by Yasmin Angoe
The woman has provided jeans, a pale-pink shirt, and an olive-green army-surplus jacket with plush lining that feels like heaven. After I lace up the russet combat boots that are my size, I assess myself in the mirror. I look like me again. I look like I belong somewhere and to someone. It makes me sad and elated. Guilt nibbles at me for my selfishness at being pleased by my appearance when appearance no longer means anything to my dead family.
She is on her phone again when I leave the bathroom and force myself not to rush to the breakfast table. I make myself choose wisely, knowing that overindulgence will mean getting sick later. I choose fruit, some scrambled egg, and bacon that is perfectly cooked, neither too crispy nor too limp. I have a large cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream.
She is still on her call when she joins me at the small table. She pours herself tea and sips from it as she continues to make travel plans, from the sounds of it. Hopefully she will allow me to fill my rucksack with any leftover food, of which there will be a lot, because who knows when my next meal will be. I think of a good argument for why she might let me leave with the food, suspecting she will not. And why should she? When she finally dismisses me, that will be the end of it all. She will have repaid my saving her with a good night’s rest, a hot shower, and food, and I do not fault her for it.
I tense when she puts her phone down on the table. She picks up her cup, studying me. She’s thinking of how to tell me to leave and when. She doesn’t have to; I can do it for her.
I push my empty plate away. “Thank you, Madame,” I say. “Is it okay if I take some food with me when I go?”
She continues to eye me critically. Her expression is unreadable. “No,” she says plainly.
I expected as much. And yet a wave of embarrassment cascades over me. I misread her kindness. I wore out my welcome. Used up my sympathy card. I should have just stolen what I needed and left before she awoke. Then she would not have had to tell me to go, and I would not have to suffer the humility of being tossed back like bad fish.
But I know I am lying to myself. I would not have stolen a thing from her. I am no thief by choice, and especially when someone has shown me kindness, even if they did it because they pitied me.
“Okay,” I whisper, ducking my head so she can’t see my inflamed face. Out of everything, this is the worst feeling, the feeling I have just reminded her that I am a wretch and not a hero.
“It’s unnecessary for you to take this food,” she begins, “because there will be plenty where we are going.”
“Madame?” I look up at her, bewildered. Fear cuts through me as I did the man last night. She is taking me to the authorities. Back to Paul.
She smiles at me with warmth I feel is genuine. “Where we are going,” she says, “is to London, where I live with my husband, Noble, and my daughter, Elin. She is maybe a year or two older than you, sixteen. Would you like that, Nena?”
There is warmth in her voice and a want that nearly brings me to tears. “Would you come home with me and be a part of my family, as my daughter?” she asks.
Her words have rendered me speechless. Quite senseless, to be exact. I wait for clues alerting me that she is being dishonest. I wait for my instincts to urge me to run for my life because she means me harm. But they tell me she is being sincere. I already know I am safe with her and that she needs my acceptance, as she has accepted me. With that new knowledge, I answer, more assuredly than I have ever before. “Yes, Madame. I think I would like to. Very much so.”
45
AFTER
Spotlights lit up the nightclub, and lines entering the double doors wrapped around the building. Hopeful patrons had decked themselves out in their Saturday best. Nena was dressed for the occasion in a short leather skirt and black fitted bodice that showed more skin than she was accustomed to. She wore one of her favorite wigs, the black bob with burgundy-tipped ends. According to Witt’s intel, the club was where Kwabena would be most vulnerable, where she could most easily separate him from his people.
She joined a raucous group of women already toasted from a night of bachelorette partying as they entered the club so she wouldn’t have to wait in the seemingly endless line. The place was packed with writhing bodies that took up the expanse of the wide room, its bright electric colors and fog machine adding to the promise of a fun-filled night. She reminded herself she was supposed to be in character. So she let the rhythmic bass drown out all the noise in her mind, and before she knew it, her shoulders began to jiggle, and she allowed herself to get lost in the thumping and bumping of the song.
“Dance?” asked some random guy with a complexion as creamy as the suit he wore, no shirt. He held out a hand, wiggling his fingers for her to take. She cast him a sidelong glance, swaying her hips as she moved away. She smirked when he clutched his chest as if she’d broken his heart. She moved through the crowds in sync to “Daddy Yo” by Wizkid.
The VIP section was in the middle of the club for the most prominent view. It was a raised white circular platform, like a crown in the center of the dance floor. All the non-VIPs danced around it, hoping they’d be chosen to join the elite. She waltzed right through them all.
She spied him, Kwabena-now-Kamil, and her directive returned as she danced in front of the platform, refusing any other person who tried to dance with her. She was performing for a party of one, hoping she’d catch his attention. She would, because what drew a man to a woman the most was when she seemed untouchable.
“May I?” a voice from behind asked above the din of the music. She accepted, moving in time with the music and with him. She didn’t let him get too close. She thwarted and teased his attempts to hold her waist. She kept just out of reach, wanted to make him yearn for her, be enthralled by her.
When she tried to drift away, he grabbed her hand. “What’s your name?”
The grab was electrifying, driving her to that moment with dirt and rocks digging in her back while Kwabena hovered above her, causing her to feel more pain than she’d ever imagined. The taste of his foul breath in the back of her throat while her mind was going, going, gone.
She could take him down right here. Her push daggers were in her belt. There was enough crowd to conceal her act. But that would mean too quick a death, like Attah Walrus. She reflexively snatched her hand away and saw him shrink back at her sudden hostility. But wasn’t this why she was here? To draw him out?
You need to cool it. She forced herself to play at being coy, to reel him back in, make him follow her.
“Hey!” he called out. She ignored him, moving farther away.
He called after her again.
She paused for a group of club goers to pass. As she did, he caught up, jogging over to her, slightly out of breath.
She said, with faux surprise, “You’re following me?”
His smile was not unpleasant, but she’d love to scratch it off him. “How could I not? You took my breath away in there,” he panted.
Easily, she maneuvered toward the door. “A good thing.”
“I don’t normally chase women.”
She smirked. “And yet . . .” Easy. Not too much.
Her Dispatch training included ways to engage people romantically, but her best teacher was Elin, and Nena tried to channel her now.
She bit her bottom lip, showing a bit of teeth. She looked at him, taller by a foot or so, through her eyelashes. He was nothing but arms, legs, and a rounded little potbelly. They were at the doors now. “What do you want from me?” she asked.
He held up a finger. “One night. One night with you, and I’ll make your life brand new.”
He’d already done that, now, hadn’t he?
She let out a throaty laugh. “You think highly of yourself . . .”
He gave her his name.
“Kamil.” She let the name roll off her tongue, as if becoming accustomed to it.
She cocked her head to the side, looking coquettishly at him with a hint of hesitation. “One night?”
He held up his fing
er again. “Just one.”
“Where do we go for this ‘one night’?”
“I know the perfect place.”
She knew where he’d want to go. To a place not so public. And it was indeed perfect.
She looked beyond him, at the couple of guards weaving toward them through the crowd. “And your friends?”
He looked over his shoulder at his approaching men, then back to her. He really thought his boyish looks were disarming, and maybe to any other woman they would be. “I’ll take care of them.”
Nena let Kwabena drive her several blocks away in his latest-model Bentley. Ostentatious, but what more could she expect from a man like him? He pulled into the dimly lit back lot of a strip mall.
Pointing to a door with a blue flower painted on it, he said, “We can go in there. It’s very nice. I own it.”
She made a point of looking at the door, then him, in awe. “Perfect.” Her voice was husky with anticipation. She unbuckled her seat belt and left the car, beckoning him to join her.
The Lotus Flower was deserted at this time of night. All the girls who were forced to work the spa were likely at a shared house, recuperating from another day of being forced to give massages and prostitute themselves to earn their keep. One of the numerous ways traffickers used their merchandise: in their businesses, in their homes, moving the girls from one location to another . . . always moving. And when the merchandise was all used up, it was disposed of.
He unlocked the door and stepped aside to allow her in first. She swallowed her unease at the door shutting and locking behind them as they stood in the dark hall. The place smelled of flower fragrances and sea salts and opulence that contrasted with the burgeoning anxiety of being in a small, unknown space.
She didn’t lie to herself that this job was like the others. This job wasn’t for the Tribe. It was only for her. She took his hand and pulled him down the hall.
They entered a room Kwabena said was one of his favorites. She’d cased the spa a few days earlier, both as a wife looking to purchase a package for her husband, and after hours to get the layout of the back rooms. From the outside, the business appeared high end, but it was much more sinister when the patrons knew what to ask for.
He rambled about how this was unlike him, to bring a beautiful woman here alone.
“Then I’m honored.”
He chanced a quick glance at her. “There’s something beguiling about you, making me ditch my security detail and bring you here to my spa.”
She threw a sly smile over her shoulder as she walked the length of the room, ensuring there was nothing new since the last time she’d roamed the premises. He turned on the moon light, and the room was bathed in warm recessed lighting.
“Make yourself comfortable? I’ll get us some champagne.”
When he returned with an ice bucket holding a bottle of his finest, she was waiting for him. She gestured for him to join her. He set the bucket down and did as told, snuggling into her neck, inhaling the scent of her. He ran his arms over her body, exploring her curves and the heat of her skin. He went in to kiss her supple lips, and she tilted her head up so he trailed the tip of his tongue along the length of her jawline instead. She couldn’t bring herself to have his lips on hers.
“Me on top,” she breathed into his ear.
He gladly traded positions. She ran her hand up and down his leg. She traced it up and down his thigh, near his manhood, then teased it away.
She kicked her long leg over his lap, straddling him and easing her body onto him. He unzipped his pants. She quelled the urge to jump off him, the feeling of his penis flopping like a fish out of water beneath her making her think horribly of her brother Ofori. She breathed through the urge to vomit.
“Let me taste you,” he growled, gripping the hem of her skirt and hiking it up. His animalistic urges were overpowering his gentlemanliness. He was tired of seduction—and she was tired of seducing.
She said, “Tell me again what you want.”
He answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “To fuck you.”
“To fuck me?” Her hands slid down his arms, which were wrapped around her rear. “To know me?”
“Yes.” He strained against her. “Yes, baby, yes, to know you.”
She pulled back. “But Kwabena,” she breathed, “we already know each other.”
At the sound of his name, Paul’s third-in-command snapped his eyes open in muddled confusion. Beneath her, his body stiffened. He searched her eyes for understanding.
“What—what did you call me?”
Her hands were moving beyond his vision. “You know me. Intimately.”
She produced her push daggers from the belt of her skirt. In one swift move, she plunged the blades into his chest. She leaned her weight into the daggers as he thrashed beneath her. She dug them deep under the breastbone, the blades tearing through his left and right ventricles.
“Perhaps you remember me from N’nkakuwe.”
She watched his eyes grow round and his mouth open. Close. Open. Close again. He wheezed. She studied him, wanting to see every last second of his life. He coughed, blood spurting from his lips, running down his throat, and then dripping fast onto the floor.
His hands dropped from her, swinging like heavy pendulums until they finally stilled. When he was done, she got to work on the rest of her plan.
She walked the halls, entered all the rooms, the outer ones for legal massages and the inner chambers for illegal acts. She checked the explosive charges she’d placed in each one. When she set them off, this place would be leveled and Kwabena with it. But first . . .
She returned to the room with a small red condiment bottle of accelerant and matches. First she wanted to watch Kwabena burn.
When it was done, when he’d gone up in a quiet and satisfying whoosh, she walked away from the building, pressing a button on her burner cell phone to remotely detonate the charges.
Two down.
One to go.
46
BEFORE
If anyone had said I would be riding in another fancy black sedan before being whisked away to England in a private plane, I would never have believed them. Of all the things I envisioned for the future, this was not it. I believed I would die in Paris, frozen on the street, and that no one would realize it until I thawed in the summer and the smell of rot became too pungent to ignore.
I consider pinching myself to make sure the house looming into my vision as we ride down a long, curved, tree-lined driveway is real.
The mansion is a sprawling L-shaped home of stone and wood that looks as one might imagine an English house does, turret and all. It sits on 2.5 acres of lush lawn and greenery in Hammersmith, made of light-colored stone with a dark rooftop and large bay windows. It is an eight-bedroom, twelve-bathroom mammoth to me, but—
“It’s a simple home,” Madame says. No, where I came from was simple. This is otherworldly.
Our car rolls to a stop in front of the brightly lit home, and the driver exits to open Madame’s door. My door pops open. Another man dressed similarly to the driver has materialized from thin air and waits for me to leave the car. I take a moment for my heart rate to slow.
She waits patiently for me as I take in my surroundings. I swallow down the bud of nervousness threatening to sprout. What hides behind those doors? I am unsure. I wait for a twinge or stirring, alerting me danger is afoot. There is nothing.
“Ready?” Madame asks.
I hesitate, worried she is going to offer her hand to me as we enter. I do not want anyone to touch me. But she doesn’t, as if she is aware of my thoughts. Instead, she motions toward the front doors. “Shall we meet Noble and Elin?”
And by “we,” she really means me.
I start biting my bottom lip, my hands rubbing up and down my pant legs, as I follow her up the stairs. The swath of red beneath her heels catches my eye. I have seen shoes like this on TV, on models. This family must be richer than their royals
to be able to afford what people on TV do. The driver and the other man pull her bags out of the car. I shift my rucksack on my shoulders—my only possession.
As if by magic, the front door opens, and an older, stout Black woman with graying hair tied in a bun greets us. Her smile to me is immediate and welcoming as she ushers us in out of the cold.
“Welcome home, Ms. Delphine,” she says. Ms. Delphine, not what I have been calling her. I like this better. The older woman’s voice is pleasant, welcoming. Her voice is rich and full of soul. I bet she has endless stories within her, like the elders of my village. She turns to me. “Welcome home, Nena.”
My body goes stiff and my throat tightens. Again, having such kindness shown to me and hearing myself referred to by an actual name is alien to me. I feel unworthy of the attention they bestow on me. Terror overtakes me. I am going to disappoint them, and they will realize their error in selecting me. The thought nearly makes me run out of the door.
“Margot, hello.” The two women hug and kiss each other’s cheeks. “Where are they?”
“In the kitchen finishing lunch. Ishmael has a spread for you both, not knowing what Nena likes to eat.” Ms. Margot looks at me, and I shrug. I cannot afford a food preference. “Well, I’m sure we’ll figure it out soon enough.”
We walk down the front hall into a kitchen of gray quartz countertops, white cabinets, and dark-stained wood flooring. It is pristine with a cook busy at the counter, chopping away. Beyond in a large alcove is a round cherry table topped with even more food than was at the hotel room. My stomach growls, but thankfully the noise is drowned out by the sizzling pots and the chatter from Ms. Margo and Ms. Delphine.
A man rises from the table, dark and slender. He is taller than his wife or me but not too tall. His hair is dark and cut very low. He is clean shaven except for his perfect mustache. He removes his reading glasses and opens his arms as he approaches. Behind him, a lanky girl with his same coloring trails behind. She is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Graceful. And she must be Elin.