No Going Back

Content warning: Themes of coercion and criminal activity 

Katarina stared at the thick envelope sitting on her desk, her pulse quickening. The return address was from an anonymous sender, but the bold, red stamp across the front read Privado y Confidencial. She had almost ignored it, thinking it was another tedious legal document. But when she finally opened it, her hands began to tremble.

Inside was a single photograph of her daughters—Manu and Tina—taken at the park two blocks from their house just yesterday.

On the back of the photo, in precise, blocky handwriting, were the words: "Protect your family. Follow the instructions, abogada."

Also enclosed was a flash drive. Katarina fumbled with it, plugging it into her computer with shaking hands. Her screen lit up with scanned copies of property documents, bank transfers, and shell company records—the exact files she had uncovered while working for her high-profile client.

Then came a video file. Katarina hesitated, her instincts screaming to stop, to close the file and call the authorities. But the memory of her daughters' smiling faces forced her to click play.

A man appeared on the screen. His face was shadowed, but his voice was unmistakable.

“Señora Jiménez,” Juarez Suarez drawled, his tone calm and deadly. “You’ve been busy, abogada,” Juarez Suarez drawled, his tone calm and deadly. “I’ll make this simple: comply with nuestras instrucciones, o habrá consecuencias. Para Manu. Para Tina. Eres una mujer inteligente—I know you’ll make the right choice.”

Her hands clenched the edge of her desk as his voice faded. Her prestigious law office, once a symbol of her accomplishments, now felt like a cage.

That message changed everything.

The revelation had hit her two days ago during a meeting with Juarez Suarez himself. They were reviewing a set of documents in his sleek, glass-walled office when she noticed discrepancies in the property acquisitions. As she questioned the irregularities, Juarez leaned back in his leather chair, a smug smile on his face.

“Katarina, abogada, there’s no need to dig too deep,” he said, his tone dangerously smooth. “You’re paid to handle the paperwork, not ask questions.”

But she had dug deeper—later that evening, alone in her office, pouring over records. The shell companies, the irregular money transfers, the trail that led to hundreds of families being forced from their homes. Her prestigious client wasn't just a real estate developer. He was using construction projects to launder drug money, and now he expected her to help displace entire communities through fraudulent foreclosures.

She confronted him on the phone the next day, her voice steadier than she felt.

“Client-attorney privilege protects all our conversations,” Katarina insisted, her legal training kicking in despite her fear. “I would never—”

"Save it," Juarez cut her off. "Your ethics are touching, really. But Manu and Tina... such beautiful girls. The older one still takes ballet at the Cultural Center, no? And little Tina, always at the park near your house after school... It would be a shame if something happened while they were walking home."

Katarina's blood ran cold. That night, after the girls were asleep, she pulled out their passports—still valid, with American tourist visas from their Disney World trip last year. Her hands shook as she booked four one-way tickets to Atlanta. When Miguel came home from his engineering job, she explained everything. He didn't argue; he'd seen enough families torn apart by cartel violence in their Bogotá neighborhood. They'd built a good life here, but lives could be rebuilt. Lost children couldn't be replaced.

They told the girls they were going on an adventure. Manu, at twelve, seemed skeptical but excited. Eight-year-old Tina bounced around the house, packing her favorite stuffed animals. They left most of their belongings behind, taking only what they could carry in four suitcases. Katarina transferred their savings to an international account—the fruits of fifteen years of professional work, which had seemed like so much in pesos.

That "adventure" led them to Maria's house in Duluth, Georgia—a Colombian friend from college who'd married an American. They tried applying for political asylum—a special protection the United States offers to people fleeing persecution in their home countries—but their application was rejected because Katarina had no concrete evidence of Juarez's threats. Two weeks of hospitality was all Maria could offer without risking her own family's stability. The search for a rental property became a daily humiliation. Landlords demanded social security numbers, proof of income, credit histories—documents they couldn't provide. Each rejection carved away at Katarina's confidence, at the certainty that she'd made the right choice.

They finally found shelter sharing a cramped two-bedroom house with the Ramirez family in a working-class neighborhood. Six people, one bathroom, and dreams shrinking by the day. Their savings—impressive in Colombian pesos—dwindled rapidly against the dollar's harsh reality. The power dynamic with their housemates was awkward; the Ramirez family had been in Georgia for five years and knew the unwritten rules of undocumented life.

The girls' first day at the local public school felt like a punch to Katarina's gut. Manu, once vivacious and outgoing, came home silent, her eyes red. "They called me 'wetback' and said I'm probably a drug dealer's daughter," she whispered that night, her voice breaking. "This girl in my class told everyone not to talk to me because I probably climbed over some wall to get here." The fact that she was Colombian didn't matter to her classmates; in this part of Georgia, "Hispanic" was often a single, suspicious category. The teachers weren't openly hostile, but their indifference to the bullying spoke volumes.

Tina adapted differently, but her fear ran deeper. She obsessively practiced speaking without an accent, spending hours watching American TV shows and mimicking the voices. "Mom, please don't speak Spanish when you pick me up," she begged one day, her eyes darting nervously around the schoolyard. "Everyone knows we're different. I don't want to be different anymore." She started having nightmares, crying out in her sleep about being taken away, about men in uniforms finding them.

In Colombia, Katarina had been respected—a lawyer with her own office, a woman who'd earned her place in a male-dominated profession. Here, she was invisible, or worse, unwanted. The sideways glances at the grocery store, the muttered comments at the bank where she tried to open an account, the carefully neutral faces of other parents at school functions—all reminded her that she'd traded one form of danger for another.

Then came the call about the cleaning jobs. Night shifts at different times, so someone could always be home with the girls. Cash payments, no questions asked. The manager had connections to other undocumented workers and promised steady work if they proved reliable. The kind of work that would have been unthinkable in their old life, but now represented survival. Miguel's engineering degree and her law license meant nothing here; their futures had narrowed to the width of a mop handle.

Miguel held her that night as she sobbed, their daughters finally asleep in their corner of the bedroom. They'd divided the small room with hanging sheets, creating a makeshift space for the four of them—parents on one side, girls on the other. It wasn't ideal, but they needed to stay together. "We could go back," he whispered, not for the first time. "Maybe Juarez was just threatening us. Maybe..."

But Katarina remembered the cold precision in Juarez's voice, the detailed knowledge of their daily routines. She thought about the families whose homes would be stolen, about the drug money flowing through legitimate businesses, about the power of men who operated above the law. The Colombian authorities she'd worked with for years had proved helpless—or unwilling—to protect families who spoke out.

The cleaning company expected an answer by tomorrow. Their savings would last another month, maybe two. The girls had another day of school ahead, another day of navigating a world that seemed determined to remind them they didn't belong.

What should they choose? The uncertain danger of return, or the grinding certainty of a life in the shadows? Is there dignity in survival at any cost? Safety in surrender? When every choice feels wrong, how do you decide what's right?

Katarina stared at the ceiling, listening to the gentle breathing of her family in the darkness, waiting for an answer that wouldn't come.