“How many were there … that you knew about?”
“You want their names?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. Do you?”
“Let’s see,” Valencia paused, and put her hand on her chin. “There was Manuela, and Ana Sofia, and Guadalupe, and Agustina—”
“Vee!” Geno held up his hand to stop her. “I think I get the point.”
“Anyway, she’s got a bag full of his clothes and she throws them at my feet, cursing at me in Portuguese. Cadela, você pode tê-lo, sua cadela. O filho da puta me bate. Muita cocaína, ele não pode continuar, was what she kept screaming at me. At the time, I had no idea what she was saying, until one of the maids told me. After that, those words stayed in my mind because they would become my life.”
“What does it mean?”
“Bitch, you can have him, you bitch. The son of a bitch beats me. Too much cocaine, he can’t keep it up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Believe me, so was I.” Valencia poured them both another drink and she took a sip. “I asked him about it, and he said that she was lying, he barely knew that woman. That she was a friend of his cousin Pérez.”
“What happened after that?”
“I just told you. That became my life and one night I had had enough. I told him that I was leaving. That I was tired of him being gone all the time; and when he was here, he was a drunk that couldn’t get it up.”
“I bet that didn’t go over well.”
“No, Geno. He beat me, and then he raped me, and then he left.”
“I’m sorry,” Geno said, because he didn’t know what else to say. All this time, he thought that when Valencia left him dirt broke and fucked up, as he liked to say, that she had moved to paradise and was living the life of a queen. Geno had no idea that it was her life that was fucked up.
“So, there I am, crying. I had just got beaten and raped, my eye is swollen, my lip is bleeding, and my clothes are torn. I’m trying to cover myself, and Ezequiel Simmonds walks in my room and sits down on the bed next to me.”
“Who is he?”
“My nightmare.” She took a sip. “He’s an enforcer for The Comodoro Cartel. He tells me that Gustavo was becoming a problem for more than just me. But since he is Pérez’s cousin, that most people are afraid to do anything to him out of fear.”
“Pérez? He the boss?”
She shook her head. “No, his uncles, Juan Esteban Ferreira and Sebastián Esteban Ferreira, run the cartel.”
“Go ahead.”
“He said that he wasn’t afraid of Pérez and he would make all my problems go away, and all I had to do was ask him … and do one thing for him. I said, ‘Kill him,’ and I never saw Gustavo again. Three weeks later, they found his body in the trunk of an abandoned car when it started to smell.”
“What did he want you to do?”
Valencia just looked at him as if he should have known the answer. “He wanted me.” She finished her drink. “He pulled me up from the bed, spun me around, ripped the rest of my dress off, and I got raped for the second time that night.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to keep saying that.”
“I don’t know what else to say, and I am sorry this happened to you.”
“I am too.” She touched his hand. “After that, I stayed down there for a few months, playing the grieving widow for as long as I could stand it, and then I came back to the states and tried to restart my life,” she paused. “And yes, Geno, I did look for you.”
“Thank you.”
“I thought a lot about you those days, wishing I had chosen with my heart instead of my head.”