“Who are you?” I rose from the couch and inched closer to the fireplace rack. Most home invaders don’t bust in carrying boxes. But I wanted to be within arm’s reach of the iron poker just in case.
“Oh, hey, I’m Yaron. Victor sent me…”
He set down the box, allowing me to see him better.
This Yaron didn’t look like somebody Victor would send. No visible tattoos or muscles that I could see. He had one of those super multicultural looks that made it seem as though he could be from anywhere. Black hair, slightly tanned skin, tilted brown eyes, and out-turned ears like President Obama. He sported a sloppy man bun, but his hairline sat pretty far back. So maybe he was older than he appeared. He also had a slight accent, which I couldn’t quite say for sure was Chinese.
“Hi, Yaron,” I answered, just to be polite before I asked, “Why did Victor send you?”
“To drive you around. Keep anybody from messing with you. Make sure you don’t get in any trouble while he’s gone. You know, stuff like that,” Yaron answered as if this was a list of things that every prisoner wife got after agreeing to marry the devil.
He hitched a thumb toward the door. “I got a few more of your boxes to bring in. Hold on.”
Wait, the box he’d brought in was for me?
I turned off the two college-aged reality stars arguing on TV to shuffle over to the front hall and check it out. The box’s flaps were just folded on top, with no packing tape, so it was easy to open up. Inside I found a bunch of the things I left behind in my dorm room.
Whoa. What kind of weirdo kidnapped someone in the middle of packing but makes sure to complete the job? I even found my Sidekick iD phone in the box, a way cheaper version of the Sidekick 3. It had been the nicest phone I could afford back when the first iPhone came out. Guess Victor wasn’t scared about me having it.
I entertained the thought of calling my family and letting them know what was going on with Victor. My father was in international law enforcement. Surely, he’d know what to do. Maybe we could all go into witness protection or something.
But almost as soon as the ideas occurred to me, I decided against them. Even if I could get a message to my father before Victor could call his cartel contact, we’d have to stay in hiding for the rest of our lives. And there was no guarantee we’d be safe.
I trusted Victor to keep his promise to let me go and leave my family alone at the end of ten years. I also trusted him to hunt us down like dogs and slaughter us if I tried to escape.
“I want you to hurt. I want you to suffer. I want to humiliate you the way your father did me. I want you to lose everything.”
I set the phone aside without calling anyone. New Victor wanted to punish me. And letting him was the only way to keep my family safe. I’d just have to bear whatever he had in store for me next.
I braced the entire day for whatever that was, but Victor never showed up.
And the next afternoon, Yaron left some mail on the front porch’s table. Two large envelopes, both addressed to me. One was from a pharmaceutical company. It contained a year’s supply of birth control pills. I recalled Victor’s caveat about me getting pregnant and vowed to take my pill on the regular to ensure nothing else would chain me to that monster beyond these ten years.
The second envelope was from an international bank that had been gobbling up smaller banks since the beginning of the most recent recession. Inside I found a bank card with Dawn Kingston-Zhang written across the front, along with some checkbooks that bore an address I didn’t recognize.
Elite college graduate here, but it took me a few frowning moments and another trip outside to solve the mini-mystery. Yep. The slat of wood next to the front door bore the same address number as on the one written across my new checks.
More whoas. I had no idea you could open a bank account without an in-person visit. Much less for someone else, who never agreed to change her name. The list of questions for Victor was piling up. But he was a no-show on May 27th, as well as May 28th.
The following week a cleaning lady showed up, a stern Polish woman who announced, “Sonia speak no English!” when I tried to introduce myself. Sonia spent the entire day deep-cleaning the house from top to bottom. And the only other words she spoke to me were “See you next week!” when she bustled out the door with her huge plastic tote filled with cleaning supplies.
