Page 82 of Forbidden Fate

One who raised me when my mother couldn’t. Two who remind me of those who fussed over me and slipped me sweets when Señora wasn’t looking. And one who has been under my skin from the second I saw her in Adriana’s house in Texas.

Robin.

She’s bewitched me.

I don’t like that word. It sounds ridiculous. Weak. Like something a boy would say about a woman he has no business wanting.

But it’s the only word that fits.

I noticed her before I meant to. I wanted to hear her voice before I should have cared if she spoke. I wanted to know what she was thinking, even when it was probably how to claw my eyes out and run.

Now she sits next to me, her skin still too pale, her eyes still too sharp. The robe is too big on her. It slips off one shoulder every few minutes, and every time it does, she jerks it back into place.

She doesn’t belong here.

But somehow, at this table, she fits.

Not because this place is safe. It’s safer than Vega’s world, but safety is always temporary. Especially here. He knows this is the first place I’ll go, which means we need to move quickly.

Robin knows it too. She watches the windows when she thinks no one notices. And she still looks at me with distrust.

I don’t blame her.

I wouldn’t trust me either.

I take a sip of coffee, and the warmth spreads through my chest.

Only then do I realize how cold I’ve been.

Not from the night. Not from the drive. Not from the fear of getting caught with Vega’s prisoner.

Before that.

Long before that.

I’ve been on edge from the moment I entered Vega’s employ. I just didn’t know it. It became the air I breathed. The way I learned never to enjoy any moment because the next one might require violence. Vega’s world put monsters in tailored suits and taught boys like me that loyalty was all that mattered.

I thought I was used to it.

I thought the constant tension was just part of life.

But sitting here, listening to Mercedes and Esmeralda tell Robin their stories, I remember a different life.

A life full of women who knew how to laugh even when their bodies were used up.

Prostitutes aren’t respected. I learned long ago that people—even the men who came to the brothel—spit the word out with contempt.

My mother never said it that way.

“Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus’s most loyal followers,” she told me once. “Do you know that, mi corazón?”

I shook my head.

“She was a woman men judged,” Mamá said. “But Jesus accepted her. The poor. The meek. The broken. The women men threw away. He accepted them all.” She took my face in her hands. “We are all God’s children, Cruz. Don’t ever let anyone make you believe different.”

I was never particularly religious.

Not like Mamá. Not like Señora V, who still lights candles in the corner and mutters prayers under her breath when she thinks no one hears.