Chapter 1
Triana~
I stared out at the street, cars, trucks, and semis just going about their business.
Normally, I was stuck at the office during this time of the day, but with Louisa not being able to find anyone to cover Raul’s shift, my mother had begged me to help out, claiming that Louisa couldn’t do it all herself because she was struggling with a gout flareup, and since no one could guilt you like a Hispanic mother, I was here, trying my best to do both my job and Raul’s.
My parents, Oscar and Carmen Medina, owned a chain of hotels along the western border of Rancher Hills, and while they weren’t in the same league as some of the other big-name hotels, they did well for themselves.
At least, they’d been able to send both me and my brother, Tomasco, to college, and when you considered how much that cost, in my opinion, my parents did very well for themselves.
At any rate, after graduating from college, both my brother and I had gone to work for our parents, nepotism at its best. Of course, there was a lot of that nowadays, what with our options as limited as they were, and even my best friend, Sonia, worked for her parents.
Twenty-five years ago, the American government had decided that the best way to end the rift between social, political, and economical classes was to divide the country by race.
With the majority of citizens voting for that as the perfect solution to all their problems, money and promises had been exchanged behind closed doors, then everyone had been herded to their new homes.
Though it’d taken about five years to iron out all the kinks, with the exception of Blooming Heights, everyone lived among their ‘own kind’, but the joke was on them.
Much to a lot of people’s chagrin, Americans had learned the hard way that segregation hadn’t been the answer.
Every region still had their poor sides of town, their drug addicts, their prostitutes, their greedy businessmen, their struggling single parents, their criminals, their pedophiles, their racists, and everything else that segregation was supposed to have gotten rid of.
Now, whether they realized it or not-or just didn’t care-the new movement had also limited our growth.
Because it was illegal to leave your region for any reason, our ambition was limited to where we lived, and that didn’t give you a lot of options to choose from.
So, even though I had a degree in finance, and even though Tomasco had his MBA, we were working for our parents because that’s what Hispanic families did; family supported family.
There was also the fact that Mexico and Canada were no longer American allies, so there was no crossing their borders for a better life there, and if you wanted to leave the country to go live somewhere else, the process was so brutal that most people just gave up.
America did not want their citizens contributing to the growth and success of other countries, and truth be told, most of those other countries rejected a lot of American applications because the damage that’d been done twenty-five years ago had been enough to burn a lot of bridges, even to this day.
As for me, I’d been born when the new movement had begun, and so segregation was all that I knew.
Yeah, we still had the internet and were able to connect outside our respective regions, but that was the extent of socializing without breaking the law.
If we were caught crossing region borders, we’d be arrested, a crime that carried no less than fifty years in prison.
That punishment was an actual Amendment to our new Constitution, and it was enough to deter most people from ever trying.
We also no longer had a president or three branches of government that ran the country.
Instead, we had Administrators that acted as presidents over their respective region, and their government was similar to what used to be the three branches of government.
Benicio Cortez was our Administrator, and I didn’t see anything magnificent in him, but I also didn’t follow politics as much as I probably should.
In a perfect world, everyone would do the right thing, eliminating the need for any positions of power.
However, we didn’t live in a perfect world, so here we were.
The funny thing about abolishing a ‘corrupt’ government in the name of forward progress?
The new founding fathers had voted themselves in for a lifetime, which sounded like the biggest power grab ever.
An Administrator had to be only thirty to be elected, and he or she was eligible to serve consecutively for thirty years if they chose to, and if that didn’t set the stage for corruption, then I didn’t know what did.
Of course, there were five-year reviews to determine if an Administrator could be ousted, but I wasn’t sure how legitimate the reviews actually were.
“Are you daydreaming again?”
I jumped at the sound of Maria’s voice, the woman always sneaking up on someone. “If you must know, I was thinking of running away with a Nigerian Prince,” I retorted.
Maria shook her head. “You’re the only person that I know who answers those ridiculous scam calls.”
“What else am I going to do all day?” I gestured around the lobby. “This is our slowest hotel, and it gets boring as hell during the day.”
“Careful with your words,” she scolded softly. “It is unbecoming for a young girl to curse, and you know that your father does not approve of you using such language.”
“First of all, if the word can be said in church every Sunday, then it should be accepted everywhere,” I argued. “Plus, I’m twenty-five, not fifteen, Maria. My father will get over it.”
“Aye, muchacha,” she chided, her accent coming out. “It’s like you enjoy being stubborn just for the sake of being stubborn.”
“Not wanting to be part of a cult doesn’t make me stubborn, Maria,” I told her pointedly.
She shook her head again. “There is nothing wrong with living in a community of likened people, Triana. It helps restore a level of comfort that use to not always be.”
“I hate to break it to you, but I still hold my purse close and look over my shoulder when I have to go to the store at night,” I informed her.
“You people act like all the gang members and criminals vanished into thin air when you all voted for segregation. Well, as far as I can see, judges and lawyers still have jobs, and our prisons are still filled with the worst of the worst.”
“Of course, if you do nothing but focus on the bad, you won’t ever recognize any of the good,” she replied sagely. “There has been a lot of good that’s come out of the new movement.”
I turned from the counter to give her my full attention. Maria was our head housekeeper at this location, and not only was she one hell of a worker, but she was also a very good person, so she deserved my respect, even if I didn’t agree with her views.
“Such as?”
“Well, for one, our heritage is no longer being diluted,” she answered, and it was amazing how she thought that it was perfectly acceptable to say such a thing. “Our ancestry, culture, and customs have begun to come back, giving us a clearer identity.”
“Then why leave Mexico to begin with?” I challenged. “Or Peru, or Argentina, or Honduras? If heritage, customs, and culture are so damn important, then why ever leave?”
“Do not pretend to be na?ve, Triana,” she replied sternly. “Because as much as all of those things are very important, safety and opportunity are not always available in those countries. America is the only country that offers unlimited success if you work hard enough.”
“You mean that it used to offer unlimited success,” I reminded her. “It no longer offers that if you are not an RNA citizen. Even then, the success is limited if a person can’t venture beyond the border to other regions.”
“Triana, there is nothing wrong with having small dreams,” she went on, and this really was a pointless conversation. “You still have a lot to be grateful for.”
I hated it when people said that. It was an unfair argument to make you feel guilty enough to shut you down.
Just because I had questions and wanted to know more than what I’d been taught, that didn’t mean that I wasn’t grateful for all that I had.
I realized how lucky I was that my parents did well for themselves and had been able to afford to send me to college.
I realized how lucky I was to be able to afford my own home and have a good job at the age of twenty-five.
Nevertheless, that didn’t mean that I wasn’t entitled to wish for more.
Just then, the door to the lobby opened, and an older couple walked in, looking like tired travelers.
When I used to work the front desk during my college summers, guessing the guest was a game that we would often play, and my guess was that this couple had tried driving the entire way to their destination but failed.
“Hello,” I said, greeting them. “Welcome to Vista Comforts.”
“Oh, hello,” the woman rushed out. “We’ve been traveling for hours, and we just can’t do it anymore. Do you have any rooms available? We’ll take anything.”
My fingers went to work on the computer, and the couple looked tired enough that I looked for a downstairs room. When I found one, I said, “We have a great room on the first floor, so you won’t have to travel far.”
The woman gave me a grateful smile as her husband said, “Thank you.”
Ten minutes later, the couple was checked in and on their way to their room, and I was back to counting down the hours until my shift ended.