For our honeymoon, Salvador and I headed to the coast to a quiet little village that was completely under his jurisdiction, where he had a massive beachfront property. I barely had any time to say goodbye to my mother and father, my hands still clasping theirs, holding on for dear life, as I was ushered away from the ceremony, flowers in my hair, and into the waiting limousine.
It was bulletproof. But I was not.
Salvador and I sat in the back, the only inhabitants, while I craned my neck around and watched as my parents disappeared from sight, two frail frames against the relentless sun.
“That was rude of me,” I said, even though I knew it was best to keep my mouth shut. I wished my voice wasn’t shaking. “To just leave them like that.” It was more than rude; it frightened me more than anything else to have them out of my reach, so fast and so soon.
Salvador turned in his seat to face me. He looked almost handsome in his tuxedo, his hair slicked back, his mustache trimmed. His eyes though, they always betrayed him. They were frazzled, sparking, like bad wiring.
“You’re my wife now,” he said with a grin that was far too wicked to be genuine. “You no longer answer to your parents, you answer to me.”
I swallowed uneasily, trying to decide on whether to wear defiance or pleading compliance on my face. It was a split-second decision and defiance won out.
It got me a smack across the face.
I took a few moments, my newly ringed hand on my cheek, trying to soothe the throbbing. I stared at Salvador in dumb shock. I knew that everything had been for show so far, I just had no idea it would turn to the truth so fast.
“You answer to me,” he repeated, his eyes growing thinner and hard as steel. “That means no talking back.”
I opened my mouth and he immediately backhanded me again, harder this time, enough that I saw lights flashing behind my eyes, my teeth biting down on my tongue as the back of my head hit the seat rest. I tried not to panic, tried my hardest to remain composed all while wanting to cry out from the pain. The fear was greater than I’d ever known.
After a moment, I straightened up in my seat, inching away from him. He only leered at me, as if the whole thing was one giant joke. Perhaps it was.
“When I say no talking back,” he said, running his fingers over his mustache, “I mean it, like I mean everything I say. We can have a nice, happy marriage if you learn to behave. I will still give you the world and you will want for nothing. But there are rules that you will have to follow. Nothing is free in this life, do you understand?”
I nodded, not daring to speak.
Suddenly he shot forward and was in my face, a vein throbbing at his temple. “I said, do you understand!?” he screamed, spittle flying onto me.
I shut my eyes tight, as if it would make him go away. I felt like the life was being drained out of me with every second that I spent in that limo, that this was the start of a slow and painful death. And I had willingly walked into it.
You’re doing this for your parents, I told myself, trying to draw myself inward to where it was dark, warm, and safe. Remember that. Remember whose happiness you are buying.
“Look at me,” Salvador said, his voice quiet now, though I could feel his hot breath on my skin. “You have to look at me when I’m talking to you. That is one of the rules.” He grabbed my chin and squeezed hard enough to make my eyes flutter open. I stared at him blankly, not wanting to really see him. My husband.
“The other rule,” he went on, softer now, “is that you will not talk back. You will also be loyal and you will not stray. You will not even look at other men. For your own protection, you will not be allowed to have any friends that I do not choose for you. You will not be able to leave the house on your own. You will always stay thin and beautiful, with a big smile for everyone you meet. And you will not deny me my rights as a husband.” He licked his lips as he said that. “Now. Do. You. Under. Stand?”
I did understand. The life of Luisa Chavez was really and truly over.
There was only Luisa Reyes now.
And she was about to live a life of pain.
Salvador took my virginity in the back of that limo, minutes before we even reached the beach house. It happened quickly, and for that I was glad. It didn’t lessen the pain—the horrible, ripping pain—but it meant I didn’t have to suffer the humiliation of my first time for too long.
He wasn’t kind, he wasn’t gentle, he wasn’t generous. If that’s what sex was, I wondered how anyone could enjoy it. He treated my body like a piece of meat, a slice of property. I had no claim to it, and that’s what he wanted to show me, again and again and again. I had no say, no rights. I was his, whether I wanted to be or not, and he would have me anytime he wanted. My own feelings and desires didn’t matter.
I didn’t want to the second time. I was sore, oh so sore, and trying to sleep in, afraid to face him and my first morning as his wife. But Salvador didn’t believe in the word no. It didn’t matter how many times I said it, if I struggled … in fact, he liked it when I did. He’d strip his bloated, ugly body naked and force himself on me and into me with a grin on his face that not even his mother could love.
If he even had a mother. I couldn’t imagine anyone ever raising him. When I tried to picture him as a young boy, I knew there would have been no innocence in his heart. He’d have been the one to put firecrackers in dogs’ mouths, to take the fights in the playground too far, to spit in his grandmother’s food. I tried to think about these things, trying to figure out how one becomes such a vile, hateful thing, while he violated me from the inside out.
It wasn’t enough that I was clearly in pain and vulnerable while this happened—if I struggled in the least, he would assert his dominance in other ways.
“Mrs. Reyes,” the housekeeper called out from the balcony behind me. I was sitting on the beach, the warm Pacific lapping at my feet and soaking the ends of my dress. I’d been sitting there for hours, and I knew she was calling me in for lunch. But I couldn’t eat even if I tried.
I ignored her and stared down at my arms, at the marks and bruises up and down them, ugly purples and yellows from the last few days, so bright in the daylight. For a split second there was so much terror filling up my chest like ice water that I thought about running straight into the ocean and trying to swim until I drowned.
But that would be nearly impossible. To the left of me, standing half-hidden in the palms, was one set of guards, watching the property and watching me. I couldn’t see who was to my right, further down the beach, but I did know that they wouldn’t let me drown.