There was a pause before the men all glanced at each other and started laughing, as if it were the funniest thing they’d ever heard. So much machoism in this country, it didn’t matter if I was in power of a cartel or just a simple woman wanting a job. The men always treated you like a joke if you were anything more than a whore or a mother.
Esteban wasn’t laughing though. He was glaring at me as if he couldn’t believe I had the nerve to stand up to him. He didn’t want to hear the truth, that by my marriage to Javier, everything was really and truly all mine.
The truth hurt. And now I knew he was going to make me pay for it.
“Is that so?” Esteban finally said, unable to hide the irritation in his voice. “You must think you’re in the wrong country, hey. There are no laws here. You should know that more than any of us, beauty queen.” He eyed the men and jerked his chin at me. “Get her.”
My body turned on instinct and I immediately began running for the house, the front door just twenty feet away, but before I could, someone reached out and tackled me from behind, sending me flying into the gardenia that lined the edge of the wall.
I screamed but it was futile. Hands, so many hands, grabbing my body, pulling me up and then seeming to pull me apart.
One of the men, the biggest one, lifted me up by my throat, his fat, thick fingers pressing into my jaw. The pain was so intense, I prayed I’d pass out but I didn’t. By some sick, cruel world joke, I didn’t.
“We don’t bow to no queen,” the man said, his nose swollen with purplish veins, his breath so sour I could have gagged if I wasn’t being choked already. His grip tightened until I was sure my windpipe had been crushed in. Light danced before my eyes.
“Don’t kill her,” I heard Esteban calmly say in the background. “Just teach her a thing or two.”
The man grunted and then marched forward, still holding me by the throat, until I was up against one of the white pillars by the door. He banged my head against it, hard, the pain shooting down my spine, while my arms were pulled behind the pillar by someone else and handcuffs were place around my wrists. Two men grabbed a hold of my legs so I couldn’t move.
He pulled a knife out from a holster around his waist, the sun glinting off the sharp, narrow blade, and placed the tip at the neckline of the cotton dress the federales had given me to wear. Pressing the blade in until I felt it lightly puncture my skin, he began to drag it down, slowly. I stared as blood spilled down my chest, the dress ripping down the middle as he went.
The pain was intense, almost sickly. I sucked in my breath, trying not to scream, trying so hard to hide my fear but when he got to the soft of my stomach and pressed the blade further in, I couldn’t hold back.
I cried out, turning my face away from the sight as he quickly brought the knife down, ripping the rest of my dress. Without undergarments, I was completely exposed, naked and bleeding before them like I was about to be burned at the stake. My gash stung from the air, causing tears to well in my eyes.
“Spread her legs,” the man said to the men below him.
I wouldn’t plead. I wouldn’t ask them to spare me. I would take it like I had taken it from Salvador, from his men, once upon a time when I thought life was a worse fairy-tale than this.
I’d been wrong.
Nothing had been as bad as this.
My legs were wrenched apart.
The man undid his fly, took his disgusting appendage out and started stroking it in front of me. I looked away. The other men started hooting and hollering and I shut my eyes, praying that Esteban wouldn’t want to share me this way, that he would have a change of heart. But I knew my wishes were useless. Esteban wanted this and I, I brought this all upon myself when I believed he was better than the person he was.
“Look at me bitch,” the man said, grabbing my face with one hand, sending me into a swirl of pain. He forced me to face him as he grinned at me and his grubby fingers thrust between my legs. With an angry push of his cock, he entered me and I felt as if my body were being torn apart. More than that, I felt my soul was too and that I might never be able to piece it together again. I felt stolen. My insides were nothing but dirt.
The man licked up my face with his sour, wet tongue as he thrust hard in me, the pain almost splintering, like it was breaking off into slivers that dug deeper and deeper. I closed my eyes tight and did what I could to go off into another place, like I had done before, but that place felt out of reach. As he jabbed himself inside me over and over again, like a sweating, fat pig, his greasy hands clawing painfully at my breasts, only then did I hear Esteban.
“That’s enough,” Esteban said loudly from behind me. “Pull out of her, you fuck. She’s not getting fucking pregnant by someone like you.”
The man sneered at me, on the verge of coming, but did as he was told. He then proceeded to jack off until he was coming all over my body, his semen mixing with the blood. After a satisfied grunt, he leaned in close to me, snorted up something deep from his throat and spit it directly in my face.
I flinched and he laughed loudly in my face – “fucking puta” – before walking away.
“Have you learned your lesson yet, Luisa?” Esteban asked and then he appeared in front of me. His shaggy, highlighted hair fell across his face, making him look younger, something I hated. I hated that a monster could walk around in this disguise, pretending to be human when he was anything but.
I didn’t say anything. I could barely breathe from the pain.