Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 80139 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80139 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
I am definitely some people.
But maybe that’s my privilege talking.
Maybe I’m sitting here in borrowed silk, drinking coffee I didn’t pay for, judging a woman who found a way to take control of the only asset the world was willing to recognize.
What the hell do I know?
“I’ve enjoyed the work,” Esmeralda says. “Not every night. Not every man. But enough. I like being desired. I like choosing. I like money. I like this house. And I’m grateful to Señora because she gave me the chance to decide.”
That last word settles over the table.
Decide.
I understand that.
More than I expected to.
Last night, I decided things about my body I never decided before. Things that would look strange from the outside. Maybe even alarming. Things another woman might not understand if she heard them over coffee.
But they were mine.
My choices.
Messy, complicated, possibly reckless, and definitely confusing choices.
But still mine.
Who am I to sit here and decide whether Mercedes or Esmeralda survived correctly?
Who am I to be weirded out by women doing what they had to do when I’ve done the same?
In Romania, I did what I had to for survival.
Different circumstances.
Different scale.
Same ugly truth underneath.
I used what men wanted from me because it was the only tool I had.
These women have done the same. At least they’ve turned it into something positive.
“I get it,” I say quietly.
Cruz turns his head toward me.
I don’t look at him.
Mercedes studies me across the table. “Do you?”
“I think so.”
Esmeralda smiles a little. “Most women do, sooner or later.”
28
CRUZ
For the first time since Robin and I escaped, I breathe.
Really breathe.
Not the kind of breath a man takes when he’s counting exits. Not the shallow drag of air that comes while listening for footsteps outside a locked door or calculating how many seconds it’ll take to get a gun out from under a jacket.
This is different.
This is warm.
The room smells like cinnamon, beans, old wood, and perfume that has soaked into the walls over years and years of women passing through it. Not expensive perfume. Not the sharp kind Adriana wears.
This is softer.
Powder. Soap. Vanilla. Roses past their bloom.
Home.
Esmeralda keeps smiling into her coffee as if she knows something I don’t. Mercedes is chatting with Robin. Señora V sits at the head of the table like the queen of a very strange monarchy, her dark eyes moving from face to face, missing nothing.
I sit here with these four women.
One who raised me when my mother couldn’t. Two who remind me of those who fussed over me and slipped me sweets when Señora wasn’t looking. And one who has been under my skin from the second I saw her in Adriana’s house in Texas.
Robin.
She’s bewitched me.
I don’t like that word. It sounds ridiculous. Weak. Like something a boy would say about a woman he has no business wanting.
But it’s the only word that fits.
I noticed her before I meant to. I wanted to hear her voice before I should have cared if she spoke. I wanted to know what she was thinking, even when it was probably how to claw my eyes out and run.
Now she sits next to me, her skin still too pale, her eyes still too sharp. The robe is too big on her. It slips off one shoulder every few minutes, and every time it does, she jerks it back into place.
She doesn’t belong here.
But somehow, at this table, she fits.
Not because this place is safe. It’s safer than Vega’s world, but safety is always temporary. Especially here. He knows this is the first place I’ll go, which means we need to move quickly.
Robin knows it too. She watches the windows when she thinks no one notices. And she still looks at me with distrust.
I don’t blame her.
I wouldn’t trust me either.
I take a sip of coffee, and the warmth spreads through my chest.
Only then do I realize how cold I’ve been.
Not from the night. Not from the drive. Not from the fear of getting caught with Vega’s prisoner.
Before that.
Long before that.
I’ve been on edge from the moment I entered Vega’s employ. I just didn’t know it. It became the air I breathed. The way I learned never to enjoy any moment because the next one might require violence. Vega’s world put monsters in tailored suits and taught boys like me that loyalty was all that mattered.
I thought I was used to it.
I thought the constant tension was just part of life.
But sitting here, listening to Mercedes and Esmeralda tell Robin their stories, I remember a different life.
A life full of women who knew how to laugh even when their bodies were used up.
Prostitutes aren’t respected. I learned long ago that people—even the men who came to the brothel—spit the word out with contempt.
My mother never said it that way.
“Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus’s most loyal followers,” she told me once. “Do you know that, mi corazón?”