37 #2
I’m salivating. The burgers here are ridiculously good. Hot, crackly buns; meat that actually tastes like meat; thin pickles; onions sweated down until they’re sweet; cheese right where it should be; and that mustard that makes you close your eyes for a second. I need it now. Then I’ll talk.
“How were the guys from Bratislava?” Irina cuts the silence.
“They deliver,” Rashel answers. “The route through Lisboa is cleaner. Fewer hands, fewer surprises.”
Business. Not the avenging kind. I listen out of habit, even if it’s no longer my direct job.
Today details slip through the crack in my attention.
A finger trembles. It’s not cold. I repeat the plan so I don’t bolt: as soon as the twins get back, I say it.
I say it and that’s it. My brain runs one way: Alaska. There’s no off switch.
I sip water in quick little hits and a thread of it runs onto my hand.
A neat little cover. Irina turns her glass without tasting it; immaculate nails, eyes fixed on nothing.
Rashel checks her phone under the table; the screen lights the tablecloth for a second, locks, lights again.
I count breaths. Eight. Nine. Ten. My head takes a spin.
The twins come back before the food. They pull the curtain aside and come in together. My feet glue to the floor. The escort folds back outside, where he belongs.
“Did I miss anything?” Alaska asks, brushing my shoulder as she sits.
“Gold leaf and logistics,” Rashel mutters with her usual mystery. She lets it hang. She’s talking about the Frenchwoman they’re working with now. Best counterfeiter on the continent. I’m intrigued, but right now I care less.
My pulse ticks up a notch and a half. It’s now. Dry lips. Tongue glued. My brain decides to blow a fuse at the crucial moment. I open my mouth to spill everything, to tell Irina what I’ve been sitting on for weeks. I prepped version A, B, and C. I just need my voice not to crack.
But of course, two waiters come in with a huge tray and five silver domes. They lift them and a warm cloud—bread, the griddle, mustard, salty juice—fills the booth, wraps me. I smile on reflex.
Alaska and Vega look at each other. Alaska’s face falls; full funeral.
She doesn’t blink. She slides her chair back a hair, recoiling from the plate, real revulsion.
Vega loses color; she looks like she might faint.
There they go: they grab hands under the table.
Sister click. Their language. No one else speaks it.
“Sorry,” Alaska says, and her voice breaks in a place I don’t know. “Take it away, please.”
“Yours?” the waiter asks, polite, not getting it.
“All of them,” Alaska spits, with a tone that freezes me. “I don’t want to see them. No fucking way.”
Irina doesn’t ask why. She never uses that word when someone she cares about is out of air and voice.
“Take them away,” she orders, directly to the waiter, in her boss voice. “Bring fruit. And bread. And… soup. Whatever, just not that.”
They close the domes, clear the plates, and the smell retreats. The air turns odd, something missing.
Rashel clinks her spoon against her cup and breaks the silence a little. All I see is Alaska’s hand hooked to Vega’s under the table. The thumb goes back and forth on a loop, a soothing stroke. It makes me sad and sends me tripping over my own emotions.
“I…” Vega starts, uncomfortable, barely a voice.
“No,” Alaska cuts her off, dry, sharp. “Not now.”
“Alaska.” Vega goes serious, dead serious. “I’m going to tell her.”
“I said no.”
“We’re not alone now. We tell her now,” Vega goes on, firm in a way that surprises me; it’s not hers.
I look at Irina. She’s still, in thinking mode. I look at Rashel and she gives me a small wait sign. Inside, I inventory: burgers, disgust, hand, secret. None of it fits in my head. My neck goes tight. What is this? What’s happening?
“I don’t care,” Alaska protests, and she’s not cocky; she’s not the usual Alaska. “This isn’t the time, Vega, shut up.”
“No,” Vega cuts in with another voice, stronger, more determined. “We’re not waiting any longer. Every day counts for them.”
The sentence doesn’t fit. It plants itself in the middle of the private booth and leaves us off-balance. "Every day counts for them." For who? My head buzzes. Heat crawls up the back of my neck.
I find the edge of the seat with my hand and grip hard.
I don’t want to shake or make a scene. I had my damn speech ready, my big truth with Alaska, bullet points and everything, me being super dramatic, and now that gets shoved aside without warning, off to the side, out of frame.
Because there’s something even bigger here.
"What’s going on, girls?" Irina blurts, impatient.
Alaska takes her sister’s hand over the table now, not hiding it, and squeezes.
Rashel, who always has a quick fix, sets a glass of water in front of Vega with a silent "Here.
" Vega turns the glass with one finger. She does it slow, watching the droplets slide. When she speaks, there’s no warm-up, no detours.
"We went into the children’s home at eight, you know that.
Two beat-up canvas backpacks, sneakers with holes in the toes, and the absurd idea that Mom would come back if we were perfect.
The rest’s easy to sum up: crying the first week till we ran out of tears, fighting over the top bunk, hiding behind the swings so the caregivers wouldn’t see us.
We were tiny and scrappy. There… at first they treated us well.
The yard was big, they gave us hot cocoa for breakfast, and the caregivers wore brightly colored T-shirts. "
Alaska fixes her gaze on a spot on the tablecloth, focused. She doesn’t interrupt. Not even a huff. Irina sets her wrist on the cold edge of the table and the other hand on top. Human tape recorder posture. I know it. I look at Rashel: fingers laced, back tight, brow in analytical mode.
"The director ‘adopted’ us," Vega goes on, making air quotes.
"No paperwork, no court, no legal anything. Off the books. He’d pull us out of the chaos, check our homework with patience, give us extra snacks ‘just because.’ And dumb little gifts that, to us, were treasure: little makeup, thread bracelets, notebooks with shiny covers, strawberry gum, scented erasers.
The others said we were his favorites. We laughed it off. We were kids. We saw the good, period."
She takes the briefest pause. Rashel doesn’t blink. Neither do I, because I can see where this is going. My eyes sting; I don’t know if it’s pure fear.
"At eleven," Vega’s voice tightens, "he started calling us into his office. First me, then both of us. To ask for ‘things.’ With the door closed. We didn’t get it at first. Then we did. And we didn’t tell anyone.
We were scared. We were ashamed. We thought it was our fault for taking snacks and gifts. For being ‘the favorites.’"
My body warns me before my brain does. I don’t need the rest. The word "things" weighs a ton. Irina’s jaw tightens, that millimeter that means a personal storm is coming. Her thumb digs into her other hand. Alaska doesn’t let go of Vega. She slides her grip up, covers her fingers with hers, steady.
In the silence it clicks: we’re in it now. Once again Vega has no idea what this is going to set off. And there’s no going back. I wish I had something smart to say. What I have is a knot in my throat and a quiet "fuck" I don’t dare let out.
"At first it was… well, posing, you know?
" Vega scratches her wrist, searching for words that don’t make you gag.
"We learned the drill fast; it was always the same: photos, a silence that ate you from the inside, and if we kept our mouths shut, reward. They’d take us out for a fucking burger.
Like it was the big prize for keeping quiet. "
Alaska stares into space and I catch her "get her out of here" as clearly as if I’d shouted it myself.
"Then it got worse, obviously," Vega goes on, lower now. "Another one of those ‘caregivers’ joined in. It wasn’t just photos anymore. They started filming. And look, they didn’t touch us, okay?
" She looks at Irina, making that clear.
"But they forced us to take part in scenes on camera we wanted no part of. Humiliations. Things that leave you dirty inside. And if you refused, the nasty punishments came: less time in the yard, they took the few things you had, not a single kind look. Total isolation. They’d leave you there, alone, with your shit, no mark on your skin, but inside you folded, they crushed you.
They even took our Barbie. The fucking Barbie. "
I think of myself at eleven and feel like I can’t hold the weight of all this.
I look at Irina again: she’s rigid, fury in her eyes.
She absorbs, processes, files it all to use later.
She’s like a precision machine, and that scares me a little, but it also calms me, because I know that if Irina stores it, it’s to blow it all to pieces.
"Alaska tried to stop it, yeah? She made a racket, got in their faces, ran off a couple times. Me…" She shrugs, old, bone-deep tired. "Sometimes I obeyed so it would be over faster. Other times, no. Some weeks nothing happened. And others, back to the office and the fucking prize."
Prize. The word drops on me. I picture all of it like I’m there, right then: the door closed, that disgusting fluorescent light, those two men and the girls. I don’t want to see it, I swear, but it shoves into my head and sticks there, nailed in. I hate that I wasn’t there to break someone’s face.
"It stopped when we left," Vega finishes, her voice almost inaudible. "At least, it stopped for us. The new little ones…" She doesn’t finish. No need. The silence screams it.