Author Warning
Red Waters has subject matter that can be alarming.
Please do not read if you have triggers with sexual abuse.
Dedicated to the ones not afraid to know where Whitney has been…
“One word, Fire.” His eyes were full of sorrow… His lips trembled as he softly said, “Link,” and placed my silver necklace with Link’s water sign into my shaking palm.
There was beauty in dying…
There was even beauty within all the horror…
Foreign and Forever
Blood is thicker than water… This old and famous quote about men fighting on the battlefield, sharing spilt blood that is thicker than womb water, is true. I shared not one drop of the same DNA with my brother, Timothy, yet he fought for me as if I were not an illegally adopted sibling. That fight cost him his life.
Shared battle blood.
Crash, also known as Harold Thompson Junior—a young man forced to be a drug dealer by his father—and I did not share womb water, but we loved each other fiercely for as long as we could hold on. Crash tried to protect me from my parents’ wrongs. Crash is now dead.
Shared battle blood.
In a twist none of the innocent saw coming, Crash did share DNA with someone; Link—Reether Jones—is my best friend and has been as loyal as they come. Even when Link found out his girlfriend, Constance, had been murdered by the Russians who were hunting me, he held me tight, crying. Thankful I was alive.
Shared battle blood.
Link and Crash had been unaware that they both came from the same womb of a sex slave, Marina. That connection wasn’t made ‘til after they joined forces to protect me from the ones who felt I was their property; Russians who ran a high-end sexual slavery trade, owned— kidnapped—my mother before I was born.
What happened to me after my birth and how I ended up in the United States of America as an infant were details that I thought I would never learn. That was to change when I got on a plane to pretend to ‘travel the world’. After my corrupted political father put a contract out on my life, Link demanded he give me two million dollars as hush money. Link knew I wanted freedom. He knew that money, as much as it couldn’t make up for the betrayal, would at least give me wings. So, I flew from one devil right into the hands of another.
Crash had been held against his will as collateral until I let Russians enter my home to search for a document that I was clueless about. However, when they found the paper, the leader of the pack of rats went back on his word. On the boat dock behind my home, syringes were inserted into Crash’s arms, drugs were pushed into his veins, and his overdosed body was rolled into the lake I grew up next to.
Even though my leg was still in a cast, I dove into the water to save him.
I failed. Link failed.
Shared battle blood.
Every beautiful childhood memory I had drowned with Crash that awful night.
Even remembering my long since passed brother swimming in those blue waters now made me wince. The boarding pass in my hand crumpled as I squeezed my hands closed and slammed my eyes shut. Tilting my face to the plane’s window, I begged air to seep into my lungs and for my broken heart to pump blood because there was someone I had to return to someday.
I was naïve but not stupid. Once all the revelations had been presented, I now understood that I loved Link—more than as a best friend—and had all along. I now understood that a part of me fell for Crash because I, unconsciously, recognized Link in him. All this only compounded the guilt I had for Crash’s death—for failing him.
I wish I had believed the love I felt for Link was enough to hold me steady after all I had learned about my past, and losing Crash who had also been present during my own brother’s murder. Yes, the same organization that killed my brother years earlier had taken Crash’s life.
Shared battle blood.
I thought finding my Russian biological parents was the way to learn who I truly was. I also thought revenge was the key to my inner peace. So, I ran. Ran right toward destruction I didn’t cause and a swarm of evil I would barely escape from.
Blood. Blood is thicker than water… Yes, it is true, but blood diluted by water runs different shades of red, like life. Once life is diluted, it becomes a different consistency. That is what I was to experience; different shades of the red waters now resembling my existence. Even when the blood of a battlefield seeps into the ground after the rain, the carnage of that day still lingers just as it happens in life. Maybe people can no longer see events—past experiences that gutted me as this story unfolded—but that won’t stop the memories from haunting me.
A part of me wishes I had flown to Hawaii and took a vacation like I told Link I was doing, but that would epically change where we are today.
Unacceptable.
All that was to come after this torturous time in my life was so worth every second. But, before those happy times—the true beauty in life—were to be found, I had to visit Hell. Here’s where that trip began. I had just graduated from high school, it was summertime, and I was begging Link’s father—Ted Jones—for deadly information.
“Does Reether know you’re asking for this?” In his home’s library, Mr. Jones eyed me most suspiciously.
I swallowed my fermenting emotions that were devouring my insides and rotting my core. “No. And I don’t want him to.”
“Because he will stop you.”
I stared at a picture frame on Mr. Jones’ desk. Link’s child self was gleaming innocence none of us had anymore. The young man he now was would’ve been livid with my ‘vacation’ plans. I looked away from the blue eyes that were a sharp contrast to his already darkening hair.
Mr. Jones exhaled regret and an inner pain I was yet to understand. “The Russian you want to find is… untraceable.” He tiredly rubbed the back of his neck. “Trust me.” His voice faded. “I tried.”
“Will you at least tell me how far you got?” My eyes welled for the anguish Mr. Jones must have experienced, having to purchase his wife in an attempt to save her life.
After staring at me for what felt like an eternity, he reached inside a drawer and pulled out a vanilla legal folder. Laying it on his desk, he opened it. An 8x10 photo had me grabbing my stomach as it soured. Mr. Jones sneered, “Yeah. The sight of him does that to me, too. His name is Yury.”
Visions of Crash’s smile whispered to my heart in a taunting manner because I would never see it again. The man in the photo took it from me. In the picture, the young man, already so unbelievably cold and calculated, was walking across a street in a foreign country. I could tell by the buildings and surroundings. There was a statue that burned into my memory. What appeared to be the body of a lion had a human head attached. The cement creation was wearing what I suspected to be an Egyptian headdress. “Is he in Egypt?”
Mr. Jones’ hand slammed down on the picture. “Whitney, this picture was taken by a private detective I hired. Ask me where this detective is now.”
I started to shake, unwilling to hear it. My anger refused to be derailed from its mission.
“He’s dead, Whitney. This picture was sent to me, we thought, undetected. Days later, the PI’s body was delivered to his wife.”