Consumed by Desire: A Dark Mafia Romance

Chapter 1

Olivia

The quiet back seat of Papa’s Range Rover feels like a hearse on the way to my own funeral.

The air conditioning blasts and a partition’s up between the driver and Papa and me. My seatbelt feels like a tether keeping me tied down to the inside of a coffin, and the tinted glass is like the walls of my pinewood box. Soon they’ll toss dirt over my face and forget all about me, and for what? The Cuevas family, Papa would say. The only thing that matters.

We don’t speak. What’s there left to say? I did all my screaming and crying already back in Mexico on my papa’s estate where the bitter sun beat down against my skin and Papa’s guards stood around talking about soccer and wondering when the argument would be over. Their shadows were long ago the tile mosaic set around the pool as Papa tried to explain how this was the right thing to do. I hated him then and I hate him now, and for all that I still can’t seem to bring myself to understand.

Papa’s breathing like a bear. He’s a hairy man with dark tan skin from spending so much time outside. He’s got on a short-sleeve polo shirt tucked into dark slacks and dark dress shoes and a watch that costs more than the car. His gold chain with the diamond-studded crucifix attached at the end is tucked into his shirt but he’ll take it out and touch it and kiss it when it’s time to do the deed. For good luck, he’ll say. He loves that cross more than he loves me. He wouldn’t sell that damn thing if someone put a gun to his head.

I wish Manuel was here to tell Papa off.

“When you see him, I expect you to behave.” Papa doesn’t look at me. He stares out the window as Phoenix, Arizona, flashes past: squat, gray, squalid buildings, faux-Southwest style structures with stucco and cacti and lots of little pebbles, not at all like I remembered. This place was massive, mythic. It’s been ten years since I was last in this city and back then I thought it was home. It was the only place I ever knew.

Now it feels foreign, like Mexico when we were forced to flee across the border in the middle of the night. Papa clutched me against his side then and promised we’d come back.

Now we’re back and I wish everything were different.

“I don’t even know who he is,” I say, keeping my back turned. Let Papa speak to the back of my head. It’ll annoy him and maybe earn me a slap, but what’s it matter now? One last parting strike for his lovely daughter. A gift worthy of a man like Gerardo Cuevas.

“Don’t start this again.” He sounds annoyed and I feel a childish spike of vindication.

“It’s the truth though, Papa. You plan on selling me to some American—”

“Not long ago, you called yourself American, let me remind you.”

I grimace but keep my eyes locked on the scenery. The sky’s like a painter’s blue and the sun’s like an oven coil. Everything’s so spread out and barren, a city stretched to its thinnest across an inhospitable desert: there’s a strange optimism about this place, like despite how badly the outside world wants to cook all the people living here, they keep on going like it’s nothing, like it isn’t some big toaster inhospitable to humanity.

“American, Mexican, you’re selling me to a stranger. That’s the point I’m trying to make.” I feel the argument roll through my shoulders. God, how I shouted at him yesterday, in a way I’ve never shouted at him before in my life: You bastard, you thief, you’re stealing my life from me, you’re treating me like a piece of property, like I’m a slave. I said all that and a lot more. I said things he would never have allowed from any man, and I said it in front of his soldiers. I humiliated him, and my papa took it, all because he knew how horrible it is to make me come here and marry a stranger. I knew it hurt him but what else could I do? When Papa came and said he found a husband for me and he didn’t plan on telling me who, I lost my mind.

How could I marry a man I didn’t know? How could he do this to me, the only flesh and blood he’s got left? This man, who has a shrine to every saint and every ancestor scattered across his home, little niches filled with candles, painted images of the Virgin Mary, burning incense, offerings of fruit and brightly colored flower blooms. This man who says family is everything. This man wants to sell all that he has left in the world.