth it. I was willing to give up my life to save the man that I loved. I even used all bargaining power that I held with the FBI to secure a full immunity agreement for him. When I turned rat, I gave details on my wrongdoings as well. I figured that they would send me to some holding cell and I would get a visit from one of the boss’s wet work guys and die a slow, horrible death.”
“Well since you are sitting in front of me still breathing, it obviously didn’t go down that way,” Javier stated in a sarcastic voice.
“No. When the FBI did their raid, they kept me in a room very much like this one. Hours went by and when they finally returned, I was dying to know if they had made it time to save my boyfriend. The agent in charge was thrilled to tell me that not only did they take down all the major players with the information I had provided them with, but they also made it in time to save their undercover agent. I didn’t understand why there were telling me that until he made it clear that the man I had fallen in love with, Joey Ford, was none other than special agent Joe McDonald of the F. B. I.”
“No way. You turned rat to save a pig?” Javier asked with a chuckle of laughter. At least he was enjoying the plot twist. To me it had been the biggest violation of trust I had ever experienced, and that included when my own father handed me over to be sold as a sex slave.
“It gets worse,” I murmured, and Javier stopped laughing and sat on the edge of his chair with his elbows on the table, reveling in my pain. “While I had done everything in my power to not only save Joey but also protect him from prosecution, he had been collecting evidence against me. Evidence that the FBI used to pressure me into becoming their star witness. Nothing plays better to a jury than the stories of an abused child and the FBI wanted that testimony. If you want to know how to break someone, Jefe, force them to recount their most degrading and painful memories in front of a packed courtroom.” Javier let out a low whistle and sat back in his chair.
“Part of the deal I made with the FBI for that testimony was that I never had to see Joe McDonald again. I had loved him. Gave up everything for him. And he saw me as nothing more than a common criminal he needed to put behind bars. So, after remaining strong at the hands of you and your men, Mr. Revera, and accepting the inevitability of my death for a second time, when I saw Agent McDonald advancing on me with his weapon drawn, I faltered. I let my mask drop and you saw the fear and shame that I hold within me.”
I let that sink in for a minute before bringing the conversation back to the missing girls. I wanted to get the information and leave. Recounting everything that had happened while in a room that mirrored the one that I had learned the truth about Joey in was bringing a lot of those feelings of betrayal back, and it was starting to get hard to breath.
“A deal is a deal. Tell me where to find the girls.” When he hesitated I pushed, “You gave your word Jefe.” I used his nickname here to remind him of his position of respect. Hopefully he would honor that position and not go back on his word now.
“They are being held in the Argicola Oriental. Ote 249. It is just an old house with maybe two or three cartel members watching the girls.” Javier said in a distracted voice. It was clear he was still mulling over my story.
I let out a slow breath and calmly rose from my seat. That was it. I wasn’t going to get anything more. That address was the best that I could do right now. Now I needed to leave this room before I broke down and started crying or something stupid like that.
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