Page 40 of Mace
Iwoke and turned over in bed when Mace slipped into the room. He grabbed a quick shower, so I sat up and turned the bedside lamp on to wait for him. Nine was asleep at the foot of bed, totally unconcerned with the goings on in the human world.
Mace came out of the bathroom with his beautifully inked skin still glistening with droplets of water and a towel slung low on his waist. He bent down, opened the door of the minifridge and pulled out a beer for himself and held up one for me to see. I shook my head, “I’d rather have a bottled water, if there’s any left.”
“Yeah, there’s plenty,” he replied while exchanging the beer for the water. He walked over, climbed onto the bed beside me, handed me the water and twisted the top off his bottle. After taking a long draw, he asked, “How are you holding up?”
The big news of the day was that my father had sent me a text message putting off our meeting for another week. The text had come in not long before Mace came back, but he already knew because I texted him as soon as I heard.
“My anxiety spiraled through the roof just thinking about my mom having to be with him, especially when he’s so angry with me. He tends to take out his frustrations on her at times.”
Mace had a grim look on his face. “Yeah, we saw some of that when Storm spoke with him a little while ago.”
My eyes widened in shock, “You saw it? Is my mom here?”
Mace shook his head, “It was a video call.”
I twisted the top off my water and took a mouthful, “I wish I could have been there. I might have been able to talk him into letting me see her.”
“We all saw her. Your old man was being a right bastard to her, but Storm put a stop to that shit immediately.”
“Alright, tell me what happened,” I said. From the sounds of it their conversation was more than just a casual chat.
“You know how we found Hernando and your father’s stash in the cave?”
She nodded.
“Storm used his cell phone to call your father, and they had a little chat. My club president hates to see women being treated badly so as a little dissuader, he burned some of your father’s drugs in front of him. You can imagine how well that went down. Told him that we’d trade the drugs for your mom. He threw a fit about it but ended up taking the deal. Storm made it perfectly clear that for every mark on your mother, he was going to destroy a brick of his drugs. He didn’t take that very well, but we think it will incentivize him to keep her healthy and unmarked.”
Something loosened in my chest, I hated the thought of my mom having to stay with my father any longer than she needed to. But if he’d promised not to touch her, then that was a weight off my mind. “That was a really smart idea.”
“We had a deal with him to meet up in two weeks. But then you texted me to say he’d told you three weeks instead. You can imagine how happy that made our club president.”
I shrugged, “That’s my Papa, always being contrary.”
“That’s all well and good, but pushing Storm too far is a pretty stupid idea. I don’t even know who I would put my money on between a US veteran who’s seen more than his fair share of active combat, or a man who not only survived but thrived as a member of the cartel.”
“Tough call,” I responded as I rolled this latest bit of information around in my head. Something about trading my mom for my father’s drugs seemed like maybe the only way to get her clear of all this. He always been attached to my mother, but he was equally attached to his business interests. Though something I hadn’t had the heart to tell Mace was weighing heavy on my chest right now. Having my mom back in the US was one thing, but unless the feds could intervene, I wasn’t sure she would be safe.
Mace noticed because, let’s face it, the man missed very little of what went on around him. “Something on your mind, sweetness? Now’s not the time for secrets.”
“I don’t think this matters in the general scheme of things, but my father took my mom back to Mexico when I was a baby. I don’t remember any of it, but I know my mom had no choice. I’m guessing he took us over the border the same way we arrived here, illegally. I had no documentation to say I was born in the US, and he destroyed all my mom’s documents. We were both trapped there, I don’t think she could figure out a way for both of us to leave.”
I realized in that moment that I’d never seen Mace truly shocked.
“You told me your father went to the US a lot, why didn’t your mom just leave and go to the nearest US consulate and explain she’d been trafficked?”
I explained as best I could, “She probably would have tried if it hadn’t been for me. She had no papers to prove she was an American citizen and no close family here to confirm her identity. She was scared that if she did get deported from Mexico then I’d be forced to stay behind. Or if she managed to get to the States then I’d be sent back. As the years went on, I guess she just resigned herself to her fate. But we’d always planned on how to get us out. My mom knew that if I managed to get to the US then maybe I could get help. If not, then with me safely out of Mexico she could risk going to a US embassy,” I paused. “Obviously, that didn’t work because my father always had his men watching the house, so it was up to me to get her out and I’ve failed.”
“Well in my opinion,” he shot back, “If you have to force a woman to stay with you then that isn’t really love, sounds more like Stockholm syndrome.”
“She always used to tell me that my father had been a good man. But I never saw it.”
“Sounds like it’s been awful for both of you,” Mace said.
I nodded, “Whatever love they once had, must have evaporated over the years. It was replaced with an overpowering need to control on my father’s part and fear on my mother’s part.”
He reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “I hope that doesn’t happen to us, sweetness.”
I just sat there on his bed staring into his beautiful, dark eyes. He sounded like he wanted us to have a long-term commitment. I didn’t know how I would fit into his world, but I wanted to give it a try. Deep down inside I was starting to feel like whatever was going on between us had legs.