I flinched. The truth stung. “You’re turning heartless, just like them,” I warned him.

“Occupational hazard, I guess,” he said. “It may save your life if you were to turn the same.”

At that he nodded at the door, eager for me to leave his charge. I sighed my acceptance and got out. Though I had told Javier I wanted to be bound at the wrists, he assured me it wasn’t necessary to make it look like I escaped. I was grateful for that. I needed every ounce of power I could get, even if it was just an illusion.

The minute my feet hit the soil, Juanito pulled away. I watched his red lights until he did a U-turn a few meters away. Then he roared past me, heading back to Javier, back to safety.

I’d never been so envious in my life.

I stood there for a long time, just a black figure against the darkening sky, the passing cars anonymous with their blinding lights, my hair and dress billowing around me in their wake. It wasn’t until I summoned the courage to stick my thumb out that one car eventually stopped.

To my utmost relief, it was a middle-aged woman driving. I got in and kept quiet while she scolded me for being out on the highway. I didn’t give her much of an explanation as to why I was out there—I was saving that for later—and I kept my face turned away from her so she wouldn’t see the faded yellow and blue bruises that still colored my skin from Franco’s assault.

She made good company, talking about her newest grandchild and how scandalous it was that he wasn’t baptized yet, and how all the neighbors were flapping their lips. I wondered what it must be like to live a totally normal life. To fall in love, get married, have children and grandchildren. To drive to the supermarket and drink instant coffee and watch daytime television and go to church and take every fucking day for granted.

Because of her normality, we sped past the one checkpoint we saw. The armed men didn’t even slow us down. We just kept driving through, their eyes trained only for people like Juanito.

When we finally arrived in the city and I asked her to drop me off at one of the busy plazas, I told her she was lucky to have all that she did. She only stared at me in disbelief. Then I thanked her and got out of the car. She drove off, shaking her head and talking to herself, and I wondered if I was going to be news in the morning, and if she’d be flipping through her morning paper and realize just who she had given a ride to.

Now, it was time to play a part, a me from another timeline, a timeline where Javier was the brutal captor and that was it. I closed my eyes, inviting the other persona in: frightened, relieved, jubilant at their escape. I looked around the plaza for someone who would know who I was, who would hear the underground tittering from the Sinaloa Cartel, who would first have to hear my story.

I found a musician—a narcocorrido singer—sitting by the side of a fountain, playing murder ballads on his accordion. The man, with his slicked back hair and soulful voice, glanced up at me as I hugged myself in front of him, shivering for show, and he immediately knew who I was. I was sure he had sung many songs about narco wives. Perhaps even one just for me. Sing me a song about Luisa, the one who was taken, the one who wasn’t wanted back. The one who found her freedom in another man’s bed.

It didn’t take long before I was wrapped in a blanket and being escorted into a police vehicle, flashing lights illuminating the plaza in red and blue. A few onlookers were watching, camera phones out, recording my apparent rescue as they would the murders that littered the city.

Once in the vehicle, the officers extra courteous, I was driven in a different direction than I thought we’d go. Then I realized that after my kidnapping, Salvador must have abandoned his old mansion for another one, for security’s sake.

It made no difference to me; they all held the same horrors.

Soon we were driving past checkpoints—some operated by other police, some by men with black ski-masks and automatic rifles—and then through the heavily guarded gates of my husband’s newest palace.

Once we came to a stop, the police escorted me out of the SUV and straight up the polished steps of Salvador’s front door. One officer went to knock but the door was already opening, slowly, ominously, like a scary movie.

Salvador stood on the other side, backlit from the foyer, his ugly face cast in sinister shadow. He stroked along his mustache and gave me a smile that even a crocodile would be ashamed to wear.

“Luisa, my princess,” he said cunningly, opening up an arm for me. “Welcome home.”

I looked to the police officers, wondering if I had enough strength to turn back, to run, to plead for their help. But they were paid handsomely by my husband, and their job was about indifference to anything but money. There would be no help from them. There would be no help from anyone.

I was on my own.

I gave Salvador a stiff smile as I walked into the house.

He slowly closed the door behind him and shot me a sly look over his shoulder. “This took me by surprise. I must say I never expected to see you again.”

“I know,” I said, putting on the face of the scared yet sympathetic wife. “And I understand. When I saw I had a chance to escape, I took it. You’d be shocked at how immature Javier’s men are. They are nothing like yours.”

He smiled briefly at my compliment. “I’m surprised you came back here.”

“You are my husband,” I told him, hoping he bought the sincerity. “Where else would I go?”

He studied me for a moment, his jaw ticking back and forth. “I guess you’re right.” He took a large step toward me, his cowboy boots echoing on the floor. “It’s too bad that you’ll soon wish you hadn’t.”

My face fell. His lit up. “Sometimes,” he went on, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” He chuckled to himself. “I realized what I had wasn’t even worth bargaining for.” He shrugged and pulled at his chin as he looked my body up and down. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t worth something. Get on your knees.”

I opened my mouth in protest and almost said something I’d regret. Talking back to Javier had become a bad habit, one he had encouraged.

“I said on your knees, cunt!” Salvador yelled at me. He grabbed me by my hair and thrust me down to the floor, my knees taking the brunt of the fall. I heard his zipper go down but I couldn’t make myself look up.

He made me look. He made a fist at the top of my head and yanked my hair straight up, my nerves exploding in pain. I looked past his rancid cock and right at his face. It was evil incarnate. He shook his head, clucking his tongue. “You hesitated, Luisa, and a woman never hesitates. Looks like I’m going to have to retrain you all over again.”

The next thing I knew, his knee came toward my face. There was pain and spots and all the world went black.

Javier

The saying goes, if you love something, let it go. I always thought it was better to just shoot the damn thing so it’d never go anywhere.

But now I understood. Now that I didn’t have a choice.

I suppose I could have said something. I could have told Luisa what she wanted to hear. But that would have been a lie. I didn’t love her. I couldn’t. That was something that was no longer applicable to the person I’d become. There was no place for it in my life; it didn’t fit, it didn’t work. Love didn’t build empires, it ruined them.

What I felt for Luisa wasn’t love. But it was curious. It was something, at least. It was deep and spreading, like a cancer. Yet, instead of only bringing pain, it brought purpose in its sickness. Her lips soothed me, her heart challenged me, her eyes made me bleed. My bed was where we held our exorcisms. She brought me peace. I brought her fire. Now the flame was out—gone forever—and there was a war raging inside me.