It didn’t take her long to figure out that while this was not home, life was good. She missed her parents terribly. Letting Daro see that might be a mistake. She was determined to avoid making that mistake. For the other young girls who were housed in the shed, Pip surmised that they were the currency of this place.  She knew she’d had a narrow escape of sorts that reinforced her belief in herself. Confidence begets confidence. Beautiful young girls between the ages of 12 to 16 came and went, but never without spending a night, or many nights, in the master bedroom with Daro. She became accustomed to his sex parties but never as a participant. Her experience with her captors back in Trinidad had been all the education she needed to understand what the girls who passed through the doors of this house were for. She didn’t know where they went afterwards and didn’t really want to know.

In the kitchen, it turned out Quinn was not only too short to handle anything hot from a stove, but the standard counter height required her to stand on something. A short butcher’s block was found, and before long, it was she who was prepping the chickens, the fish and the salads. 

But being so short meant she had free time. Esmerelda was not one to see time wasted. She started downloading normal school subjects as well as nutritional information about the vegetables they were using on a laptop so that the little girl would at least be able to read and write and learn the value of the food she prepared. The Spanish self-help books were good to a point, but were short of hard nutritional information, other than in the broadest terms, so suitable for a child. 

Esmeralda was constantly looking for plants that could be used for medicinal purposes that grew locally, if possible. As head cook, she couldn’t get out to look for herself, but over time, she fixed it so that Pip could be her eyes, hands and scribe. Everything was documented in Pip's childish hand. Esmerelda knew the local growers and their crops. Each of these growers had secret recipes that had been handed down through generations all the way from the Incas and even the Mayans and Aztecs from further north. They came to enjoy sharing information with Pip. In time she shared what she learned from other staff as well.

Esmeralda had a brilliant mind that was always searching for the next solution, recipe or treatment. She’d amassed a plant-based living pharmacopeia that would rival or outpace most of the best hospitals in the world. In recent years, her interests had come to include antivenins. Poisonous snakes are a serious threat in Colombia. In remote areas, a snake bite is usually fatal. Snakes were a threat to his people. To help with this, El Heledaro took this situation seriously enough that he brought in Miguel, a snake handler. 

Snakebites were a constant hindrance to production, affecting not only the person bitten but the morale of everyone around the stricken individual. To make matters worse, the snakes that escaped not only lived another day but maybe killed an important member of his staff. Esmerelda, with her snake potions then, was achieving status locally without doing anything illegal. Her efforts generated new money that brought inter-cartel cooperation to a new level.

With Esmerelda’s evolving status, she earned more autonomy than that allowed anyone else but El Capo himself. It did her little good, though, since she had hardly any time to spare from the kitchen. As a consequence, little Pip became a welcome resource to be exploited and developed.

For her part, Pip was more than happy to learn all she could. As she became confident with schoolwork and food, the snakes became a source of fascination. Soon, she was feeding and cleaning the smaller ones. At no time did she lose sight of the fact that she was a captive. She knew that she had been sold to the man in whose house she lived. That fact seemed inconsequential until the day she was branded. 

She was playing with the dogs. The property was guarded by six Belgian Malnois, dogs that looked like German Shepherds but were slimmer and more suitable for warmer climates and climates that varied widely. Columbia is an equatorial country, but much of it is mountainous, and at higher elevations, it is often chilly. The six dogs accepted Pip immediately. They followed her everywhere when not deployed elsewhere on the property. Pedro knew he had to pick his moment to separate her from the dogs if she was playing with them. There was no way to tell the dogs she was just property and not part of the family or staff. The dogs seemed to sense the difference between Pip and the other trafficked girls. They were guarded by the dogs as captives. Pip was never that to them. For her part, she treated them as people and saw to their needs in ways others didn’t think about. Pedro could tell that in a pinch, the dogs would protect her first, not him, so he was not about to take chances by handling the girl roughly in their presence or at all for that matter. Besides, he was coming to love the cheery little girl too.

Heledaro himself was caught by surprise when she walked up to Chimo one day, stuck her finger in one of his ears and pulled out the detritus that characterizes ear mite infestations. He asked what she thought she was doing. “Your job,” she told him, “Your dogs have mites and need to be cleaned. See this?” she held her finger up under his nose, “This is what mites make in a dog’s head. It itches and hurts. That’s why Chimo, Mina, and Drum are shaking their heads. If it’s not fixed, all of the dogs will be sick. They’re your dogs. You should know that.”

"Well, bless my cotton socks! I didn’t know that! Where did the mites come from?”

“Other dogs or cats, maybe.”

“What’s that you’ve got in your other hand?”

“Sunflower seed oil. That’s what I used to treat my dog at home. It’s easy. Even a kid can do it.”

“If you say so. I’ll tell you what, that’s one of your jobs here too. Check the dogs. Make sure they stay healthy.”

From that day, Pip was always in the company of at least one of the dogs. She was soon feeding them, too. Heledaro knew this was dangerous, integrating the little girl more tightly into his little community. He had never considered her as merchandise but her bond with his dogs meant something. He knew he was growing too fond of her in a way he never did with the sex toys he bought and sold. Still, she was on his books as a salable asset and as such, had to be identified as his property. When the next round of branding came up, Heledaro ordered Pedro to make sure the first girl done in the next round was Pip. He knew there would be screaming and he didn’t want her hearing it and suffering anticipation before she was branded. 

Consequently, when Pedro took her to the branding shed, she had no idea what was about to happen. She had been given a sedative earlier to numb the pain, but when two burly men in the forge grabbed her and stretched her out on the shop table, she fought and squirmed and yelled without even knowing why. The dogs came running, but they were too late; the doors were closed. Her top was pulled off, and a hand pushed her on her back down on the steel, shop-soiled table. The white-hot brand she’d seen in the forge as she entered sizzled into her flesh at the top of the left side of her chest below the collarbone. 

An ear-piercing shriek rang out that everyone in the hacienda recognized. It went on for a few minutes, then silence. Then another scream erupted. More of a bellow this time, followed by a stream of colourful foul language.

Pip came flying out of the shed with the hombre who had branded her in hot pursuit. It could be seen that his pants had a smoking hole just to the left of his zipper…

Later, she recalled the interminable sting of the tattoo she wore right after it had been done. The brand was a mind-blotting experience. Upset, she asked Pedro why she’d been branded. She was told everyone was, not just her.

“It’s for your own protection,” Pedro told her. No one will mess with you once they see that.”

“Why not?”

“We are a powerful family, Pip. Everyone knows that brand and who owns the brand. It’s all about respect. Count yourself lucky.” 

“Well, my chest hurts. Who’s going to see my chest anyway?”

“Only the people who would want to interfere with a lovely, young señorita who should be left alone if they know what’s good for them. The people the message is intended to protect you from will know. If they don’t, they will pay a heavy price with their lives. Your chest will be fine in a couple of weeks, yet you will have protection and prestige for the rest of your life.”

“You think so? How come then, that all the other girls, the whores, have the exact same brand that I do? Am I Heledaro’s whore too?”

“Yes, you are. You’re different, though. You’re more. You don’t have a price tag. I think the boss has plans for you. No other girl has ever been set aside and trained as you have been. Don’t tell him I said so, though. What you don’t know is that the other girls get two brands, not one, and theirs is on the back of their necks, not on the front where it’s noticeable.”

“What do you mean?”

“The brand you received is a statement of possession. The second brand is a statement of financial value. It’s a price tag as I said, in other words. A bar code. You’ve seen bar codes?” She nodded.  “The fact that you didn’t have a bar code burned into you as well is a sign that the old man has plans for you that don’t include shipping you anywhere else. He must consider you priceless.

“How come?”

“The boss is a funny man who can be unpredictable. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Where do the other whores go? They don’t stay long, then they’re gone.”

“The boss sells them.”

“He sells them? Like selling a chair?”

“Something like that but very complicated, but the bar codes are part of it. Some people have designs tattooed on for a fashion statement. Ours is no fashion statement. Ours are the real thing. They cannot be removed. They aren’t about body decor, they are about financial value. People pay lots of dollars to keep this place running.”

“What if he sells me, Pedro? I’ve already been kidnapped once. I don’t want that to happen to me again.”

“He’s not going to sell you, Pip. I already told you, you are special.”

Why am I special?”

“Why don’t you ask him? I don’t know how his mind works."