Page 136 of Forbidden Fate

If she had been in my place, fifteen and grieving, with nowhere to go except a house full of women the world spat on, and a man like Vega opened a door, would she have stepped through?

What if every honest road looked closed and every criminal road came paved with protection?

Would she have done better?

Would anyone?

I’m sixteen now.

My clothes are better. My shoes fit. I eat meat more often than not. I have my own room in one of Vega’s houses, a small one near the back with white walls and a locked drawer in the desk. I’m being educated, not in the way Mamá wanted, but in the way Vega values.

I learn quickly.

Vega likes that.

“You have discipline,” he says one evening after I deliver a message to a man who turns pale before he even opens the envelope. “Discipline matters more than strength. Strength fades. Discipline becomes character.”

I want to feel proud.

Part of me does.

But another part of me—the part that still hears Mamá telling me all men are God’s children, even the broken ones—knows something is wrong.

I know what Vega does.

Not everything, of course. Not yet. But enough. Men disappear. Women cry behind closed doors. Money moves through hands. Drugs, guns, bribes, threats. Favors that aren’t really favors. Debts that can never be repaid because men like Vega prefer it that way.

At first, my duties are small.

Deliver this.

Watch him.

Stand outside that door.

Repeat exactly what you hear.

Tell no one.

Don’t ask questions.

But small duties become larger ones.

The line keeps moving.

After a year of this I’m restless. But what are my options?

Go back to the brothel? To Señora V? To the women who would take me in again but never stop looking at me with questions in their eyes?

Still, I think about it.

And I still believe some adults are safer than others. So I talk to Adriana. She’s the one who introduced me to this world. Maybe she can help.

I find her in her office late one afternoon.

Adriana sits behind a wide desk, reading a file. Her hair is pinned up, exposing the long line of her neck. She wears a black dress that fits her like a second skin. I can’t help but notice. I’m sixteen with a perpetual hard-on.

“Cruz,” she says. “You asked to see me?”