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Grabbing a black T-shirt that’s been carelessly thrown on the floor, I put it on and drop the quilt.
He continues to pound on the door, the wood practically bulging inward with each impact. “Let me in!”
“Leave me alone!” I yell as I climb into the soaking tub and begin to yank on the window above it. But before it gives, I stop, my eyes wide and glued to two things I hadn’t noticed before. Two things that have my stomach clenching so hard, I feel the wind being knocked out of me.
An emblem I’m all too familiar with, one that anyone in Mexico with access to the news is familiar with. A skull with wings and the wordDiabloswritten beneath it has been inked onto the inside of my wrist. And not too far from it, on my fourth finger, is a platinum ring with a large round diamond that cannot be mistaken for anything other than an engagement ring.
Behind me, the door bursts open and Santos rushes in. “Sonia.” He’s panting heavily as he comes to stand beside me, but I don’t turn to him. I can’t. All I can do is stare at that thing wrapped around my finger.
“I’m engaged?” I whisper.
“What?” He remains silent for a moment. Then, hesitantly, he says, “No. You’re not engaged. You’re married.”
“Marri…” Now I do turn to him, afraid to voice the question I can already surmise the answer to. “To whom?”
“To me.”
“That’s impossible!” Shaking my head, I move away from him. He reaches for my arm, but I yank it out of his grasp. “No. No. No. This isn’t happening. It has to be a nightmare.”
“I think you should lie down.”
My minds races to make sense of everything, desperately piecing together my last memory before ending up here. Being awakened in the middle of the night by my father while men I’d never seen before tore through the house. Him dragging me toward the fields after they killed several members of the staff. Then what?
It all seems like some dream I had, but with each second that passes, it fades into the past a little more.
I jam my hands through my hair in frustration just as I catch my reflection in the mirror above the marble counter. “My hair,” I murmur, walking toward it. Gone is my waist-length, perfectly straight light brown hair with blond streaks that I worked so hard to maintain. It’s reverted to my naturally dark wild waves, made even more full by the shorter cut that barely reaches the middle of my back. “I…”
My gaze meets Santos’s much darker one through the reflection. His frown deepens as do the lines around his eyes. It’s been a decade since the last time I saw him, and yet I remember him looking like this—slightly older.
That’s when it hits me, the memory of the night Villanueva was overtaken. Santos was there. I saw his face for only a split-second, but it might as well have been hours. His image was immediately emblazoned into my brain. “You were at the river. You’re the one who attacked me.”
“The river?” His gaze widens before he glances away momentarily.
“Of course. It’s all coming back.” I press my fingertips into my temples, the pain in my head increasing the harder I try to remember. “You were at Villanueva.”
“Why would I have attacked you?”
“Because you hate me. You attacked me and we rolled into the river. Then I wake up and see this.” I tug on a lock of hair.
Santos blinks at me, looking as stunned as I feel. “That was a long time ago and we’ve gotten past it.”
My stomach sinks. “What do you mean a long time ago? How long ago?”
As if he doesn’t want to reply, he clamps his lips shut.
“How long ago?” I repeat.
“Five years.”
A cold sweat instantly breaks out over my skin, as if all the blood has drained from my body. “Five…” I stumble as the room begins to spin, then I lose my footing.
His arms come around me before my head has a chance to hit the sink and lift me easily. “Sonia.” He pats my face trying to wake me. “¡Ayuda!”Help!he exclaims.
I want to push him away. I want slap him and force him to let me go. But I’m too weak, and as the world fades away, the only thing I can do is peer into the dark eyes of the man who swore revenge on my family. Revenge he took on me.
