“It was very difficult to get out of that situation because she holds your money,” Sol told the BBC.
“It was terrifying. I thought something could happen to me because she had all my information, my passport, my driver’s license.”
But Sol says she realized she had to escape somehow after overhearing a phone call in which Torres told another client she had to work as a prostitute in Brazil as “punishment.”
Sol was able to leave thanks to the help of an ex-boyfriend.
Meanwhile, the guns Torres’ husband kept began appearing regularly in his Instagram stories and became a source of fear for the remaining women.
At that time, Desirrê says Torres tried to convince her to leave the strip club to work as a prostitute. She refused, and the next day, Torres took her for a surprise day at a shooting range.
Frightened, Desirrê says she finally gave in to Torres’ demand.
“Many questions haunted me: ‘Could I stop whenever I wanted?’” Desirrê writes in her book.
“What if the condom breaks, will I get a disease?” [the client] “He could be an undercover cop and arrest me? What if he kills me?”
If the women did not meet the income quotas set by Torres, which had been increased from $1,000 (£782) to $3,000 (£2,345) a day, they were not allowed to return home that night, they say.
“I ended up sleeping on the street several times because I couldn’t get to it,” Desirrê adds.
Bank records seen by the BBC show that Desirrê transferred more than $21,000 (£16,417) into Torres’ account in June and July 2022 alone. She claims she was forced to pay a much larger sum in cash.
Prostitution is illegal in Texas, and Desirrê says Torres would threaten to report her to the police if she ever talked about wanting to stop.
In September, Desirrê and Letícia’s friends and family in Brazil launched social media campaigns to find them, growing increasingly concerned after months of no contact.
At that point, they were barely recognizable. Their brown hair had been dyed platinum blonde to look suspiciously like Torres’s. Desirrê says that at that point, all her phone contacts had been blocked and she was obeying the influencer’s orders without question.
As the Instagram page @searchingDesirrê gained momentum, the story made headlines in Brazilian media. Desirrê’s friends even feared she had been murdered, and Letícia’s family made desperate pleas for her to be allowed to return home safely.
Ana, who lived with Torres in 2019, said alarm bells rang as soon as she saw the reports. She says she immediately guessed that “[Torres] “babysitting other girls.”