SWNOVELS Savior Complex: Chapter 6
Talking with Ant about his dad, Antonio Sr., is enough to make my blood boil. He had been, at best, ambivalent about his new wife and son. He rarely spent the night in their marital bed, never bothering to hide the fact he was seeing women on the side.
Still, Yaya kept in contact with Gigi and would visit her often so their boys could play. Yaya once told me Antonio’s father would lurk in the shadows, grumbling when the boys would play games he deemed too girly for the Allende name.
The times I saw Antonio—usually only around holidays and special occasions—I could tell my young nephew and I were cut from the same cloth, so to speak. I hid it well enough from my family and our tiny community, but that little boy had no hope of hiding anything. Even now, his punk aesthetic and leather wristbands are quietly—but distinctly—queer.
Gigi rarely visited but would sometimes send us pictures of her and Antonio. The last time she visited Mexico City, she went to an actual photography studio. She sent our mother an envelope with a larger photo and a sheet of wallet-sized pictures.
The larger photo hangs in my parents’ hallway, in a place of honor.
Ant, still brushing Cupcake, shakes his head. “The only images I remember of my father are from the pictures that Abuelita Allende had up everywhere. I don’t remember playing with him or being around him at all.”
“I’m not surprised. You must’ve been, what? Four? Maybe five years old when he was busted for trying to blackmail a town official.”
Ant grimaces. “The jails in Mexico aren’t great.”
“True. He died in a prison fight over a cigarette, right around your ninth birthday.”
“That’s when Abuelita Allende died, too. Me and my mother stayed, but I can’t remember why. I sometimes wish I remembered more, but then something fires off a memory and…” He pauses, looking down at his fingers, then up at me. “Then I regret making that wish.”
His wide-eyed sincerity reminds me of him as a child, and I can’t believe that part of him survived.
“Gigi said it was because someone had to stay and take care of him, but he was only in his mid-fifties. She withdrew from us even further, but Yaya continued to visit. After a while, Yaya was convinced something was going on between them.”
Ant wrinkles his nose, then nods. “I remember seeing them in the courtyard. He was palming her belly.”
“I don’t know if you remember this about your Tía Yaya, but she’s stubborn when she has to be. She kept pressing your mom for the truth, and finally, Gigi told her they were in love and going to get married.”
Ant’s expression saddens and he looks to Levy, who rubs his shoulders. I want to know what’s making him feel that way, but I suspect it’s better if I let him tell me in his own time.
“Yaya tried to reason with your mother, but that didn’t go anywhere. She was afraid Gigi would cut her off from visiting, so she kept her mouth shut after that. A couple of months later, however, Gigi stopped answering Yaya’s texts.”
Ant’s expression darkens further and his jaw tightens. “She was already dead by then. And I was already gone.”
Guilt pierces my heart and I push it down.
I nod. “After weeks of no contact, Yaya showed up and was told to leave. Your grandfather said Gigi didn’t want anything to do with her. We knew it was a lie because Yaya was her best friend. At that point, we were convinced something awful had happened, but we didn’t know what.”
Ant’s lower lip quivers. “I wish I had better memories of her.”
I wonder what he saw of her last moments. When I verified that she died, I put in a request for the police report on her death. The judge warned me I wouldn’t be able to unsee the contents of the report.
He was right.
I dare not ask Ant about it now, unwilling to tug on that loose thread just yet, as much for me as for him.
I rub his back. “We’ll help you remember the good things.”
We break for sandwiches, then Ant asks me to continue. I silently check in with Levy, then take a deep breath and honor Ant’s request.
“I only got involved months later when my mother asked me to intervene. I was a rougher guy then, so I forced my way into the Allende family compound, looking for answers. The place was like an old ghost town, the kind you see in American movies about the Wild West. You and your mother were nowhere to be found and your grandfather was like a ghost, living in a dark bedroom near the back of the compound. I put a gun to his head until he showed me Gigi’s death certificate and admitted she’d been killed by a gang and they’d kidnapped you.”
Antonio snarls. “He was a fucking liar. He’s probably told that lie so many times now he thinks it’s the truth.”
I nod. “Like every good liar, he told a partial truth. I could smell a lie hidden in his confessions, but I wasn’t smart enough to figure out where it was. All I knew for sure was that Gigi was dead and you were missing.”
“That must’ve made you so sad,” Levy says, grabbing my hand.
I grind my teeth, shoving down the regret. “I shouldn’t have let him live.” By the time I understood that he’d sold Ant, Señor Allende had surrounded himself with enough security to make it impossible to kill him myself. Shaking my head, I continue, “The worst part was when I had to tell my mother her youngest daughter was dead and her grandson was missing. She made a sound I can’t…I’ve never heard a human being make that sound.”
It hurts my chest to think of it even now. The rest of us were quietly, horrifically shocked. Even little Gael was eerily quiet that night.
Ant puts his head on my shoulder again. I wrap my arm around him, kissing his head, reminding myself this story has a happy ending.
“I promised my mother I would track you down if it was the last thing I did.” I pause and look down at my hands. Speaking of believing one’s own lies… “I told her you’d most likely been sold to a rich family.”
Ant snorts, shaking his head. “Rich families only buy newborns. The most any family would have paid for an eleven-year-old boy would’ve been ten thousand. Maybe.”
Breathing heavily, I dip my chin. That had been my estimation as well.
Speaking casually, as though discussing stock prices, Ant continues, “I made them more than that every week, especially at the beginning. Hell, the first guy paid fifty thousand for one night with me. Then, when I got too old for celebrity island, they shipped me back to Mexico. That’s when I was sold to a ring in the United States.”
I lean forward, putting my head between my knees. Fuck, I can’t breathe. God, I want those names. “Did you…?” I inhale raggedly. “Did you recognize any of the celebrities on that island?”
Suddenly it’s as if I’m breathing in air but not oxygen. Hyperventilation starts to take over.
“Oh shit,” Ant says, rubbing my back in soothing circles. “I…shit. Sorry for traumatizing you.”
“Cup your hands over your mouth,” Levy says, his voice incredibly calming.
I do as he says, and after a few moments, I start breathing regularly again.
“I am so sorry, Ant. I…I’m so sorry I keep getting affected this way—I’ve never hyperventilated before. Please don’t apologize for your truth.”
“Yeah, but Levy says not to trauma-bomb people.”
Levy speaks up. “This is different, Ant. We were on the subject. You didn’t do anything wrong. Javier didn’t do anything wrong. This is…this is tough stuff, buddy. It’s okay that it’s hard. And if Javier wants to, he can maybe share what he’s feeling.”
I nod along, so grateful for Levy’s kind words. “Grief and rage are clashing in my chest so hard it makes my lungs seize. I want to cry until I throw up, then I want to know where this island is so I can save every child and then carpet-bomb that place off the face of the earth.”
Ant laughs, and it releases something in my soul. “I love that idea. Can I help?” he asks with a wide grin.
Cupping the back of his head, I touch our foreheads together. “I’ll let you press the button.”
“Fair.”
Levy laughs along with us. “Alright, white knights, before you go riding in, remember we’ve got a protocol for such things. Pretty sure Erik, Charlie, Anders, and maybe his friend, Hopper, would like in on that.”
The grief and pain from a few minutes ago dissipate as we laugh, and they explain who Hopper is.
After we settle, Levy turns to Ant. “Did you tell Charlie and Erik about the island?”
He scowls. “I did, and as much as I like joking about it, they told me we can’t carpet-bomb it because it’s restricted air space. You know, because of all the dignitaries who go there.”
I fucking hate the world sometimes, and I don’t give a shit about air space regulations. That island is going down one way or another.
As satisfying as it is to imagine taking down these assholes who steal and hurt little kids, it’s harder to reconcile with my part in all this.
The truth of the matter is I neglected my family. For years I did my own thing, got involved with the wrong people, ignoring the fact my younger sister had fallen into a trap she didn’t know how to get out of. It cost her her life and sent Ant on a path he is just now recovering from.
I could kill a thousand traffickers, save a million people, but I won’t ever absolve myself of the neglect that allowed my family to be torn apart.