“Javier doesn’t run my life,” he said. “And Lucía…” he closed his eyes briefly, as if holding something back, something he was struggling not to say. “Things have changed, María.”He pulled off his leather gloves with a sharp gesture, the kind of movement that suggested purpose.
“Get in the car,” he repeated, his tone brooking no argument. “I’m not here to rescue you out of pity. I’m here because I need your help.”I looked at him suspiciously, my street-honed instinct for danger suddenly activated.
“My help? I have nothing. I’m nobody,” I said, stating what felt like obvious fact.He leaned closer, lowering his voice so that only I could hear him above the ambient noise of the city.
“Exactly,” he said. “Because to them, you’re dead. Because you don’t count. Because no one will suspect you.”
A cold shiver ran down my spine, and it had nothing to do with the February weather.
“Suspect me of what?” I asked, though part of me already understood.Ernesto held my gaze, his eyes dark and tired in a way that suggested he hadn’t slept well in a very long time.
“María,” he said with a coldness I had never heard from him before, “I need you to help me destroy my own son.”The Proposition
I sat in the back seat of the SUV, clutching my backpack against my chest as if it were a shield, the only physical object that still represented my life as it was. The interior of the car smelled of new leather and the subtle, expensive cologne that I remembered always surrounding Ernesto. Through the tinted windows I watched the underpass fade into the distance, its dirty silhouette shrinking as we drove toward the illuminated neighborhoods of Los Angeles, toward a world I’d thought I’d permanently left behind.
“Take this,” Ernesto said, handing me a bottle of water and a chocolate bar, as if he understood that my immediate needs took precedence over everything else.I devoured the food in silence, feeling the warmth and sugar rush to my head, mixed with a dull shame about the desperation with which I consumed it. He watched me out of the corner of his eye, as if trying to reconcile two different versions of me—the woman in the white wedding dress who’d once called him “Dad” in the church, and the ragged woman shaking slightly with hunger in his luxury car.
“Where are we going?” I finally asked, my voice hoarse from disuse.
“Home,” he replied. “My house. The one in Brentwood. You’ve been there before.”The villa with the infinity pool, the one where summers smelled of chlorine and grilled steaks and the particular happiness of people who’d never had to worry about money. I remembered the nights sipping gin and tonics on the terrace, Javier telling jokes that made everyone laugh, Lucía… Lucía sharing confidences about her failed relationships, about how she was always unlucky in love, about how she envied what I had with Javier.
