Chapter 26

A/N: allusions to rape/assault, homophobic slurs

Another obnoxiously long chapter … I cut it where I thought was a good place (but there really didn't seem to be a good place. These characters … this is the eleventh chapter of a part of the story I expected would only take two. Apparently, I (? yeah, pretty sure I'm no longer in control of this story) decided to write a story within a story. Thanks to those of you who are still with me)

bold italics means they're talking in Spanish.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"Once again, things were going well. I should have been ready for the next blow but … I wasn't."

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"I had started going home only to sleep. I would go to school, stay at the school library until they kicked me out, then go to the public library until it closed at ten. After that, I drove around until midnight; that's when I knew they'd all be in bed.

I stopped eating simply because I wasn't home. I didn't want to eat fast food; my stomach … sometimes it was fine with it, sometimes it wasn't. I didn't want to need a bathroom and not be able to get one. I ate lunch at school, I had bars for breakfast; protein, cereal, granola – I kept a variety in my room and grabbed one or two for breakfast.

"Quinn noticed I had started to lose weight and asked me what was going on. Then gave me hell for not letting her know that I wasn't going home. After that, I would go Quinn's after school until just after eleven. So I had dinner and a small snack there."

Santana shook her head.

"It was late February? Early March, maybe … staff development day so we got let out early. Quinn had plans with Bobby so I went back to the house. I figured everyone would be gone and I could use the gym."

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Santana stopped at the top of the basement stairs when she heard loud voices. Julio and Carmela were arguing in the living room and Santana would have to go right past them to get upstairs. Dammit.

"What do you want me to do, Mama?" Julio's voice was rough and sounded frustrated. "I have done everything you told me to do and none of it has worked. She survived the camp and came back with even more attitude. Kyle …" he growled the name. "If Teresa hadn't coddled her, had taught her her proper place …"

"There is nothing to be done about the past, Julio! We need to think of now. There are only four months until her eighteenth birthday. She needs to be under control before then! Call this number. Hire the man to kidnap her and keep her until she's pregnant. Understand?"

"You think that will work?" Julio scoffed, "she'll simply get rid of it. What if we just have her eliminated?"

"He will hold her until it is too late to do so. She will have no choice but to come here and stay. Have the child. Then you have all the leverage you need and the money will be ours. If she wants to leave after the child is born and agrees to leave the child here? Even better.

"You can't have her eliminated; the money in both funds would revert to Teresa. Carlos was sweet and trusting, but smart. And Diego hated you."

Santana was frozen to the spot until she heard them moving; she slipped back down the stairs and hid herself in the storage closet of the gym. She waited there until she was sure they'd gone to bed before silently going upstairs and into her room; her mind furiously working out a plan to avoid the fate they were planning for her.

Xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"It was about money. They made my life hell for a trust fund I didn't know existed. The one I knew about was from my abuelito; my mother's father. He'd never liked my father but my mother fell for him and his charms. He set up the fund in such a way that no one could access it until I turned twenty-one unless I went to college; then I could access it when I turned eighteen but no one else could touch it for any reason.

"My abuelo, my father's father, was a sweet man. How he was married to that harpy and raised that … bastard is beyond me. He died when I was younger but, apparently, he had set up a fund for me. He was so trusting, naive even. He left Julio and Carmela in control of it; with me to gain control when I turned eighteen. Julio and Carmela had been using it as their own personal ATM. Not because they needed the money; my abuelo had left them both very well off. No. They did it simply to deprive me of it. I wasn't a boy. I couldn't carry on the Lopez family name; couldn't be molded into a younger version of my father."

Brittany felt dampness seeping through her shirt. She pulled Santana in tighter to her, holding her close, stroking her hair and back.

Santana cleared her throat. "I … uh … was afraid again. Afraid to be left alone, anywhere but behind my locked bedroom door. I took a chance, a big one, and told my mother what I'd heard. I don't think I've ever seen her so angry; she hadn't known about the fund either. She made sure she was awake when I left and when I got home so Julio and Carmela couldn't let someone in to grab me. If I needed to go to the mall, she went with me and Quinn. I told Quinn, of course, and she didn't let me drive to school anymore. She picked me up every day and brought me home every night.

"I took another big chance; I talked to some of the Glee Club members. Mercedes and Kurt; I didn't tell them everything, just enough to let them know I wasn't safe. They quietly recruited some of the Glee members; Kurt's boyfriend, Blaine. Tina. Artie. They set up a system to keep an eye on me without anyone knowing. Mercedes talked to her boyfriend, Shane; he was on the football team. Quinn talked to Bobby. The football team started shadowing me, making sure Quinn and I got to and from the parking lot safely. Bobby followed us home every night to make sure there wasn't an "accident".

"It was the closest thing I had to friends, ever. These people who barely knew me took it upon themselves to keep me safe. To make sure nothing else happened to me. One of the football player's girlfriend asked him … they were outside the locker room and I overheard them talking … why everyone seemed to be following me. He told her that they'd all decided I'd been through enough shit and part of that was because the football team didn't stop Jacob so they figured they owed it to me to make sure I finished up my senior year with as little drama as possible.

"I had no idea that had been going on. I thought it was just Shane and Bobby. The whole football team had banded together. I don't know what Bobby and Shane told them but … god, Britt … I was so grateful. They managed to keep me safe for the rest of the year.

"The stupid thing? If they'd treated me well, I'd have given them the money. They had access until I was eighteen. If they'd treated me like a daughter and a granddaughter? I'd have signed it over to them if they'd asked."

Brittany kissed the top of Santana's head as the Latina fell silent.

"Did you ever send the information packets out?" Brittany asked quietly.

"I sent one – kind of as a warning – to his hospital administrator. That seemed to work. Julio was a lot more … careful around me. I just … I couldn't just ruin him. I wanted to but, I figured out that Quinn was right; if I did that, it was me giving up on having a relationship with my father."

"I get it. Same shit with my mother. We keep hoping … despite all evidence … that the next thing we do or try will be the thing that makes them care; makes them love us."

"Yeah. We still have all the packets. I didn't get rid of them; they're in the closet at the apartment. Insurance, I guess. Although, I doubt I'll go back to Lima for any reason now so he won't have a chance to do anything to hurt me again. Plus, I'm eighteen so it's all mine anyway."

They fell silent again.

"So, you're worried that … because things are going really well, something bad's about to happen?" Brittany's voice was soft.

"Yeah. I mean. It just seems like every time something good happens, I end up worse than I was. I mean," she sighed, "if it hadn't been for the Glee Club and the football team stepping in, who knows what could have happened."

"This is going to sound … I don't know how it's going to sound … but you seemed to be doing a lot better when I snapped that picture last year than you were when I met you this year."

Santana sighed and reached over to the nightstand to grab the bottle of water. She sat up and drank some of it, leaning her back against the headboard. Brittany shifted until she was sitting up, facing Santana.

Santana looked at her.

"You know … I graduated at the top of my class; 4.0 GPA, valedictorian. I had scholarship offers from a few schools. On my eighteenth birthday, I got a visit from two different lawyers letting me know about the trust funds. I swore Julio was going to pop a blood vessel when the lawyer pointed out that the one my abuelo had set up had been "accessed" quite a bit; the lawyer assumed that it had been for my benefit. I just looked at Julio and shook my head. The fund was still pretty substantial and, honestly, I didn't want to get into a big litigation over it. It would have meant time and money and I just didn't have the energy for a fight that would probably cost more than it would recoup. After the lawyer left, I looked at him and just told him he was pathetic; letting his mother control him like that, treating his daughter like he did. I told him I hoped his thirty pieces of silver was worth it before I walked away. There was really very little else he could do to me.

"But the damage was done; I was still so closed off. Quinn made me promise that, when we got to school, that I would give it an honest chance. That I would look at it as a clean slate; these people didn't know me, didn't know my past, and wouldn't care about my sexuality. Away from my father and abuela … I could be me.

"My mother spent the summer getting me everything I needed for school; we became pretty close during our shopping excursions and she told me the same thing. To give myself a fair chance at having actual friends and a normal life away from those people."

Santana paused and drank some more water, swiped away a few errant tears. "God, I'm tired of crying." She let out a wet chuckle.

Brittany smiled. "I bet and I can't say I blame you. You know, though, not everyone you trusted betrayed you. Don't get me wrong, I'm not downplaying the hell you've survived. Your father and grandmother are unbelievable and they probably, most likely, colored your view of everything else."

Brittany stopped for a minute, thinking about how to phrase what she was thinking. Santana waited, she was tense and that wasn't what Brittany had intended.

"Okay. So, you could trust Quinn." Santana nodded at that statement. "Then … when shit got really bad … you trusted Mercedes and Kurt, right?" Santana nodded again. "And, while you, personally, didn't let them know what was going on and they probably only had a vague notion of 'Santana's in trouble' … Blaine, Bobby, Shane, Tina, Artie, and the football team all banded together to keep you safe. Any one of them could have betrayed you; but … they didn't."

Santana's posture relaxed slightly as she thought about this.

"Yeah. You're right."

"And, yes, things are going well … but … didn't the shoe drop when your mother told you that you couldn't come home?"

Santana grinned. "I guess you could look at it that way, yeah."

"So … what happened when you got here?"