my arm, asked me if I was okay.
She, this young girl who had been snatched off the street, was feeling sorry for me.
"I thought my sister would be in this container," I explained to her, swatting one of the tears away. "I have been looking for her. And this was my last hope."
"Maybe we saw her," the first woman, Victoria, said in English. "There were many women," she added. "More than here."
"Show them the picture," Luca suggested, guiding me back toward the opening of the container to speak to Victoria.
Grateful that they'd be willing to help after they'd already been through so much, I scrambled for my phone, swiping through my pictures, then holding out the image to Victoria.
Who promptly looked like I'd struck her in the face.
"What is it?" I asked after sharing a confused look with Luca.
"This is her," she said, taking my phone, face stricken.
"My sister. Yes."
"No. This is her. This is the woman."
"What woman? Luca asked, a little more put together in the moment than I was as my mind spun with the knowledge that they had seen her. Even if she wasn't there, they'd seen her. She was likely still alive somewhere. "Where did you see her?" he added.
"In Venezuela. In my hometown."
"With the traffickers," Luca clarified.
"She is the trafficker," Victoria snapped, shoving my phone back into my chest so hard it knocked out my breath as my hand automatically reached to grab it.
I misheard her.
Right?
I had to have misheard her.
Because any other explanation was simply not possible.
"No," I said, head shaking, refusing to believe it.
"Yes. Yes. She's the one. She lured us. She made us follow her with a scheme."
"What kind of scheme?"
"To do a survey for money. She said they would give us good money for our time. And then she led us away from town, and men came and shoved us into trucks. She is the woman."
"Are you sure?" Luca asked, his voice only half-audible to me right then, my own thoughts screaming too loud to hear much of anything else.
My sister?
A trafficker?
Or a recruiter for traffickers?
No.
No, absolutely not.
That wasn't even remotely possible.
"Yes. Yes, I am sure. Right?" she asked, grabbing my phone back out of my dead hands, shoving it toward the other women who, one after the other, confirmed Victoria's words.
"I'm gonna be sick," I declared, flying out of the container, finding a break between the stacks, dropping down on my knees near the water's edge, and heaving.
Luca's hand was at my lower back a few moments later, reaching around me to hand me a pocket square.
I wiped frantically at my face, blowing my nose, balling up the handkerchief, but feeling completely immobilized by the shock.
"Romy," he tried, tucking my hair behind my ear.
"They have to be wrong," I insisted, despair a noose tightening around my throat, cutting off my air, making my voice sound breathless.
"Sweetheart, we have to believe them. They have no reason to lie."
They didn't.
And I was an awful person for even trying to call them liars in my own head, let alone saying it out loud.
"I don't... I can't..." I told him, feeling the tears welling up and overflowing.
"Okay. It's going to be alright," he assured me, though we both knew he couldn't promise me that as he dropped down on the ground, gathered me onto his lap, held me against his chest as I soaked through his shirt.
I'd been vaguely aware of the sound of police sirens, of ambulances, but had been too wrapped up in my misery to put two and two together until I heard a voice at our sides.
"Luca, we need to talk to the both of you," the man's voice declared.
"I will talk to you. I'm not sure if she is in any shape to," Luca said, untangling from me, pulling both of us to our feet.
"Officer Greys can sit with her until she is feeling more like talking," the detective declared, waving a woman over, taking off with Luca.
I don't precisely remember the course of events, but at some point, I was pulled over toward the detectives by Luca who acted as a buffer, as well as a physical crutch because I was pretty sure gravity was suddenly demanding I get closer to the ground.
Questions were thrown at me. And I was pretty sure I mumbled some responses, but couldn't know if they were even halfway sensible.
I didn't care.
I just wanted to get out of here, away from all of this. Naively, I thought some physical distance might help me