Chapter 10
Solana Damita Ledesma
Inever imagined my first trip to America would be under my father’s wishes.
I had been begging to come to the States long before I found out about my siblings and my dual citizenship.
It felt as if I’d been craving to escape Mexico City since I could form a sentence to ask for it.
Now here I was—twenty-five and finally given the chance to see the land of the free.
Yet, all I wanted now was to go back to Mexico and lock myself in my bedroom, barricading the door.
Ines Ledesma. Mi padre. My papa. Not only was he my everything, but at one point, I would do whatever it was he asked without blinking.
As the years progressed, so did his empire, and while the man I loved was still somewhere buried deep inside of him, he’d changed.
Long gone was the loving father who used to make tres leches to ease my sweet tooth and take me fishing to help calm me.
That papa was a distant memory. He’d turned into someone I didn’t recognize most days.
The man who would have stood in the line of fire for his family had turned around and deemed his loved ones as expendable.
Our entire lineage had either been traded, killed, or jailed for the sake of his freedom, and after a while, it became our norm.
Today, all that is left of the Ledesmas are my brothers and I, and now we are collateral.
While I was ecstatic to be away from Maura, my father’s wife, I felt like a fish out of the water.
I’d been out partying like always, and when I pulled up to my condo to end my night with a shower, my father was there with two of his guards.
Funny enough, the guards were the same two who’d flipped on my papa when the man, whose home I was currently in, snapped his fingers.
I thought they would be dead the moment our American guest left, but my father had been moving strangely and frantically, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to see they still had their jobs and their lives.
Intoxicated and all, my father forced me onto a plane.
I was so distraught that all I could do was cry myself to sleep.
By the time I woke up, I was shoved into the back of a car.
The driver didn’t speak to me the entire drive through the foreign city until we approached this neighborhood.
Only then did he instruct me to tell the guard at the gate that I was here for Shio.
I was even given a key to enter the house, and although the mini-mansion wasn’t as big as any of our properties in Mexico, it was still nice.
Walking from the back of the truck through the front door, the first thing I noticed was the smell of the air.
It was different. It smelled cleaner and lighter, but there was a heaviness present.
I couldn’t explain it, but anytime I got those types of feelings, nothing good came from it.
Now here I was in a country I yearned for, for so long, not knowing what my father’s agenda entailed.
I’d been promised to the eldest son of the Rodríguez Family for a year now, but I’d known the possibility of an arranged marriage my entire life so the idea wasn’t repulsive.
It was how men, like my father, did business.
Somewhere in my mind, I’d hoped it wouldn’t happen to me, but arranged marriage was normal in my culture.
Did I want to be sold off like livestock?
No. But I wasn’t going to cry about it. It was our way of life, and I respected it.
I just didn’t think my father would ever match me with a Rodríguez of all the option available.
The Rodríguez Family was one of Mexico’s most feared and idolized familias.
They were ruthless, and for a long time, the Ledesmas couldn’t be touched.
When my father began making faulty business decisions that cost us our family, and ultimately his empire, it became easy for the Rodríguezes to step in and take control.
The Rodríguez Family was the leading cause of Mexico’s rising crime rates, including kidnapping, homicide, trafficking—both human and drug-related—and everything in between.
There was a saying that when a Rodríguez had their claws in you, you were as good as dead—muerto.
Being in the United States was a way for me to get away from the Rodríguezes, even if only for a little while.
It was no secret that they despised Americans, which made me uneasy.
I am half African American, with my mother being the most beautiful Black woman I’ve ever seen, according to the only picture I had of her.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of what my life would look like after being married off to the son who was set to inherit his family’s empire.
Just the thought alone made me want to vomit.
I’d been primed and prepped to be the wife of a crime boss, and if preparation meant being able to party and spend freely for years, then I’d be the best wife on the planet.
I knew better than that, though. My papa had locked me into a deal with the devil.
All the years of my papa trying to get me etiquette training and me acting out in response have now come back to bite me.
I’d grown fond of doing what I wanted and saying what I wanted, and now that it was time to pay the piper, I didn’t know what to do.
My papa was forcing me on this American now, as if he’d given up, which wasn’t a surprise because he’d given up on almost everyone for his own comfort.
Then again, Shio had been the first one to give me a command, and I actually listened to it.
It wasn’t because I feared him either, which is probably what my father assumed.
Shio had caught me off guard with his fluent Spanish and good looks.
Had I been better prepared, then he would have never sat me down so easily with just his words.
There was no taming Solana Ledesma. But for some reason, my father thought shipping me off to another man was the answer to his “me” problem. But, again, his assumption was wrong.
From the moment I was put on the plane, I knew this was where I would end up.
Well, I didn’t know I would end up sitting in the middle of a bed in Shio’s modest-sized home with a growling belly, but I did know that I was going with the American.
My papa had outlandish and impulsive ideas that he never methodically thought through.
How ridiculous was it to send me off to someone he knew nothing about, to train me to be a “good” wife?
What the fuck was a single American man going to teach me?
How was an American going to teach me how to be a wife to a Mexican ruler?
From the looks of it, the only thing he could teach me was how to receive his ejaculation on my face.
Was there an attraction to the man whose skin tone mirrored mine?
Yes, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see his penis.
I only wanted to shower because I still smelled like hookah smoke.
When I saw that the first bedroom I stumbled across was equipped with everything I needed to clean myself, I got lost in the shower.
I had no idea I would walk into him getting pleasured, nor did I expect him to place a gun to my head or choke me.
My life was in danger; I could see it in his eyes.
If I hadn’t done what he said and told him why I was here, he was going to harm me.
He meant everything he said about sending me back to my family in a body bag; I could feel the truth in his tone.
Yet, I was turned on like never before. If I wasn’t scared, I would’ve showered again, but as soon as he left the room, I curled up on the bed in the towel.
My brain was in such an overload that I passed out.
I must’ve needed the sleep because I was just now waking up, and it was late in the afternoon.
Still wrapped in the towel, my eyes adjusted to the sunlight streaming through the window.
I could feel the heat radiating through the blinds.
I’d read about how hot it could get in the States.
It was usually the rainy season in Mexico around this time, so the heat came and went quickly, leaving cooler days.
Standing up from the bed, I popped my back, adjusted my towel, and let the cold floor beneath my feet guide me to the bathroom.
I had a headache, and since there was already enough sun coming through the window, I left the lights off.
My clothes from the night before were still damp and scattered across the floor.
Stepping right on top of the skimpy dress, I sat down on the toilet and nearly moaned at how good it felt to relieve my bladder.
I was hoping my menstrual cycle wouldn’t show up early.
I didn’t have any sanitary napkins with me, and the only thing I’d found in the vanity drawers when I first showered here were tampons.
Tampon use wasn’t common in Mexico. Many women were taught that foreign objects did not belong inside of you, and some women even believed that a tampon could get lost once it was in you.
I didn’t believe anything like that could happen, but I still didn’t use them because my father said not to.
I’d have to figure out how to get something soon because, according to my Flo app, the bleeding was due to start in a few days.
I was crossing my fingers that something would be available in a store here because I didn’t want to disobey my father or figure out how to get the cotton inside of me.
Once I wiped and flushed, I stood in front of the mirror. Tightening the towel around my frame, I stared at my reflection.
Estoy hecha un desastre (I’m a mess).