Page 153 of When Lies Unfold

When he leaves my bedroom, slamming the door behind him, I wonder what’s gotten into him. Perhaps now that he tried that, he won’t do it again, seeing as how terrible it turned out. Maybe he’ll even give me a reprieve of some sort.

I’m irrevocably wrong, because the next day, he punishes me in a way I could’ve never imagined.

Zip-tied and hung by my cinched wrists, I’m beaten with a crowbar. This is when my uterus ruptures.

This is the night he steals my ability to ever have children.

Even this, though, I find a way to accept. Because there’s no way I want to bring a child into this kind of world.

It isn’t until the day he steals my gift—my dream—from me that I feel as if he shatters my entire existence.

He straps me to the metal table as if I’m a patient on the verge of a mental breakdown. My head, body, arms, legs—everything is restrained.

His face looms over mine, and with that maniacal smirk I’ve come to dread, he informs me that he knows I want to leave him. That he heard me whimpering about it in my sleep.

His mouth widens in a grin that makes my blood turn to ice. “You’ll never leave, because what would you do without me?” He raises his hands and the objects he holds come into view. A wide mallet and a thin piece of rebar.

Thin by normal standards. Thick if you’re driving it into someone’s flesh.

I thought I knew pain from all the previous torture I endured.

Until now.

Until he hammers the first few centimeters of the metal through the center of my dominant hand—my left. He knows this, because he watched me perform surgical procedures countless times on his men.

He knows that my left hand is the steadiest and most precise. My skilled precision is what’s received accolades from my professors.

He knows what destroying my hand will do.

But Hidalgo is evil enough not to stop there. I know this with every fiber of my being. I know he’ll continue to diminish my will to live. He’ll find other ways to punish me for whatever fucked-up reason he conjures.

I promise myself, in this moment, that I’ll do anything to escape him.

Anything.

PRESENT

“I stand by what I said before.” Santy’s voice is a low rumble, blanketed with affection.

With two fingers beneath my chin, he urges me to peer up at him. Once I do, all breath evaporates from my lungs at the blatant affection etched on his features. He smooths back my hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear. “No doubt about it, my woman’s a warrior.”

I greedily soak up his words and tender touch, but I know the truth.

Rosa Carrera wasn’t a warrior. She waited for someone else to give her a way out. Otherwise, she would’ve continued to turn the other cheek. She would’ve continued to live her life filled with regrets.

But these past few years, I’ve made it a point to hone myself into the kind of woman I’m proud of. The kind of woman who will be a reckoning force for the most evil men on this earth.

I may not have been born Lola Arias, but I’m more her than Rosa. I’ve become a woman who doesn’t yield to anyone.

I’m a woman who finds her own way out. Who paves her own way.

It’s more important now than ever before to remind myself that I can take on challenges and risks I would’ve previously balked at.

Sudden clarity and peace settle over me, and I lift up and press my lips to Santy’s. Because I know what needs to be done.

This is it.

I’m prepared to finalize Rosa Carrera’s last chapter.

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