Hush (20 page)

“You’re so jealous right now,” Callem poked fun.

“I don’t see anything funny about this.  Let’s just say I don’t like sharing my things.  But, you’re not off the hook, sir.  You’ve got an awful lot of explaining to do.”

“What?  What, are we going to have one of those number talks?  You tell me your number, I tell you mine?  It’s a little late for that, wouldn’t you say?”

I shook my head as I stepped into him.  I had to get my scent back on him after that viper tried to mark her territory.  “No, that’s not fair anyway.  You already know my number.  I just need to know about this particular number since she seemed to have such an effect on you.”

Callem chuckled, nuzzling into my neck. “I have never seen you like this before.  You’re flushed and fired up.  Looks like you’d sucker punch the next person who looks at you sideways.  Oh, I am so hot for you right now.  It’s sexy.”

“Don’t get used to it.  I prefer nothing like that ever happens again.”

“Oh, Liv.  You’ve got nothing to worry about with that woman.  She was terribly high maintenance and clingy.  Too much for me to handle, which is why nothing came of it.”

“Ah, so she was a fling.  I’m sure it was fun while it lasted.”

Callem gazed at me.  “That seems like a trap so I’m going to stay away from that comment.”

Bianca peered at me from across the room.  I didn’t know much about Callem’s exes and I never had the prerogative to.  At least I knew I could hold my own if another one tried to swoop in and cozy up to Callem again.  Next time, I’ll have to wave the rock in front of her nose.  That’d put a kibosh on her efforts for sure.

Sweat dripped down my face as I rounded the block and neared home.  The sun was high in the sky, setting the scene for a blistering jog.  I spotted Red’s car in the driveway as I approached the house.  I slowed my pace as Red stepped out of the garage, closing it behind him with the key pad.

I pulled the ear buds out of my ears as he stepped towards me.  “Hey, Liv.  I just had to come pick up some things for Cal while he’s out of town.  I hope you don’t mind me helping myself.”

I shook my head.  “Not at all,” I said while panting.  “Did you find what you needed?”

He nodded quickly, reaching for his car door.  I noted the manila folder in his hand.  “I got it.  Thanks.  You doing okay?  You need anything before Cal gets home?”

“Oh, I’m doing fine, thanks.  Just anxious for him to get home.  I feel like he’s been gone for so long.”

“Tell me.  He left a load of work in my lap.  I’m just as ready for him to get home as you are.”  He popped open the driver’s door.  “Just call me if you need anything, alright?  Get in the shower, girl.  You're looking funky," he joked before dropping into the driver's seat.

I laughed.  “Will do.  See you later.”  I waved him off as he pulled out of the drive.  I mixed myself up a protein shake before heading upstairs to take a shower.  As I passed Callem’s office, I noticed the closet door hanging open.  I strolled into the room and was about to close the door when I noticed something off.  Callem’s safe was hanging open.

I’d never had any reason to be suspicious of Callem, even if he’d never divulged the contents of his mysterious safe, but at the opportunity of finding out, I couldn’t resist.  It was harmless and I was sure I’d find such documents as passports, licenses, maybe some cash or even jewelry, possibly heirlooms.

Feeling the urge to look over my shoulder, I couldn’t help but feel guilty for breaking some unwritten privacy Callem had established when bringing the safe into our home.  The safe was pretty full as I pulled the door back.  I pulled out a few pieces of paper to find a number of emails from people whose names I didn’t recognize, some in other languages.

“The packages are ready for travel.  We’ll reconvene at normal drop points considering the police are now cooperating.  Will send word if we divert from the plan. – Gus” one email read.  I didn’t know what that meant.  It was dated almost two years ago.

The next email read, “Disposal of physical and legal evidence was completed by Luca, as requested.  There are no longer any traces to link back to your establishment.  Please advise.”

Disposal of evidence? That has to be code for something.  That’s not legal, no matter what kind of evidence is being destroyed.  That doesn’t sound like anything Callem would be involved in.  More cryptic emails, all brief and all mysterious, followed the first two, all were dated at least two years ago, if not older.

Setting them aside, my curiosity was peaked and I was hoping to find something else in the safe that would explain the emails, and possibly ease my concerns.  On the bottom shelf was a stack of brochures.  They were all the same and in foreign languages.  Though I didn’t detect the languages or understand what they said, they showed pictures of smiling women, what looked to be dorm rooms, and some kind of grounds, possibly for a school.

In the back of the safe was a small white box.  I pulled it out and opened it.  Inside, I found a stack of passports.  I started becoming concerned.  There shouldn’t be any reason for someone to have more than one passport because that reason would obviously be illegal.

The most alarming part of this discovery was the fact that none of these passports were Callem’s.  Each passport belonged to a young woman from a far-off country.  Romania, Latvia, Moldova, Ukraine, Lithuania.  There were over a dozen of them.  Why would Callem have these?  Maybe the languages of these countries were the languages on the brochures, but what does that mean?  What would Callem be doing with them?  What does this have to do with his business?  It just didn’t make any sense.

At the bottom of the box was a stack of DVDs.  None were labeled, but I was sure there’d be something on them or there wouldn’t be any need for Callem to be locking them up.  I took the DVDs out of the office with me and moved to the bedroom where my laptop was charging.

Popping in the first disc, I drummed my fingers against the laptop impatiently while it loaded.  When the video started, it showed a young woman, probably no older than twenty, sitting on a bed in a very depressing location.  It was a very dreary image.  The girl looked uneasy and avoided looking into the camera.  A man off camera, possibly the cameraman, spoke in another language.  The young woman nodded in response.  This exchange continued.  The man would ask something and the woman would respond, either with a nod or shake of her head, or with a short answer.

Then the man said, “Do you speak English?”

The girl nodded before saying, “Yes.”

“Very good,” the man said.  “Do not be scared.  We will take care of you.”

The girl said something in another language and then started to sob.  “Please, no more Romanian.  You speak English for the men.  They like to hear you speak English.  You no more speak in Romanian, yeah?”

“I want to go home.  I will send the money I owe.  I will do what need be done.  Please, just let me go home.”

“You no more go home.  This is home for you now.  Now, you look at the camera and say what I told you to say.”

The girl sniffled and wiped a few tears off her cheeks.  “My name is Talia.  I have 23 years.  I come from Deva and I hope to please you.”

“Good.  You do work for us till your money is paid back.  You work at bar until you work off debt.  We take care of you.  Other girls tell you how to do job.  You listen, follow rules, don’t leave, and you will be home soon enough.  You have young son, no?”

The girl nodded.

“You want to see young son again?”

She nods again.

“You never leave.  No running or we will find your son.  We will kill your son if you leave us before debt is paid.  You understand?”

The girl now had her face buried in her hands as she sobbed.  She spoke behind her hands, in Romanian again, I believe because I couldn’t understand her.  A man stepped from off camera and slapped the girl on the back of the head before retreating.

I covered my mouth with my hand as I watched the girl plead with the men in the room.  I cringed at what was happening to her.  It was starting to make sense.  Before I could stop it, I, too, was crying as the cameraman continued to taunt Talia, if that was even her real name.

I pulled out the disc and stuffed in the next.  Another poor young woman being victimized on camera.  I popped in one more DVD and was appalled at the sight before me.  Another foreign-speaking man navigated the shaky camera through an atrocious scene.  A pair of hands pulled back a piece of wood from a large gaping hole in a wall.  Behind the wooden barrier, a crawl space lined with thin, stained mattresses, probably a dozen of them tightly packed in the tiny space.  A man walked in ahead of the cameraman.  He had to crouch down because the ceiling hung so low.

Aside from the mattresses and tattered blankets, the room was cluttered with piles of clothes, shoes, and make-up.  On one bed in the corner, a frail looking body was curled up on one mattress.  The man in the room shook the body.  A pale, sunken face turned towards the camera and quickly scurried away, off camera.  “That’s where they keep them?” I whispered, voice cracking as the camera panned around the dismal space.  It made my skin crawl to imagine being held prisoner in there.

I ran back to the office and grabbed the stack of brochures.  I hurried back to the laptop in hopes of translating the text.  Google translate detected the first language as Estonian.  The brochure was enticing young women to come to France to work as maids and nannies and they’d be given a proper education in exchange for their work.  They wouldn’t have to pay for any of the transportation as long as they worked for four months before starting their education, in order to pay off the travel debt.

“Okay, so that’s how they got Talia,” I mumbled to myself.  “That’s the debt she has to work off.  But why the theatrics?  Why was she crying?  What’s really going on here?”

I went back to the safe to look for more information.  I sifted through the passports.  I didn’t find Talia’s in the bunch, but I did find something that nearly made my legs buckle.  Bianca’s passport.  She looked much younger.  It was issued nearly a decade ago.  Why did Callem have her passport?  I can understand if she left it behind when they separated, but why would he have it with all these others?  Why wouldn’t he just give it back to her? 

I grabbed the large stack of papers from the top shelf and started sorting through them.  Most everything I put my hands on were emails, all as vague and ambiguous as the first ones I read.  Something just wasn’t adding up, until I found an email towards the bottom of the stack that was a very lengthy email and was dated 2004.

“Foot soldiers will seek out women and recruit them for the school,” the email started.  “The foot will escort the girls to the first stop, which they will be told is the layover.  The escort will gather personal information as well as confiscate identification for further travel.  The girls will be told they’re being enrolled into the program with the information they provide.

“The girls will then be moved to the next check point where they will be placed in a designated group home.  There, they will be assessed by the generals in order to establish their worth and value to the particular bar.  They may be moved, depending on their condition and the needs of other bars in the area.

“The girls will then be integrated with the other girls and given a job.  They’ll be warned of the rules and the consequences of disobeying the rules; first by the other girls, then by management.  Procedures are in place for disposal of women as well as in the event of a raid.”

My hands were shaking.  I couldn’t read anymore.  This couldn’t be real.  This couldn’t be happening.  I can’t tell you how long I sat on the floor of Callem’s office, the email wavering in my hand, my mind processing everything I’d just discovered.  My brain, as advanced as it was, just couldn’t compute the reality of what I’d just stumbled upon.

All along, this was right under my nose.  All along, he’d been running this secret business behind my back.  All along, Callem had been some sort of kingpin in a human trafficking ring in Europe.

When my mind finally caught up with the world around me, it was dark outside.  I think I had a moment of shock and lost time, literally, lost an entire sunset.  When I gained conscious control of my limbs, I slunk downstairs to the kitchen.

I suddenly started panting and shaking.  I was having a panic attack.  Everything I was touching, the floor, the counter, the clothes clinging to my body, the ring on my finger, the product in my hair, the make-up on my face, the air I was breathing, it was all a lie, provided to me by the blood and tears of those young women.  Everything he’d ever given me was bought from human trafficking profits.

Talia’s sobs seemed to echo through my empty, dark house, as if she were here with me.  I hurried to the powder room and vomited in the toilet.  Every molecule in my body told me to flee.  Every ounce of my being told me to get as far away from him as I possibly could.  I needed someone.  I needed Erin.  I needed a shoulder.  I needed some sort of level-headed thinking to help me through this.

I collapsed on the floor of the powder room and laid there until I could hear logical thoughts surfacing in my mind.  Where was I?  I was alone.  No one knows that I know.  Callem doesn’t know I’ve discovered his secret, and he won’t be home until late tomorrow.  This was the only upper hand I had going for me.

Knowing what Callem was capable of, I had to think like him if I was going to get myself out of this.  He had to be stopped.  This couldn’t go on anymore.  I knew I didn’t fully understand the depth of his reach, but I couldn’t let that slow me down.

I picked myself up.  I didn’t want to stay here a moment longer, but I had work to do.

Though I was trying to make a true effort to reconstruct my marriage, Olivia’s lack of cooperation was tiring.  I get it.  I get that it’s hard for her, but I was hoping she’s start to come around soon.  I didn’t really want to work so late at night, but at this point, the more time I spent away from home, the easier it was for both of us.  I just had to keep telling myself it would get easier to help keep the guilt of being away so much at bay.

When I walked into the house, all the lights were off except the overhead light in the kitchen.  Nick sat in his usual post, an oversized leather chair near the front door, fiddling with his cell phone.  “Hey,” he said when I entered.  “She’s on the patio.  She’s been over there for about an hour.  Had some wine, hasn’t said a word, and I’m pretty sure she’s been doing some crying,” Nick explained.

I nodded, inhaling deeply.  “Alright, thank you, Nick.  We’ll see you in the morning.”

I tiptoed my way to her, trying not to startle her.  A single candlelight perched on the glass top patio table danced around the darkened space, playfully outlining shadows.  I walked around to the front of the couch to find Liv gazing into space with a glass of wine in her hand, a blanket draped around her body.  Two empty bottles sat at her feet.

“Liv,” I whispered.  “You alright?”

Slowly, she shook her head, her eyes transfixed on the dead space in front of her.  “I am the farthest from alright,” she said with a slight slur.

I watched her for a minute.  I was about to walk away when she spoke again.

“Everything makes perfect sense to me now,” she started, sounding more lucid than she looked.  “It’s all so clear, now that I know what you are.  The past, I mean.  All the trips, Michael Drake’s warning, all the company expansions, that time in Italy.  I get it, all of it.  Even though it disgusts me to imagine it, there’s still so much more I want to know.  Will you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“What I want to know?”

I hesitated.  “What is it that you want to know?”

“Everything and anything.  You’ve done so much lying, don’t you think it’s time to tell me the truth when I ask for it?”

I swallowed hard and sat down in the chair next to the couch.  “Are you sure you want to know?”

She finally looked at me.  Her eyes had no light, even with the soft candle casting a flame in them.  “How many of these places do you own?” she started.  “These brothels, these bars, these whore houses?  How many of them do you bank roll from?”

There wasn’t anything in my safe connecting me or identifying the locations here in the U.S. so I figured she must have just been asking on a hunch.  How else would she have found out about those?  “Eight.”

“But you have connections overseas, don’t you?  How many places over there are yours?”

I shook my head.  “None.  I’m just used for my transportation and security services overseas.  I don’t hold any ownership in any foreign countries.”

“How many girls?”

“I don’t know those numbers exactly, but I’d say somewhere close to a hundred stateside and probably three to four times as many internationally.”

“Your father passed this on to you?”

“No.  I became interested in it in my youth.  He had established a relationship with the Italians in hopes of simply expanding the family business.  Through their humble hospitality, the Italians introduced me to a darker side of life and, at the time, I was hypnotized by the dollar signs that came along with them.  I learned the system and I learned the laws, which helped me branch out to different countries, different rings.  Since making the decision to branch, I haven’t been able to find an exit.”

“Was that even a question, getting out?  It was so lucrative for you, you were getting away with it, why would you want out?”

“Because of you.”

Liv scoffed, rolling her eyes.  For the first time since we started this question-and-answer session, she didn’t believe me.   She had accepted my other answers as truth, which they were, but she wasn’t buying that last line.  If I was being completely honest with myself, I don’t know if I did either.

“Have you ever,” she paused, taking a drink of her wine.  “Have you ever participated?  In your youth, when you were introduced to the glamorous world of human trafficking, did you ever have sex with one of them?”

I hesitated heavily, knowing this one was going to hurt.  “Yes,” I whispered.

“More than one?”

“Liv--”

“Is that why you picked me?” she interrupted.  Her voice broke and drops of anguish filled the brim of her eyes.  “Is that why you liked me so much, because I was young like those girls?”

“Liv--”

“Did you target me like your foot soldiers target those girls?  Do you plan on keeping me until I pay off some kind of a debt?  Or is that debt revolving, like theirs?  They can’t ever pay off their debt.  That’s the truth, isn’t it?  There isn’t any escape for them like there isn’t any escape for me.”

“Liv, please,” I said louder, hoping to get a word in.

“No!” she yelled.  “I have to know.  You have to tell me everything because it’s killing me.  Not knowing is the worst feeling and I just have to know it all, no matter how much it hurts.  Please, I have to know.”  She was sobbing behind each of her words.  I went to console her, but she pulled away.

“I was so young,” I started in a calmer voice, hoping it would soothe her slightly since she wasn’t accepting a consoling embrace.  “I was dumb and naïve and I stepped into a world that has no exit.  I’m just as much a prisoner as you are.  If I had known then what I know now, I would never have,” I swallowed hard.  “I never would have signed my name on the dotted line.”

“I just don’t understand how you could see what they were doing to those girls and decide it was something you wanted to be a part of.  They do the most heinous things to those poor, poor women and you thought it was something for you.”

“It wasn’t like that.  Remember Italy?  They mistook you for one of those women and you were so beautiful and so elegant.  That’s what I was introduced to.  Beautiful, elegant women who didn’t seem to be pressured or unwilling in anyway, like a high class escort service.  I was under the impression that it was a high-quality, luxurious type of trade that was more acceptable overseas.”

“Do you realize how much of an ass you just made yourself out to be?” Liv interrupted, wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands.

“The deeper I got into it,” I continued, not missing a beat.  “The longer I worked for them, the harder it was to distance myself, the harder it was to say no, the more I learned about the business.  They were smarter than me.  They knew exactly what they were getting me into and I didn’t have a fucking clue.”

“So you follow one bad, detrimental decision up with another?  You put my name down right next to yours and then think we can spend our entire lives together with you hiding it from me?”

“I tried, I tried not to fall for you.  I tried to keep my distance, you know that.  I knew what letting you into my life meant.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” she mumbled condescendingly.  “That’s real nice.” 

“I didn’t want this for you, but something powerful brought us together; something neither of us could contend with.”

“Did that power make you a mute also, selectively I suppose?  You did nothing.  You had the power to do something, but you did nothing.”

“You want to know why I was so attracted to you?” I blurted.  “It wasn’t because of your age.  It was because you were pure.  You were innocent in my eyes.  You were something so different from the life I had built and I selfishly wanted that for myself.  I wanted you to teach me.  I only saw you and not what would happen to you if I pulled you into this.  I just wanted the happiness everyone else gets.”

“You never answered my question.”  She turned and looked me straight in the eye.  “How many girls?”

I exhaled sharply, not breaking from her gaze.  My stomach tumbled around in my gut.  I cleared my throat.  “Too many.”

“That’s not good enough.  Tell me how many?” she asked again.

“Too many for me to count.”  I closed my eyes, looking away.  There was the most wretched silence between us.  I had never before said that out loud.  I had only allowed myself to mentally linger over that fact a handful of times before banishing to the deepest places of my memory.  “Liv, I was so young.  You have to believe me, I was someone completely different then.”

Her hand was over her mouth as if holding back the vomit.  “And Bianca,” she finally said after what seemed like a lifetime of the most torturous silence.  “How does she play into this?”

“Bianca?”

“I found her passport in your safe.  The night I met her, she said you brought her out here.  That was the exact word she used.  She was one of them, wasn’t she?  One of the many?”

I nodded slowly, exhausted by my own fiendish confessions.  “She was the last of them.  Her and I had an actual relationship while she working.  I brought her out here in hopes of saving her, I suppose, but she’s been in the business so long, I couldn’t do anything for her.  There were no other women between Bianca and you.”

Olivia turned her head.  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

I shook my head slowly, leaning my elbows onto my knees.  “No.  I can only imagine how you’re feeling now.”

“We wanted to have kids, Cal.  I will never, for the life of me, understand your thought process.  What would prompt you to bring children into this world when you have this hanging over your head?  It’s bad enough that you put me through this, but kids?  What if we would have had a girl?  A little girl who would have grown up to be just like the women you’re hurting?  What if we would have had a boy?  Would you have passed this business on to him when you got tired of facing yourself?  Ugh, it just makes me so sick.  So fucking sick, Cal.  It’s even worse to think that we were trying to have children and you still didn’t have the balls to tell me.  I had to find out on my own.  I’ve thanked God every day since then that I’m not with child.”

She was right.  That fact alone made me a monster.  “Liv, I love you.  I would do anything to have you and to have things back the way they were.”  I didn’t know what else to say at this point except to start digging myself out of my hole as best I could.

“Walk away.  End it all.  Give everything up.  Show me how humble you can be and then maybe, maybe things could turn around for you, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

“I can’t.  It’s not that easy.”

“And neither is this,” she mumbled.  Setting her wine glass down on the table, she pulled the blanket over her shoulder and leaned over onto the arm of the couch.  “I’m done.  No more now.  I’m going to sleep.”

“Let me take you to bed.” I stood up.

“Just leave me alone, please.  I’m not coming to bed tonight.”

“Liv,” I started to plead before she interrupted me.

“Haven’t we done enough tonight?  I’m exhausted by this.  I just want to sleep.  Please, just go.”

I watched her eyes close.  I was tempted to pick her up and carry her to the room, but she was right.  Some of the things I had said in the past few minutes had never left my lips before.  Lies were just so much easier for me in the past, compare to the awful truth.  I was honestly surprised at how easy it was for me to be so open about it all with her, having kept it under lock and key for so long.

I wondered how many more questions she would have, how many more confessions I’d be making.  How much would I have to tell her?  It wasn’t that I was ashamed.  It was the fact that I knew how it would make Olivia feel.  Some of my confessions would break her even more than I already had.  Then what chance would I have of being with her?

I sighed, shaking my head at the idea of it.  I didn’t have a chance in hell of reconciling our relationship.  The one thing she wanted me to do, relinquish my empire, wasn’t a possibility.  It would die along with me and that was the only way to end it, in death.