Page 1 of Devious Lies

PROLOGUE-MIA/MARIA

Six years ago…

I smile as I join my mom in the kitchen. It smells delicious in here.

Like pozole rojo, and my mouth is watering.

It’s my favorite soup, and she always makes it when I come home from school.

This break is longer because it’s the end of the first semester and I’ll be home through Christmas all the way through the Epiphany, and another week and a half after that.

In fact, I don’t go back until January 17th.

“Mia! You snuck up on me,” Mom says, and clutches her hand to her chest before turning to embrace me.

“Mami, I missed you,” I tell her as I hug her back.

“I’m so glad you’re home. Did you bring any laundry?”

I snort.

Of course, I did.

It’s my fourth year at Monmouth University and though I’m still in New Jersey, the drive to Union City from campus is too long to commute. I walk to the small laundry room just off the kitchen in our tiny two-story house.

My father makes good money, and we’re one of the few homeowners on our street. The others just rent.

I’m not sure what he does, but I know he works for the Sanchez family. Technically, we aren’t related, but my dad and the head of their family come from the same small town in Mexico, so I grew up thinking they’re our cousins.

Papi is a good man, regardless of what he does. He loves my mother and me and treats us with respect and kindness.

I’m lucky to have both my parents. Not a lot of girls I know from the neighborhood can say the same.

He is protective, though. He didn’t want me to dorm, but he relented after I received a scholarship. I’ll be the first one in my family to get a college degree, and my father’s pride in me outweighs his overprotective fatherly instincts.

I’m studying English literature and having an excellent time doing it. I know it’s not the kind of major that will make me a lot of money, but I don’t know what I want to do yet.

Plus, I like reading.

“So, how are things?” Mami continues the conversation.

“Good,” I tell her, and then I go on to chat about my roommate and finals.

After a little while, I help Mami cook. I’ve always loved helping in the kitchen since I was a kid.

I slice the radishes and limes, mincing cilantro and prepping all the toppings for the pozole rojo. She has a pot with homemade tamales simmering on the stove and I can smell pork roasting in the oven.

Dinner is going to be fantastic, and I can’t wait. My mother isn’t Mexican, but she learned to cook like a local for my father.

She’s half Puerto Rican and half Italian and Irish. I suppose that makes me some kind of mutt, but that’s New Jersey. Lots of immigrants have rolled through the Garden State over the last two hundred years and I’m proud of what I am.

I love having multiple ethnicities in my background. I was born Mia Alejandra Maria Lopez. It’s a mouthful, but whatever. My father is Emiliano Lopez. My mother’s name is Celia.

Papi works for Enrico Sanchez.

Why is that important?

It’s important because my father is a soldier for the Sanchez cartel. More than that. He is a general, running his own battalion of soldiers, and his position is essential to the businessman’s illegal empire.

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