Chapter 2
Lyse
Ishould have insisted on lower heels. If I made it to the end of the night without losing my toes, I would call it a success.
A cold hand touched my bare back, and I did what I could to suppress the shudder that ran up my spine.
“Lyse, love,” my fiancé, Felix Suarez, said, “come meet Dr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald.”
They donated a ton of money to his city comptroller campaign, I thought as he steered me toward a table full of wealthy, elderly people.
While planning the engagement party, he had given me an extensive rundown of the guest list, and I painstakingly memorized each one.
I fixed my face into a smile before we reached the table.
“Myra, Harold,” Felix said in what I liked to think of as his “politician” voice, “I’d like you to meet my fiancée, Lyse Rojas. ”
Myra’s eyes widened as she took me in. Harold’s gaze traveled the length of my body and back up, though his eyes didn’t get much higher than my breasts, but he hid the smirk that played at the corners of his mouth by forcing himself to frown slightly.
I did what I could to keep my face pleasantly arranged.
It was the same reaction all night long.
Did Felix not realize what it looked like?
Having me on his arm? Felix was a handsome man, to be sure, but he was going on fifty this year, and I was twenty-five.
I couldn’t decide whether he was ignoring the looks or if he truly didn’t realize it.
“It’s very nice to meet you,” I said cheerfully.
“Thank you for coming to celebrate with us.”
It was the same thing I’d said to dozens of people tonight, and while most people had done their level best to be pleasant in return, Myra Fitzgerald, I could see, was not going to do that. “How old are you, Ms. Rojas?” she asked. Her tone was snide.
I thought Felix would jump in, but he was already chatting to other donors at the table. “I’m twenty-five, ma’am,” I said.
She huffed. “I didn’t imagine that Felix would fall for such a thing.”
She was calling me a gold-digger, or worse, and a part of me wanted to lean in and whisper that her old pal Felix had made a deal with my father ten years ago.
When I was fifteen and gangly and hadn’t caught up with my own looks.
They were planning this big wedding before I ever graduated from high school; my father had been ready to sign me over on the day I turned eighteen.
It was only Felix’s insistence that we wait that had saved me… for a little while longer, anyway.
I wanted to tell her all of that and watch her eyes go round with the shock and disgust that would surely follow. I wanted the gossip to spread through the ballroom and fall around both my father’s and Felix’s shoulders like iron weights.
Instead, I smiled more brightly. The stretch was starting to ache. “Felix has always been so kind,” I said. “It’s no wonder I fell in love with him.”
Myra scoffed. “I’m sure,” she said without an ounce of the pretend civility the others had managed. Fucking bitch, I thought.
Before I could think of something to say, dinner was announced by the harried wedding planner that my father hired, and Felix excused us and led me, hand still on my back, to our table. He pulled out my chair and waited for me to sit before he pushed me in.
Across from me, my parents sat side-by-side, looking every bit like a king and his most faithful lapdog. Would I look like that in fifteen years? Cowed and beaten down by years spent with a man I didn’t love? It was too depressing to comprehend.
The waitstaff came around with plates laden with steak, twice-baked potatoes, and steamed vegetables, but the moment I picked up my fork, my father’s eyes were on me, as if daring me to take a bite.
My stomach twisted and grumbled — with all the preparations this morning, I hadn’t had time to eat — but I dutifully went into “demure” eating mode, which meant mostly pretending to eat so that no one caught me in an “undignified” moment.
My mother had taught me at a young age what it meant to be always on display: I could always eat later when no one was around to watch me.
Felix, meanwhile, was chewing a hearty piece of his steak with gusto. “This is delicious, isn’t it, love?” he asked.
“It is,” I agreed, and in my voice, I heard my mother. For my father, she was always pleasant and agreeable; she never had a cross moment. In private, I knew how much she sobbed and begged God to visit her with “the cancer” so as to end her suffering sooner.
“You haven’t touched a thing,” Felix pointed out. “The steak is divine. Have some.”
I tried to smile. “Of course, I —” My eyes drifted back to my father, but then there was a spark of pain in my thigh. I swallowed back a squeal and looked down. Felix’s hand was in my lap: he’d pinched me, hard. There would be a bruise. I looked at him.
His politician-perfect smile was still firmly in place, but his eyes were cold. “Eat, my love,” he said firmly.
I took a bite of my steak. It was delicious, and I hummed with soft appreciation. “It’s wonderful,” I murmured.
“I expect you to eat every bite,” he replied.
I dipped my head, swallowing hard. The idea that Felix might be worse than my father wasn’t a new one…
but this was the first time I wondered if I would have to fend him off in more than just the bedroom.
“Of course, Felix,” I said. I took another bite of steak, and hated myself just a little bit more.
When I chanced a look at my father, I could see the rage in his eyes. The engagement photo session might be the only thing that saved me from him tonight…but then his eyes drifted to Felix, and that rage flickered. Cowed. What —?
“Eat,” Felix told me, pitching his voice lower so only I could hear it. To an outsider, it must have looked intimate. Sweet, even. But his breath against my cheek made bile splash at the back of my throat. “That’s what I want you to do.”
I nodded and managed to finish most of the food on my plate — despite the quality, it all tasted like ashes now — without anyone else glaring at me or pinching me. I breathed a soft sigh of relief when the waiter finally came for my plate.
As the plates were being cleared, Felix stood up.
“Ladies and gentleman,” he announced, projecting his voice so that it would reach all corners of the room without needing a microphone.
Are politicians taught how to do that? I wondered.
There had to be a class or something like that.
“I wanted to thank you all for coming to celebrate my upcoming wedding to this wonderful woman.” He looked at me. “Stand up, Lyse, love.”
I pushed myself up and tried not to wince as my shoes tightened painfully across the top of my foot. “Thank you, everyone,” I said and leaned into Felix’s side, the picture of happiness.
Felix beamed at me. “I know Lyse and I aren’t the most traditional couple, but I have always been blown away by this smart, caring, beautiful woman, and I was never happier than the day that she agreed to be my wife.”
I remembered that day well. Felix and my father went into his office and came out two hours later with the announcement I would be marrying the politician.
There had been no beautiful proposal; Felix hadn’t even spoken to me.
I didn’t receive a ring until three months ago, and it was brought by a courier with the instruction that I should wear it from now on.
Felix continued to talk about our phony courtship, mentioning the innocent dates we never went on and how we circled each other for months before making anything official.
Like the information on his political constituents and donors, it was information that I also memorized before tonight.
The story of our relationship was of utmost importance; Felix couldn’t come across like a predator.
His speech would end with a kiss; I had already been warned. It would be our first, my first, and I had been dreading it since my mother told me about it a week ago. I didn’t have to do anything beyond stand here and not look disgusted, but there was no way to prevent it.
Felix turned to look at me, and my muscles went rigid. His smile hadn’t slipped an inch, but his eyes were dark in a way I’d never seen before. I had never been excited about my upcoming marriage, but I’d also never been afraid of Felix before.
I couldn’t say that anymore. Not when he was looking at me like he wanted to possess me, body and soul. Not when my thigh was still aching from his fingertips.
My eyes slipped closed as he leaned in. Just get through it, I told myself. It’s just a kiss; if a sixteen-year-old can handle it, so can you. I felt his breath brush my face, felt his heat coming closer…and then the world exploded around us.
The door of the ballroom burst open, and the room filled with the sound of gunfire and screams. “Get down!” my younger brother, Matteo, yelled out, and the members of the Rojas family dropped, covering our heads like we’d been taught all of our lives.
I tugged Felix down with me. He let out an oof as he hit the ground. “Stay down,” I hissed at him and pointed toward the exit that was away from the bulk of the noise. “Head that way.”
Felix gave me an affronted look for a second before he began to crawl as directed.
I’m never going to hear the end of this, I thought as I followed, keeping my head low.
Something — somebody —crashed into a table above us, and the table collapsed under the sudden weight.
I yelped, jerking back in order not to get hit, and when I tried to find Felix again, he was gone.
Crawling as close to the fallen table as I could, I used it as cover so I could look around. I expected to see an attack, men against men, but instead, there was only one man. My body went cold. Omar Castillo. La Bestia!
He had a gun in each hand, and he was shooting into the crowd of people, completely ignoring my cousins and distant relatives attacking him with chairs and knives from the tables.
Apá is going to be mad that Felix convinced him the men couldn’t be armed today, I thought almost numbly as I watched Omar downing my relatives left and right, leaving them to choke on their own blood.
I had to get out of here. Matteo had gotten Apá out, just as he was supposed to as the family’s enforcer, but without Felix, I was on my own unless I got the attention of the men who were currently fighting for their lives.
I can do this, I told myself. Just like I’d been taught: Keep out of sight and keep moving.
My knees ached as I pulled myself along, cursing as I slipped on my dress again and again. I only made it a few feet when I heard a soft, pitiful whimper from beneath the table I was ducking behind.
I should keep going. I needed to get to an exit and find my family and Felix.
The sounds of the dying men behind me and the gunfire made my ears ring…
but I couldn’t ignore that whimper. I lifted the tablecloth, and the two boys huddled beneath shrieked, holding each other all the tighter.
“Ernesto,” I cooed, “Gabriel, are you okay?” The twins were the youngest of us, only seven years old, and while their father was already trying to make “men” out of them, they were the sweetest boys I’d ever met.
I crawled under the table, letting the heavy swing of the tablecloth fall down behind me.
The boys threw themselves into my lap, shivering and whining. I shushed them and petted their gel-slicked hair. “It’s okay, mis amores,” I whispered against their heads.
“Mama said to get down,” Ernesto sobbed gently. “She hasn’t come back.”
She had better be dead, I thought savagely. My cousin Yessica wasn’t Mother of the Year material, but I thought she was better than leaving her children to fend for themselves like this. “When it gets quiet,” I told them, “we’ll find her, okay? We just have to wait.”
“We’re going to die,” Gabriel cried, clutching me all the tighter.
“We’re not,” I insisted. Even the Castillo Beast knew better than to attack a woman and two children. He might mow down every man in the ballroom, but unless we were caught by a stray bullet, he wouldn’t touch us. “There’s rules about these things,” I said. “You know that.”
Gabriel shook his head. “He’s crazy,” he said and more tears fell from his eyes. “He shot papá.”
I tightened my grip on them and rocked them, uttering soft, nonsensical comfort words, but fear was taking root in my stomach. We needed to get out of here. Even if he wouldn’t actually hurt us, there was only so much a child could see before they were harmed irreparably.