41 #2
"She disappeared for a few days. They said she had a miscarriage—hospital, no visitors. When she came back, she was wrecked. She doesn’t talk. She doesn’t look at anyone. She goes from her room to the living room and that’s it."
My breath caught. I pictured it and couldn’t stand it. Word was they forced her. Dragged her. Broke her from the inside. It kills me to write it in my head and not be able to erase it.
I wanted to burn it all down. But smile.
Theater. I asked Patri questions, kept up the flirty bit so Nat could scratch her ego or whatever she has, hugged Patri hard—she smelled like cheap drugstore perfume and going-out hairspray—and I kept drinking so I wouldn’t think about it. But it didn’t go away. It stuck to me.
And that’s when I said enough in my head, no epic speech, no lights. Me, my rage, Vega next to me, Irina in the back, and a plan that started with a birthday and some fake flirting in front of Nat, which wasn’t worth the drama or the hangover I paid for later.
In those days Vega had confessed to Mikel that she was a virgin, she’d never been with anyone, sex kind of scared her, kind of grossed her out, kind of everything.
She explained her reasons, her aversion, the why—what had happened to us in the group home, what we’d seen, what we’d lived, what we’d kept quiet.
Mikel listened without judging, without interrupting, without weird questions.
He told her she had to tell Irina, tell Julia, tell her moms—that they’d understand, that they’d help.
He hinted they were something like vigilantes, real-life avengers; he assured her they’d see to it those men went to prison, that they’d pay for what they’d done.
JARSI. He didn’t say it, but come on, it’s not like Madrid is crawling with discreet ladies who tidy up what the courts don’t catch. I was already picturing the Twitter thread: let’s talk about ladies who show up at your place and stage-manage your revenge.
We went all in on digging. Archives, forums, sketchy Reddit, Telegram groups, the works.
We caught looks, half-whispered conversations, and a couple of details Mikel let slip without letting them slip.
And then the memory, because I’d heard about the vigilantes everywhere at the time—headlines, debates, podcasts, the kind of trending thing that pops up even when you’re just looking up brownie recipes.
The more we dug, the more it all lined up.
I built a whole movie in my head. In it, Irina and Julia stormed the group home wearing ski masks, found Don Jota and Mauro, bam, express resolution, drones overhead, 4K videos with their voices distorted and a DJ soundtrack.
We also went meticulous with the household tea.
Vega invented a game for the girls: hide around the house and score points if they found curious things.
Who could get to the laundry room first, new clue, there’s dust under the couch and something that looks like a receipt.
I trailed behind opening drawers, reading papers that didn’t have our names on them, memorizing dates.
We asked everyone with our best “who, me?” faces.
Little by little, a map sketched itself: who really runs things, who fakes it, who gets 3 a.m. cleaning binges, who has therapy on Thursdays, who owes whom a favor. Delicious.
The big one: Irina. On the one hand, she hunts scum.
Serial rapists, abusers, pedophiles. What hides behind technicalities and legal loopholes.
On the other hand, she’s got her businesses.
Not a candle-and-yoga shop. Companies, routes, deals, numbers that never show up with the IRS.
No one asks. No one weighs in on her affairs.
We saw it clearly: Business Irina and Justice Irina both exist. Sometimes they cross, sometimes they don’t.
Which is why we wanted to catch her alone, tell her, light her up just like Vega did today—straight up, no half-measures.
JARSI officially retired. They vanished from the spotlight—end of show.
In reality, they’re still at it, but ghost mode.
And here’s the detail that made us raise an eyebrow: they put out a ten-point code on the dark web that you can now read anywhere.
Anonymous, sure, but polished prose, not a joke.
They apologized for crossing the line, for the earlier stuff.
And said they were continuing, but with new rules.
Rule number one said, "Thou shalt not kill." It stuck with me. The rest were limits, protocols, exceptions that read like they’d been written by someone who’s watched a lot of movies and written a lot of reports.
Mikel said jail, justice, laws.
We said no. Jail is slow, it’s boring, it’s a bad joke, and those two deserved something that doesn’t fit on any form. We didn’t want to see their pixelated faces on TV and four years of interviews. We needed silence and dirt on top.
Last night Vega didn’t tell a single lie; she laid it all out, but she put on a show—controlled tears and that fine-tuned manipulation she does—and I’m telling you this because I’ve got her down cold.
We’ve been at this for weeks, and since day one she’s been repeating that we have to play innocent, clueless victims, without confessing what we really wanted: put them in the ground.
Not jail—gone, period. Make them pay for what they did, but our way.
If we said JARSI, they’d hit us with “Thou shalt not kill” and years of paperwork.
If we said “Irina,” she gave back order and closure. Hence the theater.
Vega was convinced that if we pressed her hard enough, Irina would light up and go straight for them; and in the end she was right, the bitch.
Vega herself insisted we catch her with her guard down, no time to think, though today she jumped ahead and dove in without calculating. We’ve got her number, we know her. We read her memoir, a book she wrote about who she is, what she’s done, and why.
The book was kept under lock and key in a drawer in the library, a secret drawer that showed up in a way-too-convenient coincidence, because everything in this house smells like a setup.
We spent several nights reading it in secret, phone flashlight on the lowest setting, airplane mode, door cracked, with that dumb fear of getting caught.
It was clear she’d get revenge for us. But, fuck, Vega blurting it out in front of Rashel made me seriously doubt it. It made me think it might go sideways—that with Rashel there, Irina would flip to do-gooder superhero mode instead of mafia big-sister mode that lays down the law.
That’s why we had Plan B in the works, in case A fell apart.
We pushed it a bit the day at the movies. We picked a place with crowds, cameras, noise. We thought we were all safe there, that nothing would happen. It turned into a serious fuckup.
That day it clicked. We realized Irina’s enemies aren’t fanfiction. They’re out there, they move, they breathe, and now we’re on their radar. Hi, target. Nice to meet you—Alaska, queen of shitty decisions.
The original idea was to get someone with a spotlight to show up: an influencer hungry for a clip, a reporter in a hurry, a TikToker with a ring light, someone on Twitter itching for a thread.
Have them film it, post it, let the internet burn, and make sure Irina saw it had gotten out of hand—that she couldn’t leave us out there without knowing how to defend ourselves.
Plus, we paid a buddy to come incognito and grab me like a crazy fan.
I’d play the scared one, with a tear hanging on my lash and everything, and then I’d ask Irina to teach me how to handle a weapon, to defend myself, not freeze up.
We knew Luna and Nat had learned with her since they were kids, so I would too.
It was part of the plan, period—no vote.
The movie-theater day got away from us because the real bad guys showed up, the kind that leave your mouth dry and your hands cold.
We learned a lot in one afternoon. Who we are now.
Who Irina is. Who Nat is. We needed to know what board Nat was playing on.
We thought she was glued to Irina’s organization—it all checked out—and suddenly she recited the JARSI ten commandments with a conviction that made us realize we couldn’t make her complicit in our plans.
Three days ago they told us Soraya jumped off the roof of the home, that she was gone, that she couldn’t anymore, and it left us frozen with a constant ringing in our heads.
We kept thinking about what they did to her, what no one wanted to see, and what we ourselves pushed aside because we were afraid we’d break along the way.
We swore there was still time, that she was safe, and that the right thing was to do it carefully, do it smart, and then get her out of there—and it didn’t matter what we swore anymore, because it was already too late.
I went to the bathroom, shut the door, pressed my forehead to the tiles, and saw myself apologizing to an off camera. Then I came out and told Vega we were going to do it right—focus and calm.
Guilt doesn’t let up; it squeezes your chest and takes your breath. Vega couldn’t sit still. She wanted to do it now, she wanted them to pay, she wanted to close out this shit once and for all.
She was up for anything: have them arrested, let a truck take them out, throw them in jail—whatever, as long as it ended.
Me, I wanted to wait now, pick the moment, lock it down, have a clean exit.
I knew that if what they decided was to send them to jail, they’d put them in front of me first, and I’d look them in the eye.
And there I’d have to be holding Nat’s gun and pull the trigger—no hesitation, no shaking, no regrets.
It didn’t go exactly like that, but we got pretty damn close.
"Did you see Irina’s face? Alaska, that was intense. I still can’t believe it."