I tried my hardest not to breathe while the bad men were listening for me, but I was never as good at holding my breath as Carlos. He could hold his breath for more than a minute, and I always needed to breathe after only 30 seconds. I was so scared of the men that I held my breath longer than I had ever before. I probably did it for more than a minute. I felt like I was going to fall over, but I couldn't; I was stuck in the hiding spot. I could feel my blood pumping faster and faster in my body. My face and neck started tingling like little tiny ants were crawling all over them.

  Then everything started hurting really bad. Carlos told me that if something hurts, it is bad for your body, but I thought that this was not as bad as if the men found me, so I kept holding my breath. My nose, and mouth, my throat, and my chest started trying to move on their own, like my body was not listening to me anymore. After what seemed like hours, my body won, and I was forced to let out a wheezing little breath.

  The man who had told everyone to be quiet came running into the kitchen and shouted to the rest of the bad men.

  “They're in the kitchen somewhere. I just heard one of them whimpering in the walls. Get over here, we are going to dig them out wherever they might be.”

  After he shouted for everyone to come over, there were a lot of big boots clomping their way to our small kitchen. I did not know what to do. They were coming from me. All I hoped was that if they found me, they would leave Carlos alone.

  I was watching as a bunch of feet moved back and forth in front of my grate. I wasn't sure how many there were, because they were all tangled together. It seemed like there were lots, though. They were all searching so close to me, I just knew they were going to find me in my hole. I did not want them to find me, but they were getting closer and closer. There was a big bang above me, and the dust from the walls was falling on me. They kept shouting, “If we make enough holes in the walls, we will find them eventually. Make sure you are careful, we don’t want to kill the twat goblins, before we get what we want from them.”

  What if they kept breaking the house so much that the whole thing fell on top of me, like when I was building a tower of blocks, and Carlos took one of the blocks out from the bottom of the tower, and the whole thing fell down. Some of the dust went into my nose, and I could not help but sneeze. The banging stopped right away, and a second later, the grate was ripped away. I could see an ugly face looking down at me from the kitchen. They had a big, scary smile on their face, and I could see most of their teeth were yellow except for one on the top and one on the bottom that were gold. Their eyes looked hungry like some of the meanest dogs on the street.

  “Well, hello there, little fuck, I was looking for you. Why didn’t you come when I was looking for you? No worries, you will learn to do what I tell you soon enough.”

  He was looking at me like I was tasty food. I did not like being food. I did not want to ever listen to what this scary man told me to do. I knew that whatever this man told me to do would be wrong. Grandma always said that if you want to be a good person, you have to do good deeds like help aunties when they need help, or share your toys even if they are the funest ones to play with. I knew that this man never did a good thing in his life. He was going to try to make me do bad things, too.

  I tried to get deeper in my hole so that he could not reach me, but he just reached down and grabbed my wrist and started pulling on me. He was pulling so hard I felt myself getting lifted out of the hole. I wanted to make myself big so that I would get stuck and he could not get me out. He just kept pulling harder and harder. It really hurt a bunch, and I started screaming and crying because he was hurting me. Then there was a pop in my shoulder, and the worst pain ever came from my shoulder. I burned my hand once on a hot pan when I was trying to see what Grandma was cooking, and that pain seemed so bad. This felt like there were a hundred hot pans in my shoulder at once.

  I stopped being big; I just wanted the pain to stop. He kept pulling on my arm, and it hurt so much each time; I just wanted it to stop. The bad man wanted me to come out of the hole, so I started coming out of my hole. I did not get out quickly enough for him, though, so he yanked on my arm again, pulling me all the way out. I could not pay attention to the other things around me because my arm hurt so much, and he would not let go. I got out of the hole like he wanted, but he would still not let go of my arm.

  I started screaming “LET ME GO” over and over again, but that bad man just laughed.

  “Looks like this fucking runt has some lungs on them. We might want to take care of that before it becomes a problem later.”

  He had his back turned towards the cabinet that I knew Carlos hid in, so he did not notice when my big brother came running out with a big knife, shouting. “Let go of my brother.”

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  Carlos’ knife stabbed right into his arm that was holding me, and he finally let me go. He did not let go of me because he was hurt or afraid, like I was. No, what he did next was the scariest thing. He lifted his arm up and looked at it with the knife sticking all the way throught it like it was an interesting bug.

  Carlos was just as surprised as I was when the knife did not cause him to shout in pain. He fell on his butt right next to where I was lying on the ground. The scary man started laughing, as blood dripped down his arm.

  “HAHAHAh, Now someone with fight in them like this one can be used. Hey, idiots, what are you waiting for? Get them both in the van. We already have everything we came for.”

  Carlos had scooted over to me and was looking at my hurt arm. I could not move it, and every time I tried, it hurt so much. It was just flopping to my side.

  He tried to hug me before one of the other men grabbed us both and hauled us out the door. I could barely see the house as we both got dragged over to a car that was parked in the middle of the street in front of our home. I just wanted to see it clearly one last time before we were taken away, but my tears would not stop, and then the door of the van slid shut, and all I could see was the dark van and the man holding both Carlos and me.

  I was still crying when the van started driving away from our house. I wanted my Mama, and I was screaming for her and Grandma, but they were not here. The man did not like my crying, though.

  “Shut up, kid. Stop making a racket, or I will make you stop.” I keep calling for Mama. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be hurting. I knew she could fix everything; she would always fix everything in the past. The man did not like me crying, so he took out some gray tape and tried to wrap it around my head. My big brother was there with me, though, and he always protected me.

  Right when he was about to put the tape on me, my brother jumped on his back and started hitting him over and over again on the head. My brother was strong and brave, but he was not as strong and as big as this man. My brother tried his best to win, but after my brother had hit him a few times, the man got hold of Carlos’ arm and flung him into the metal side of the van.

  I tried to grab the man's foot to help, but my arm wouldn't work, so I just yelled in pain because it hurt so much to try to move my arm. While I could do nothing to help my brother, the big man punched him really, really hard more than once, and Carlos curled up into a ball. I had only heard him cry a few times, but when the big man was punching him, I heard my big brother start crying just like me.

  After that, the big man taped both of our mouths shut with the tape and then taped our arms together behind our backs. This hurt me so much, but I could barely make any sounds anymore.

  The van had been driving the whole time, and once neither Carlso nor I could move. We could only slide back and forth on the floor of the van as we drove fast down the street. The big man who had hurt Carlos then taped us up, left us in the back of the van, and moved to the front seat.

  I could hear him talking in the front seat with the driver. I did not understand everything, and it was hard to concentrate when, with every turn, I slid into either the wall or Carlos, making my arm hurt every time.

  “I don’t know, Andre, maybe the old hag was right. We have never done something this blatant before. Domingo even murdered her in her own home.”

  “Fuck Pedro, you can’t start having doubts now. You saw the news just like the rest of us. The infinity system is going to change everything. Either we find the cash to get some of our people loaded with it, or we will be nothing. I did not join on with Domingo to be nothing.”

  “I know, but if we get too much heat on us, how are we going to live the good life?”

  “You know why we started hitting the targets that were off limits before. We have a new boss, and he is going to bring us all the way to the top. Those old, stupid rules of never touching the family of dead Falcons members don’t matter to us anymore. Domingo saw the Infinity System for what it was, then he helped us understand. Who is going to stop us when we are all stronger than bodybuilders, more intelligent than geniuses, and more skilled than James Bond?”

  “I guess you are right, it just seems like we are going to become babysitters instead of badasses. We are probably going to be hiring people who do the boring work, and we original members of the Falcons are going to be living it large.”

  I did not know what they were talking about, but I decided to remember it as I did with some of the things Grandma would say that sounded important. I might not know what it means now, but I would learn. They were not done talking.

  “Has the boss already told Miss Sexy we have her kids?”

  “Yeah, she is coming with cash to the pier at 5 am. It is like she deserves what is coming; The Stupid Bitch is stupid enough to think we would trade hostages for 20 thousand.”

  “She might be stupid, but she is the hottest piece of ass in this town. Do you think the boss will let us have a go before he sends her off to get acquainted with his mysterious contact?”

  “No, he is not taking any risks with Maria; she is our ticket to our first Infinity System. He wants to get it installed in him before the end of the year.”

  “Fuck, it is not like anyone would notice. The fuckwads behind me are proof she is not a virgin. Whatever, I will have all the women I could want in no time.”

  It sounded like Mama was in trouble from these bad men. I wanted to be strong so I could help her, but I did not know how.