Chapter 1

Alicia

T wo weeks ago, my father came back unexpectedly from America with his men. They swarmed our farmhouse like locusts, ate all our food, and tried to flirt with me every time they were falling down drunk. In all the chaos, sometimes my father didn’t notice. Or perhaps he just stopped caring. All I knew was that coming back to Mexico lifted their spirits.

Unfortunately, the more they drank, the louder and bolder they got. To say that I wasn’t impressed with any of them would be an understatement. They were all like laughing hyenas, and I wanted to keep as far away from them as possible.

One called out to me, “ Sus labios se tan ven solitos, querrían conocerse con los míos? ”

Your lips look so lonely, would they like to meet mine. Ugh… I cringed at the thought of taking him up on his offer of kisses. Not in a million years.

Instead, I fast walked back to the house without answering, because shouting back anything at all, even in anger, just made them worse. Usually my father would stay for a week or two before leaving, I hoped that was the case this time too.

The worst of his men was Alejandro, my father’s right-hand man. Even now he was staring a hole through me, undressing me with his eyes. I hurried past with the basket of laundry. I hated that our washer was outside where they could all gape at me as I worked. The whistles and jeers when I bent over rang in my ears, but my father never did a thing to stop his men.

Alejandro stepped closer as I passed, his voice menacing, “Remember that you are spoken for.” Shock roiled through my gut at his words, I’d just turned twenty-one and my father had been saying it was high time I got married. I hated the thought that they might be plotting behind my back to make that happen and I wondered what Alejandro meant.

“I’m not yours, or anyone else’s.” I told him through gritted teeth as I tried to get past him.

He smirked at me in a way that made my blood run cold. “Not yet, but soon, mi guapa .” His words both angered me and scared the shit out of me in equal measure. I felt like a possession, my father had controlled me my entire life, and now as an adult he still controlled me.

My father and all his men were depraved assholes. I vowed to myself right then and there to steer clear of them all, most especially Alejandro. Pushing past him, I went inside and closed the door behind me. I started pacing and tried to come up with a plan in case my father tried to force us together.

I could mostly avoid the rabble outside our door by staying inside. Unfortunately, Alejandro was my father’s right-hand man. That gave him leave to strut around wherever he wanted. He was the only one allowed to enter our home without knocking. And he did it often, just to prove he could.

I spent the entire day cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and trying to calm my mother down. After I told her what Alejandro said, she immediately started fretting for me, pulling at her long blonde hair anxiously. It was a nervous habit she could never seem to stop. Alejandro was big, intimidating, and liked to mess people up for fun. She was afraid for me but no more afraid than I was for myself.

I knew that the first man who had me, would be the one my father made me marry. Sometimes, the way he lived reminded me of something from the Middle Ages, where women were only possessions to be traded. Becoming the boss’s new son-in-law was appealing enough that it wouldn’t take much for one the men to cross the line with me. Of course my father would be angry. And there would be severe punishments, but at the end of the day the situation would be put right with a wedding.

My father would claim I was spoiled for any other future husband, therefore I would have to marry the one who put his hands on me. The thought of it made my skin crawl. I wished so badly that my father would just stay in America. Let him run his criminal empire far from me and my poor mother.

When the day mercifully came to an end, I crawled into bed. Unfortunately, I was too anxious to fall asleep right away. After tossing and turning for what seemed like forever, I finally managed to drift off into an untroubled sleep.

I must have been dreaming, but then suddenly I awoke with a start. Alejandro had roughly yanked me out of bed. I turned over onto my back and tried to kick him as hard as I could with my left foot, scared of what he planned to do to me. Though it was hopeless, he was as strong as an ox and just laughed at my attempt to get away from him.

I was terrified he was going to attack me, that tonight would be the night he would claim me as his own, but instead, he told me to get dressed, that my father was leaving and I was to go with him so I must pack for travel. Once he left the room I sat on the edge of my bed, my heart pounding in my chest.

I knew my father didn’t normally take time out to deliver messages, even to his own daughter. Therefore, I didn’t even question Alejandro’s words. Instead, I got myself dressed and packed a large duffle bag with a bunch of clothing, my cell phone, jewelry, and small keepsakes I couldn’t bear to part with. I had a bad feeling that if my father was moving me and my mom to America, I would never be returning to this farm again.

By the time I made it out to the living room, I realized that my mom wasn’t coming with us. She was still in her nightgown and pleading with my father to let me stay this one time. He was not having any of it though. He shook her hands off roughly and shoved her aside.

When he walked away, she said hotly, “Your precious cartel is going to be the death of my daughter.”

He turned on her so fast I was left gasping, his hand wrapped firmly around her throat. He pulled her closer and murmured in her ear, in English, “Do not talk about things you know nothing about.” His lilting accent seemed suddenly threatening.

My father let her go, pushing her roughly back onto the sofa. Without another word he turned on his heel and stalked out the front door, telling Alejandro when he passed to, “See to Alicia.” He switched so effortlessly between English and Spanish that I was envious. My American mother taught me English, and living in Mexico I spoke Spanish daily, but if I wanted to change language it was like I needed to do a reset on my brain.

I gave my mom a quick glance over my shoulder, as Alejandro grabbed my arm and pulled me roughly away.

She looked calm and collected. “Remember me, Alicia, and what we talked about. Be a good girl for your Papa.” I remembered well what I was supposed to do if ever my father took me away to America.

I didn’t get a chance to answer her, because the next thing I knew, I was standing on the porch and Alejandro had closed the front door.

Turning to look at me, he gave me a little shove towards the steps. “Move quickly,” he barked in Spanish.

We both knew my father was not a patient man, so I rushed out to the only SUV that still had one of the back doors standing open and wrangled my duffle in and held it on my lap. It was almost large enough to block my view out the front window. I was terrified about what lay in store for me.

I’ve known my whole life that my father was involved with the cartel. It was something we learned early on to never talk about. I didn’t know the reasoning, perhaps he didn’t like people thinking the women in his life were privy to his business dealings involving the cartel, or us keeping our mouths shut about his associations was a way to keep us all safe. For whatever reason, we never discussed it, even in private.

***

It took us days of waiting around for the perfect moment to cross the border into the US. It was in the middle of the night. There were about twenty in our group. Since my father wasn’t the kind of man to leave anything to chance, we weren’t stopped. I had a feeling that he had bribed one of the border guards to turn a blind eye. After making it onto American soil, we hiked for a few miles until we reached a panel van with a plumber’s name on the side. The door slid open as we approached and we all climbed in, my father first, then me, and then Alejandro. After we found seats, the rest of his men clambered in and found places to sit.

I had always dreamed of visiting America, only under better circumstances. I was born there and moved to Mexico when I was two. Without any real memories of my own, I read everything I could about the United States. I knew my mother’s homeland was the land of opportunity, and I daydreamed about attending college, and maybe becoming a nurse so I could earn a decent living and help out the people in our small town. To my way of thinking, it was a realistic dream since I was born there to a US citizen, and that made me American.

The harsh reality was, since my father didn’t believe in college, it would probably never happen. I wasn’t naive enough to think he was surprising me by making my dreams of college come true, but I couldn’t conceive of why he would drag me illegally across the border. Knowing my father, it wasn’t for any good reason.

I was born in Texas. I think my parents met when he was in some kind of training program. When he was finished, he took me and my mom back to his hometown in Mexico when I was two years old. Though I was too young to remember anything of my former life, my mom used to tell me stories about my father, how he was a good man. But my earliest memories were of my parents fighting and my mom being scared. Luckily, his work took him away regularly, and he would return only for sporadic visits, always accompanied by his men. When he came, I avoided him as much as possible, which as it turned out was easy because he wasn’t interested in spending time with me anyway.

But my mom homeschooled me, and in doing so she not only taught me English but everything about her homeland. We had computers and cell phones because my father wasn’t poor. I’d even planned to take some online college classes at some point as it was something I could do without his knowledge. However, despite the outward trappings of a good life I knew I was trapped. My mom was trapped too. We had no papers to say we were US citizens, and as my father had taken us to Mexico illegally, we had no proof of citizenship there either. My mom had been scared to go to the authorities because she might get deported, leaving me under the care of my father. That’s if he didn’t kill us first.

Now, I had my chance to put my mom’s plan into action.

I stayed quiet in the back of the van, every so often I would glance out the windshield, but under the cover of darkness there was nothing to see other than the glow of the headlights on the road. At some point we passed a sign that said, ‘ Welcome to California ’. Eventually, after a few more hours on the road the scenery changed from desert and canyons to verdant green I realized we were heading towards the suburbs of some town or city. We passed a gigantic sign along the side of the road that had a name on it. Griffinsford. I peered out the side windows at the buildings we passed, impressed with what I saw. After stopping for gas my father bought me a large, iced coffee, it was sad that such a small gesture felt so big coming from him. We hit the road again and seemed to being going out of town.

If I’d thought we were heading to a house like we had in Mexico, I’d have been very much mistaken. When our vehicle finally pulled in, it was in front of a broken down, abandoned cabin deep in the woods around forty-five minutes from the town we’d passed through.

I knew the cabin would be for my father and myself only, because his men immediately started setting up tents. I headed in and started cleaning, with my father it was easier if you did things before being told, I had learned that lesson the hard way. Alejandro got on to fixing the rusty hand pump that was mounted on the kitchen sink. By the time I’d scrubbed the cabin to within an inch of its life it was starting to look livable, even if it was on the rough side. I knew better than to ask my father questions, such as what we were doing here, or how long we would be staying.

Luckily, my father hadn’t expected me to cook, even he thought that manual labor after such a long journey was too much, and he’d picked up burgers and fries from the service station. They were cold and greasy, but it was food that I didn’t have to prepare and for that I was thankful. I fell into bed exhausted and texted my mother before I fell into a deep sleep, grateful that I had reception out here. She told me to be careful, but we didn’t talk about where I was or anything to do with my father. She already knew what my plans were.