CHAPTER ONE

Three months earlier

“Excuse me, miss?”

I sighed and took a moment to compose myself before I slowly turned around, reminding myself to respond in English.

“Yes?”

The man and his buddies were staring at me with that stupid ogling look they had the whole time they were here. I was happy when they finally asked for the bill, just wanting them out of the bar and back to their drunken tourist festivities or whatever the white men got up to in this damned city of Cabo San Lucas. But it seemed I wasn’t free yet.

The guy who called me, the most obnoxious of the group, wagged his brows at me and nodded at a spot behind me.

“You dropped something.”

I opened my mouth to say something but shut it. I looked down at my feet, then behind me. My pencil was on the ground. Not that I ever needed it to remember orders anymore.

“Thanks,” I said, and bent down to pick it up. Immediately the guys snorted and I quickly snapped back up. Of course they’d wanted me to pick it up—my uniform at Cabo Cocktails consisted of the shortest skirt ever.

I ignored them, not even bothering to turn around again, and made my way back to the bar. I slammed my bill holder on the counter and eyed the receipt. The little jerks hadn’t even tipped me. Not that it was customary in Mexico, but with Americans in a tourist town, you always expected it.

“Stiffed again?” said Camila.

I looked over at her as she snapped the cap off of two bottles of beer. As usual, my colleague had an impish smirk on her pixie-like face. She always got the tips, maybe because she was always smiling.

“Yeah,” I said, wiping the sweat off my brow. The fan beat overhead but it was always a bit too hot in the bar, didn’t matter what time of the year it was. I turned around and eyed the boys who were still at the table, laughing and occasionally looking my way. “Those assholes over there.”

“You know, if you just joke with them and smile sometimes, they’d probably tip you more,” she said innocently, putting her beers on a tray.

I put my hand on my hip. “The minute I smile or play nice with them is the minute they take advantage of me. I don’t want to give them the wrong idea.”

“Luisa, I’m really starting to think you’re afraid of men.”

That bothered me a bit. “So? Aren’t you?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m a lesbian because I like pussy, not because men scare me.” And with that she took the beers over to her waiting table.

I pressed my hand on the back of my neck, trying to alleviate the constant strain I felt there. It was nearly eleven o’ clock at night, and I had been on my feet for twelve hours. I had three more hours of this before I could go home, which meant a forty-minute drive to San Jose del Cabo where I lived with my parents.

Which reminded me. My mother’s birthday was tomorrow and I knew she deserved something special. We didn’t have much money—I was the breadwinner at the house since my father suffered from early onset Alzheimer’s and my mother was blind. She was healthy otherwise, but neither she nor my father could work, which meant everything fell on me. It was a lot for a twenty-three year old but I’d been working since I was a child; even when my father was able to hold a job it was never a high paying one. I was used to poverty and I was used to hard work.

I just could never get used to being treated like a piece of meat. I could never get used to the constant fear. And working at Cabo Cocktails, working for my boss, Bruno Corchado, meant I’d been dealing with those two things since I was twenty. And now, because the only way I could get my mother a gift tomorrow would be to ask for an advance on my paycheck, I was walking right into the lion’s den.

I took a deep breath, looked around to see if any new patrons had come in, and when I saw they hadn’t, I straightened my shirt, pulling it up around my cleavage, and walked around the corner to Bruno’s office.

I gave three quick raps on it and stood back. I hadn’t seen him much today so I wasn’t sure what kind of mood he was in. I was hoping for generous and disinterested but knew that was pressing my luck a little bit. At this time of night he was usually drunk and a jackass. Or a lecherous pervert.

I swallowed hard as I heard him bark, “Come in!”

I opened the door and poked my head in. “Bruno?” I asked.

He was sitting at his desk, a row of empty beer bottles beside him, going over the ledger. He looked at me with red eyes, his head swaying from side to side, and I immediately knew I’d made a mistake. “Luisa. My beauty queen. Come on in.” He nodded at the door. “And shut that behind you.”

My heart rate started to pick up. I’d been in this exact situation too many times and knew this was going to end very badly. Still, I needed this favor. I did as he asked, the door shutting like a cell door, and walked two steps toward him, hoping I could keep my distance.

Bruno wasn’t a bad looking guy. He was in his late thirties, an apparent family man, though he never wore his ring at work and told every waitress that his marriage was open. We’d never seen his wife, or his children for that matter—we weren’t even sure if they lived in the city, and none of us cared enough to ask. Many men operated businesses elsewhere and only visited their families on the weekends.

But just because he wasn’t bad looking, didn’t mean he wasn’t bad.

“What is it, Miss Los Cabos?” he asked, stroking his chin and looking me up and down with drunken eyes. “You know, I was Googling you the other night and I found a picture of you winning that beauty queen contest. What were you, eighteen? Your tits were higher back then.”

I bit down on my tongue to stop me from saying something that would probably get me fired. Work in the waitressing industry in Cabo was hard these days and not easy to come by. Damned economy in America meant the tourists weren’t coming here as much.

I ignored his remark and ignored that his eyes were still fixed on my breasts. I licked my lips quickly and said, “I was wondering if I could ask a favor.”

He raised his brows and gave me a sloppy grin, teeth gleaming with opportunity. “Well, well, well. What is it this time? Time off to take your dad to the hospital again? Something wrong with your mother?”

I dug my nails into the palm of my hand. “No. But it does involve my mother. It’s her birthday tomorrow and I would like to get her a gift. I was wondering if I could get an advance on my wages. Two hundred pesos.”

He laughed. “What are you buying for your mother for two hundred pesos? She’s blind, isn’t she?”

It took everything I had to keep it together. “It’s a Kobo. An e-reader. A used one. I can buy audiobooks for her on it. She doesn’t like Braille so much anymore with her arthritis.”

“Well aren’t you just the perfect daughter. You must be the apple of her eye.”

His choice of words wasn’t lost on me. “They’ve given so much to me over the years just to keep food on the table. It’s the least I can do in return.”

He stared at me for a few heavy moments before picking up his beer and having a long swig of it. “And what will you do for me in return?”

This was what I feared. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “You can have my word that I’ll pay you back. Dock it out of my paycheck.”

He grinned, though there was only malice in his eyes. “Oh, you’ll pay me back. I know you will. I will take it from you before you have a chance. But I mean, what are you going to do for me to thank me for being such a wonderful and generous boss?”

I took in a deep breath. I didn’t have much choice but I still had a choice. “I don’t know. What did you have in mind? An extra shift?”

Bruno snorted and got out of his chair. He wasn’t a tall man, but I was only 5’2” and he still towered over me. His eyes became lazy with lust and a bit of spittle dripped out of the corner of his mouth. “Not an extra shift. Tell me, Luisa, why is it that every single woman here, except for the dyke, has been with me and you haven’t?”

It felt like a piece of dry toast was lodged in my throat. “Because you’re not my type.”

He raised his brow then nodded as if this whole thing was an elaborate joke. “I’m starting to think you don’t have a type, Luisa. That you just like to be a tease. I see you every day, walking around in that outfit, flashing those legs and ass, showing those tits. You’re fucking beautiful and you know it. But you don’t fuck.”

“This is the uniform you gave me.”

“And yet you wear it better than any of those other girls. The men all come here to look at you. They want you. And you’re such a stuck-up bitch that you can’t even pretend to be nice. If you did, you wouldn’t be here asking me for money. You’d be paying for everything with your tips. And your tits.”

“This was a mistake,” I said, feeling dizzy. I turned around, ready to leave. He reached out and grabbed my arm, his fingers digging into it.

“It is a mistake to leave,” he said, pulling me close to him. He smelled like beer and chili, and it made my stomach roll. “I promise to give you your money, you just have to give me something.” He read the fear on my face. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to see what others do not. I want to feel you.”

I didn’t know what to do. He dug his nails into mine and then he pushed me back. “Take off your shirt.”

I opened my mouth to say no. I had to say no. In the past he had grabbed my ass, rubbed his erection against me, had kissed me briefly on the mouth, and made an attempt to grope my breasts. But he’d never told me to take my shirt off. This was too much, and yet I thought, I felt, if I could just do it and go to some other place in my head, I would be okay. I wouldn’t be a whore. I would still be a virgin. I would still be pure and intact.