“Did you know what we were doing, searching all those papers?” Massimo asks a rhetorical question. He didn’t tell me, so I have no way of knowing. “You know those lists of names? They were women and girls, brought here on fucking boats. Traded for money. And right now, I’d cut off my arm to stop it. I need a place to put them right on this terminal and a safe way to send them back. So if you have to marry Sergio to give me the space to secure this ‘shipment’ before he does, then that’s what you have to do.”

I can almost be convinced this is a just plan—but it’s coming from a Colonia man.

“Do you think maybe Dario’s twenty-seven women are better off?” I ask.

“That’s different.”

“How?”

His frustration is palpable. He doesn’t like being questioned. But I’m not doing that. I’m asking him to explain our entire upbringing.

“They’re ours, and they were married. They’re better off. Ask any woman we know—she’s happy.”

It’s my turn to shake my head and look away. I don’t even know what I want from him. He’s not going to see the world differently in a lightning flash. Why would he? He has all the power. Changing his opinion means giving it all up.

“How do you think this ends, Goody? Lucari walks out on two feet?”

I laugh to myself. I haven’t even dared to strive for that because I have none of the power. Maybe I’m the one who needs to open my eyes and see a world where Dario walks out on two feet.

“You’re in charge,” I say. “You decide he walks out. You let him go. Do it in the middle of the night. Tell everyone you found out all the women were dead, so you killed him.”

“Why would I do that?” He crosses his arms, looking me up and down with a challenge on his face. He’s asking what I have to offer.

“I stay.” Those two words mean everything to me, but he doesn’t seem to get their value. “I can run any time, and you know it. Take your eyes off me for one second and I disappear. Poof. Leave you with a whole mess. But if you let him go, I stay in the Colonia.”

Letting Dario go was never in Massimo’s calculations, and he’s doing them now. I’m ahead of him for the first time.

“He’ll be back for you. Out of spite.”

“If I’m married to Sergio and he’s protecting me…”

“And you’re keeping him happy.”