Her thoughts got me nowhere, but I sensed something amiss. I just didn’t know what, or what I could do about it. Suddenly she spotted someone, and abruptly popped up out of her chair.

“I’ll be right back.”

In her thoughts I caught a name, Pancho. She’d been waiting for someone named Pancho to arrive and it had something to do with me.

My instincts screamed to leave. Now. Get out. I couldn’t think of anyone named Pancho. I had a horrible feeling in my gut. I got up and headed straight for the door, steeling myself to try to make it through the night without her bite. I thought if I could get my hands on some more Oxy’s to hold me over, I might make it till Enrique came home.

I was too slow. The trap Lia had laid for me already sprung. I’d forgotten that Pancho was a nickname for Francisco. Francisco Lopez, a.k.a. Arana – Spider. He snatched me up by the arm with a pistol held against my back, hidden under the folded jacket draped over his arm.

“Andale, puta – I’m so happy to see you again. We gonna go to my place and have some fun. It’ll be just like old times.” I squealed in surprise, hadn’t seen him coming. “Shush … Go quietly puta. You don’t want me to blow your guts all over this nice restaurant.”

He meant every word of it. He really wanted to shoot me. The only thing that would keep me from getting shot – immediate cooperation. He steered me out the door, same direction I had been headed.

“Nice and quiet. You make noise and I’ma have to kill you.” I kept silent. He wanted me dead. He didn’t care when or where, as long as it was sooner rather than later. Resistance would’ve given him the excuse to do it right there.

He steered me into a taxicab. I saw Lia standing on the sidewalk as he slid in beside me. She looked me straight in the eyes and winked. I read it all clearly in her mind. She’d been plotting a way to get rid of me since she left for Spain. She was extremely jealous of my relationship with Enrique. She hated how close we were. She’d been that close with him before, but their relations had steadily devolved to a function of master-servant. He no longer treated her as a girlfriend, and she deeply resented what she saw developing between Enrique and me.

Lia had been commanded-compelled by Enrique not to raise a hand against me. She couldn’t make a move intended to harm me, rough sex being the exception. Arana had no such limitations. He could do whatever he liked. Lia had arranged for him to take care of the dirty work she was incapable of performing. The age-old concept from Sun Tzu’s Art of War, “The enemy of my enemy is also my friend.”

Arana had big plans for me involving ropes, restraints, a heavy dose of violent sex, and the use of my body as a new punching bag. He was flaming pissed off at me.

“You know how much shit I got from Faustino over you? He blamed me when you disappear. He’s got a hard on for you. He like you or something, I don’t know.” Arana had taken the full blame with Faustino over my disappearance. If he fucked up again, the shark would eat the spider for lunch.

“What’s so damn special about you? You all skinny, no tits, no ass. I don’t get it, why he like you so much?”

“I can explain, if you take me to Faustino I can explain. It’s not your fault. I can convince him it’s not your fault.”

“Too late for that, puta.”

He had no intention of returning me to Faustino. He planned his juicy revenge, and then I would truly disappear, permanently. The way Arana saw it, I’d already disappeared. He’d already paid the price for it. Nothing to be gained by bringing me back into the fold. My return couldn’t undo the damage. I’d just be a pain in the ass. Arana would be forced to watch me closely, to make sure I didn’t take off again. Just another source of headache to him. He planned to get some violent kicks off on me for a time and then toss my disfigured corpse in the Hudson River. No one would ever be the wiser.

Enrique would never know what happened to me. I’m sure Lia could play it off like I ran out on her at the restaurant. I was so conspicuous in my cocktail dress. It wouldn’t be difficult to find witnesses who saw me arrive with her and leave in a hurry with another man.

Arana put his hand on my thigh and slithered up between my legs to discover I wasn’t wearing underwear. “Look like a damn model.” As he rubbed my inner thighs, speaking of how beautiful I looked, he imagined how fun it would be to destroy such a thing of beauty.

I was so terrified. I could barely speak as he guided me to the entrance of the Towers in Spanish Harlem from the taxi. Things had changed since I left.

“I gotta live in this shithole now because of you. You know how I hate the Towers, but I’m stuck here because of you.” Faustino didn’t want to lose any more girls. He forced Arana to move into the Towers to keep a close eye on all the girls. I’d literally turned Arana’s life to shit. He’d been living in a posh, upscale two-bedroom apartment in Corona, but now he had to live in the ghetto, no choice.

One advantage I had here was to be on home turf. I had a chance one of the girls or neighbors might recognize me. If someone connected to Faustino found out I was here, Arana wouldn’t be able to get rid of me so easily. He’d be forced to hand me over to Faustino. If I could survive a couple days, till Enrique and Faustino returned from Panama, I had a chance of making it out of this mess alive.

Ideas churned in my mind – ways to negotiate with Arana. I may be able to talk him into ransoming me to Enrique. Surely I was worth fifty thousand or more to Enrique, enough cash to grab Arana’s attention. Inspiration struck. I could pay Arana the thirty thousand I had in the bank right now, my employment signing bonus and my first month’s salary. I saved virtually every penny of that money for use on something worthwhile. Saving my life seemed worthwhile.

Arana didn’t give me a chance to negotiate. As soon as we entered his apartment he threw the double deadbolts and turned on me with a vicious right hook I never saw coming. He put me down and out.

I woke up sometime later on my back, tied down to the bed posts, naked, legs spread open. I’m pretty sure my nose was broken. It bled all down my face. My head pounded like a tribal drum competition. I’ve never had a broken anything before, it hurt like a motherfucker. My throat was slick with blood and mucus, I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t stop it before it happened, my stomach flopped and I puked, which made my head hurt worse.

Arana stood over me, looking at the mess I made, shaking his head in disgust. “I always knew you were a dirty puta, but this is a little too much. I can’t work in this mess.”

The work he spoke of was the task of beating me to a pulp, which he looked forward to with anticipation. He left for a few seconds then came back with a wet washcloth. After a few minutes he had cleaned me up and stood there staring with those soulless dark eyes, the eyes of a killer who enjoyed his work.

“Now we can get down to business.” He spoke quietly without emotion. He was known to be a merciless son of a bitch.

“I can pay you! I have the cash in the bank right now!”

He shook his head. He didn’t think I had any real money, not enough to change his mind.

“Thirty thousand cash. I can get it for you first thing in the morning when the bank opens. You don’t have to do this! We can have a little fun tonight and I’ll pay you in the morning. You don’t need to tie me up, I won’t fight you.”

I had tempted him. He thought about it seriously. He wanted the cash. He thought of ways to hurt me that wouldn’t leave obvious marks. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He figured he could have some fun, take me to the bank in the morning, and then bring me back here to finish what he started. Arana was nothing if decisive, a quick thinker. He made his plan and decided to go for it. He dropped his weight right into my gut with a wicked right-hand punch. Felt like his hand reached all the way through to my spine.

As I whimpered in agony he casually removed his clothes and laid them out in an orderly pile on the dresser.

“Please don’t hurt me. I’ll pay you, I promise. You don’t have to do this, it’s not necessary.”

I tried my best to stay calm, but I was in pain, crying. He moved up on my body slow and deliberate, like a cat settling in on its prey once mobilized. Arana feasted on my fear. He wanted me to be afraid. I knew everything he planned, and I was very afraid.

He made me sing with pain. The sounds of my suffering were an aphrodisiac for him. I swear his cock hardened every time he hit me.

He never touched my face. I had to look good for the bank in the morning. But no other part of my body was off-limits. I passed out from the pain when he broke my ribs with a vicious right hook. What made it worse was that he kept settling his weight into me, into my bruised broken ribs as he fucked me.

I cried and begged shamelessly. “Please stop. I’ll give you all my money, I’ll do whatever you want, please stop hitting me!”

He liked it better when I begged. Crying, passing out unconscious, none of this made a difference to him. He got exactly what he wanted and nothing I did or said could change that. I would wake up to the shock of cold water on my face, another form of punishment. I don’t know when he stopped, probably when I was unconscious. He could hardly get me to wake up. All that alcohol, pain, and exhaustion was just too much. I vaguely registered his concern that I wouldn’t be able to walk in and out of the bank tomorrow.

I had thought Arana wanted to know where I had been, what I’d been doing all this time. He really didn’t care. All he wanted was to get his kicks punishing me. The last thing I remember that night was being face down. He had untied me only to flip me over, to tag me from behind. He was going at it like a madman. He donkey punched me in the back of the head and I was out.

* * * *

Chapter 20

I awoke to pain, the memories of last night’s ordeal flooding in as my ribs screamed and my head pounded. I needed a bite so bad I could kill for it. I’d gladly claw somebody’s eyes out to get a bite. Just one bite. I tried to imagine being in Enrique’s arms, feeling his teeth sink into my neck, the heavenly euphoria wiping away all the pain. And he wasn’t even in the country yet. Somehow I knew it. Enrique was still in Panama, sleeping the day away while I counted the hours till Arana beat me to death.