**Chapter 14: The Road of No Return (Part 1; Continuation)**
📍 Peru – Lima, Piura, Tumbes
🗓️ May 2000
Joseph's POV
When we crossed into Peru, we weren't the same people who stepped off that boat in Belém. The jungle had taken parts of us—memories, friends, pieces of our innocence—and now it was time to pay another price: our humanity.
Lola was exhausted. Her body had grown heavier with the baby. The second trimester was full upon her. She didn't complain much, but I could feel her pain in the way she walked, slow and cautious, like every step carried the weight of two lives.
Lima was our first stop—a city of beauty wrapped in a veil of chaos. The trafficker we met in Belém had promised us a "clean link" to Mexico. But nothing about our journey felt clean. Our handler in Lima went by the name El Zorro. He was greasy-haired, always checking over his shoulder, with teeth too white to be trusted. He told us one thing: "Keep your heads down. Speak only when spoken to. You're not tourists. You're ghosts."
We took a crammed bus from Lima to Piura. Days blurred. Dust and diesel filled our lungs. Lola slept with her head on my shoulder. I stayed awake with one hand on my knife and the other on her belly.
Then came Tumbes. The edge of Peru. The border town felt like a waiting room between realities—one where the only thing more dangerous than being seen… was being forgotten. We were smuggled out in the back of a fish truck, packed between crates and salt, our only cover a tarp that stank of ocean rot.
Lola gagged. I held her hair. Her face pale. "It's okay," I whispered. "Just a little longer." But even I didn't believe that anymore.
Crossing out of Peru felt like shedding another layer of our lives. With each country we passed, we left behind who we were—and stepped deeper into who we had to become just to survive.
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