I swallowed uneasily, trying to decide on whether to wear defiance or pleading compliance on my face. It was a split-second decision and defiance won out.

It got me a smack across the face.

I took a few moments, my newly ringed hand on my cheek, trying to soothe the throbbing. I stared at Salvador in dumb shock. I knew that everything had been for show so far, I just had no idea it would turn to the truth so fast.

“You answer to me,” he repeated, his eyes growing thinner and hard as steel. “That means no talking back.”

I opened my mouth and he immediately backhanded me again, harder this time, enough that I saw lights flashing behind my eyes, my teeth biting down on my tongue as the back of my head hit the seat rest. I tried not to panic, tried my hardest to remain composed all while wanting to cry out from the pain. The fear was greater than I’d ever known.

After a moment, I straightened up in my seat, inching away from him. He only leered at me, as if the whole thing was one giant joke. Perhaps it was.

“When I say no talking back,” he said, running his fingers over his mustache, “I mean it, like I mean everything I say. We can have a nice, happy marriage if you learn to behave. I will still give you the world and you will want for nothing. But there are rules that you will have to follow. Nothing is free in this life, do you understand?”

I nodded, not daring to speak.

Suddenly he shot forward and was in my face, a vein throbbing at his temple. “I said, do you understand!?” he screamed, spittle flying onto me.

I shut my eyes tight, as if it would make him go away. I felt like the life was being drained out of me with every second that I spent in that limo, that this was the start of a slow and painful death. And I had willingly walked into it.

You’re doing this for your parents, I told myself, trying to draw myself inward to where it was dark, warm, and safe. Remember that. Remember whose happiness you are buying.

“Look at me,” Salvador said, his voice quiet now, though I could feel his hot breath on my skin. “You have to look at me when I’m talking to you. That is one of the rules.” He grabbed my chin and squeezed hard enough to make my eyes flutter open. I stared at him blankly, not wanting to really see him. My husband.

“The other rule,” he went on, softer now, “is that you will not talk back. You will also be loyal and you will not stray. You will not even look at other men. For your own protection, you will not be allowed to have any friends that I do not choose for you. You will not be able to leave the house on your own. You will always stay thin and beautiful, with a big smile for everyone you meet. And you will not deny me my rights as a husband.” He licked his lips as he said that. “Now. Do. You. Under. Stand?”

I did understand. The life of Luisa Chavez was really and truly over.

There was only Luisa Reyes now.

And she was about to live a life of pain.

* * *

Salvador took my virginity in the back of that limo, minutes before we even reached the beach house. It happened quickly, and for that I was glad. It didn’t lessen the pain—the horrible, ripping pain—but it meant I didn’t have to suffer the humiliation of my first time for too long.

He wasn’t kind, he wasn’t gentle, he wasn’t generous. If that’s what sex was, I wondered how anyone could enjoy it. He treated my body like a piece of meat, a slice of property. I had no claim to it, and that’s what he wanted to show me, again and again and again. I had no say, no rights. I was his, whether I wanted to be or not, and he would have me anytime he wanted. My own feelings and desires didn’t matter.

I didn’t want to the second time. I was sore, oh so sore, and trying to sleep in, afraid to face him and my first morning as his wife. But Salvador didn’t believe in the word no. It didn’t matter how many times I said it, if I struggled … in fact, he liked it when I did. He’d strip his bloated, ugly body naked and force himself on me and into me with a grin on his face that not even his mother could love.

If he even had a mother. I couldn’t imagine anyone ever raising him. When I tried to picture him as a young boy, I knew there would have been no innocence in his heart. He’d have been the one to put firecrackers in dogs’ mouths, to take the fights in the playground too far, to spit in his grandmother’s food. I tried to think about these things, trying to figure out how one becomes such a vile, hateful thing, while he violated me from the inside out.

It wasn’t enough that I was clearly in pain and vulnerable while this happened—if I struggled in the least, he would assert his dominance in other ways.

“Mrs. Reyes,” the housekeeper called out from the balcony behind me. I was sitting on the beach, the warm Pacific lapping at my feet and soaking the ends of my dress. I’d been sitting there for hours, and I knew she was calling me in for lunch. But I couldn’t eat even if I tried.

I ignored her and stared down at my arms, at the marks and bruises up and down them, ugly purples and yellows from the last few days, so bright in the daylight. For a split second there was so much terror filling up my chest like ice water that I thought about running straight into the ocean and trying to swim until I drowned.

But that would be nearly impossible. To the left of me, standing half-hidden in the palms, was one set of guards, watching the property and watching me. I couldn’t see who was to my right, further down the beach, but I did know that they wouldn’t let me drown.

They wouldn’t let me escape.

We’d been on our honeymoon for one week. I never once got the opportunity to speak to my parents on the phone. I never once got to leave the property, not even if I was escorted. Salvador was only around at night and in the mornings when he would systematically beat me and rape me. One time, he made me perform a lewd act on David, his second in command, and when I didn’t want to do it, he put a gun to my head. Part of me was tempted to keep refusing, just so he could pull the trigger, but I knew he never would. I’d only been his wife for a few days, and there was a lifetime of enjoyment still left for him.

“Mrs. Reyes,” the housekeeper repeated. “Lunch is served. Mr. Reyes would like to eat with you.”

So he was in the house today. Lucky me. It took all of my strength not to yell back at her and tell her that I was Luisa Chavez first and Luisa Reyes second, and that Salvador could go fuck himself. But now I was learning how to play the game. I got punished either way, but the safer I played it, the smaller the punishment I got. I’d learned not to talk back to Salvador after the limo ride, I’d learned not to refuse him the morning after, and I’d learned never to question him after what he made me do to David. I’d learned a lot in such a short time.

The reluctant education of the narco-wife.

I sighed and got to my feet, absently brushing the sand off my dress. My hair billowed around me like a dark scarf, caught in the cool breeze off the ocean. I closed my eyes and imagined, just for one moment, what it would be like not to live in fear. To actually feel happiness and love from a man. My heart practically shuddered from the realization that I’d never, ever have that for as long as Salvador Reyes lived.

As I walked back to the beach house with a heavy heart, I tried to think about my parents and how they were better off. I tried to think about how I was better off, not having to slave every day for someone like Bruno, how I’d never have to worry about how to make ends meet.

The fact was, I wasn’t better off at all, and neither were my parents. I’d take Bruno and his busy hands, the long hours on my feet, the fear of never being able to give my parents what they deserved—I’d take all of that and hang on to it tight if I could. If only I could have realized that what I had wasn’t so bad after all and if I could have gone back in time to take it back, I would. I gave everything I had away, just for a shot to have more.

Of course, there was the fact that I never really had a choice. That I could not have said no to Salvador. But as my mother said, we always have choices. And I was starting to think that in the grand scheme of things, perhaps I had made the wrong one.

The lesser of two evils was actually the greatest.

CHAPTER SIX

Javier


“So finally I meet the Javier Bernal.” The man sat down across from me, a cigarette bobbing out of his lazy mouth. I wasted no time in snapping it out of his lips and breaking it in half, tossing it to the ground beside us.

He stared at me, dumbfounded for only a second, which I appreciated. A man who can get over things quickly is a man you want on your side.

“No smoking,” I said, my eyes boring into his as I jerked my chin at the sign on the wall. The bar couldn’t give two shits if people smoked or not, the sign was only there for legal reasons. But that wasn’t the point. The man needed to know the score. I’d heard a lot about this Juanito, though there was no point in committing his name to memory. I only needed him for his intel, and the less I had to know, the better.

He nodded, that easy smile still there, if not faltering. That was good too. You needed to bounce back, but you also needed to stay afraid of the ones in charge.

He needed to stay afraid of me.

“Can I still drink?” he asked, raising his bottle of beer.

Ah, and he had a sense of humor. This made him easier to deal with, even like—too bad a sense of humor wouldn’t save him in the end. I’ve killed some of the funniest fuckers I’ve ever met. They had me laughing even with their heads on the ground.

“Of course,” I said to him and raised my glass of tequila. “To new beginnings.”

We drank as some ballad from a Mexican pop idol played in the background. This bar was one of the few bars in the area where I could go and relax and not have to worry about watered down booze or uncouth patrons. The owners were paid handsomely by me, as were all law officials in the town and the state of Durango. I had no fear of a rival cartel coming in and blowing my head off, and I had no fear of the Mexican Attorney General coming in and trying to take me away. As much as I hated to admit it, without siphoning Salvador Reyes’ Ephedra shipping lane and adding more routes for opium, cocaine, and marijuana, I really wasn’t the guy they were after. Naturally, with more power and influence came the danger of being public enemy number one. Right now, Salvador Reyes was the most wanted criminal and drug lord in the country. Not that the police or anyone were doing anything to stop him.

As for me, I had more to fear from rivals than from authorities. I wasn’t clean by any means—I couldn’t ever step foot in the United States again, for example. The last time I was there, I was arrested for drug trafficking. It was a minor mix-up, I wasn’t actually trafficking any drugs, just trying to trade a hostage to get ahead, but there was bloodshed and the feds got involved. Apparently they have nothing better to do up there than to worry about us Mexicans.

However, having enough money and knowing enough people who work for the DEA gets you a free ride in the states, so long as you promise to send them information on your enemies from time to time and swear to never set foot in the country again. And so that’s what I did. Paid the right people and made my promises, and I was free to go, three months later.

Those three months though (while Esteban was taking care of my affairs and the cartel I had taken from Travis Raines) had cost me a lot. I should have been on my home soil and expanding; instead I was behind bars. The prisons in America were nothing like the ones in Mexico. It could have been a vacation for some, though perhaps I was treated so well because my dollar went further in the cells. There is so much power and influence in money and drugs that it makes me wonder why anyone would bother going straight. To save face? No, that is ludicrous. Your face never looks better than when you’ve got a gun in your hand and money under your ass.

I suppose I should have been grateful that I was only in prison for such a short time and I walked away unharmed with only a new smoking habit to add to my regrets.

At that thought, I fished a cigarette from my slim gold case and placed it in my mouth.

Juanito frowned at me. “The rules…” he said feebly.