The crossing at Laredo had been seamless. ICE, Border Patrol, Mexican customs officers—none of their focus was on people being smuggled south across the border.
So here Anjelina was, away from the reach of her father or any law and order she had ever known, trapped in the gilded cage of this god-awful estate that felt more like an homage to Scarface than anything of the real world.
Gaudy gold sconces, Carrara marble floors, a bed the size of a small boat on which she floated like Ophelia in the stream in that one painting Mr. Hirsh kept on the homeroom wall. Anjelina felt just as lifeless, just as transformed. One hand resting on her chest, one on her stomach, willing her heart to slow. It thumped against her palm as if begging to be let out.
She’d been ensconced in an upstairs corner room with two large windows facing the front and side of the mansion. Between billowing tassel curtains parted like a bodice, she could see men patrolling the resortlike grounds with assault rifles. A swimming pool out of some MTV party show, rock waterfalls and bikinied girls with glazed eyes and flat laughs. And somewhere the one everyone talked about. The one everyone feared.
El Moreno.
The Dark Man.
She couldn’t see him, but she heard the low hum of his voice, how the others hushed in reverence when he spoke, and she could make out a curling wisp of cigar smoke lifting through the beams of the pergola.
She turned her head from the window and stared at the high ceiling. A garish chandelier billowing with glass beads. Or maybe they were diamonds.
She’d learned from her father that wealth could be limitless. It could be so large that it became an abyss impossible to fill.
She wasn’t crying, not exactly, but she felt tears sliding down her temples. She couldn’t muster the strength to sob. She felt the specter of death hovering about her. In a sense she had died already and could not know if she’d be reborn.
With her fingertips she pressed on the puffy edges of her eyes. She ached all the way through, terror soaking her to the bone. She’d never imagined she could feel like this.
From outside, she heard the voice once more. She couldn’t make out the words but their cadence was intense, aggressive, drug-fueled. Only the one voice spoke. There was silence for El Moreno.
She turned away from the window onto her side in the fetal position. She clutched her stomach.
And at last she sobbed.