Page 26 of Deceptive Vows

I give him my arm to take blood and spread my legs when he first checks I’m a virgin. He then takes samples to check me for diseases. I’m sure one is likely to confirm the other, but what do I know?

He’s probably just doing as he’s told, too. Or maybe this is part of my humiliation.

The whole thing takes a little over an hour, and when he’s done, he barely says two words to me before he leaves, and I’m summoned to lunch in the dining room.

After that ordeal, I don’t feel like eating, but I eat because I haven’t since yesterday at breakfast. At least the maid who serves me the food seems more human, but she doesn’t talk to me, and when she leaves and heads back to the kitchen, I hear her talking to the others in Russian. I don’t know if she didn’t talk to me because she was told not to, or if it’s because she doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Russian.

She served me a delicious-looking chicken casserole with boiled rice and a side of blanched vegetables. The meal smells and tastes as divine as it looks when I tuck in to eat.

It’s definitely better than anything I’ve eaten in the last five years. Raul’s servants like me were given the same thing he fed to the dogs—scraps.

It’s been nine years since I had anything close to a home-cooked meal like this. That was before Raul took my family.

It was the eve of my tenth birthday when his men stormed our house. They came at night and dragged us out kicking and screaming. Black bags were placed over our heads, and we were taken.

That was when my mother and I knew Papa lost his job in the city and he’d not only been drug muling for Raul, but he owed him money. A lot of money.

I was never told how much, but I don’t think the amount mattered. Even if it was ten Pesos, Raul would have still taken us.

We went to live on the plantation like the other men who worked the opium fields.

I was allowed to finish high school, but that was as far as my education went, and my dreams for my future in medicine. I wanted to be a doctor like my mother was. That’s what led her to Mexico and how she met my father. She was a diagnostician. She came to work in a research center in Cancun. I wanted to go down the same route, and if my life were different, that’s what I’d do. I know that’s nothing but a dream now, and I should force it out of my mind.

My mother was forced to give up her dream to work in the fields, and my father trafficked drugs and people for Raul. All for free. They worked to pay Raul back.

They worked night and day to pay back a debt that would never be paid.

Then, to add salt to the wounds, Raul always had his eyes on my mother. He just never did anything until his wife was killed by his enemies.

That happened two years ago.

Days after he buried his wife, he started making sexual advances on my mother, which she refused. His final attempt was what did it, though. It was like he’d had enough of her refusal. She managed to escape him and came home with her clothes ripped up and bruises all over her face. She begged my father to take us away. Before he could think of an answer, Raul came with Felipe and his guards.

Papa tried to save her, but Raul threatened my life if he intervened. They held a gun to my head and made him kneel execution style so he could watch Raul rape my mother then kill her.

We both watched helplessly.

My world ended that night and I’ll never forget it. Even when my father was killed, I didn’t experience the same devastation. Not because I loved him any less than my mother. It was just that Mom’s death broke me.

It was at that moment when I realized nothing was stable and nothing was in my control.

I was already in hell, and I expected bad things to happen. After Mom died, Papa vowed to get me out because he knew it was only a matter of time before I suffered the same fate. That vow is what killed him.

Something catches my eye through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows.

When I lift my head, I watch as wisps of snowflakes fall onto the ground.

I’ve never seen snow in real life before.

I focus on it when out from the evergreen hedge runs a white snow dog with ghost-like eyes. I’m not sure, but I think it could either be a Siberian Husky or an Alaskan Malamute. I’m not exactly well versed in dog breeds, but I’m sure it’s one or the other. And it’s exceptionally beautiful.

Quickly, I finish the little food left on my plate, then grab my coat from the living room, where I left it after the examination.

I slip it on and venture outside through the sliding doors.

The dog is way down the path now, so I quicken my pace and go after it. I try not to run and frighten it away.

When I get close, it turns and sees me, and I realize then that its eyes are ice blue.