Page 1 of Gilded Cage (Kovalyov Bratva 1)

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Esme

A SECRET LOCATION ON THE PACIFIC COAST OF MEXICO

I look around at my bedroom and fight the urge to scream.

It’s beautiful by any measure. The finest furniture. The most expensive art.

But I see it for what it really is: a gilded fucking cage.

My eyes settle on the picture board I set up when I was fifteen years old. I still remember the first thing I stuck up there—a glossy postcard of Florence, Italy.

Seven years have passed since I first pinned it up. The postcard is no longer glossy. It stares back at me, old and faded, a constant reminder of the invisible steel bars that surround my life.

The board shows all the places I’ve always wanted to go. The Coliseum in Rome. The Great Wall of China. The pyramids in Egypt.

But they’re all just fantasies. I’ve only left my father’s home once.

The picture of that lone trip is up there, too. I reach up and take it down.

In the photograph, my older brother, Cesar, stands beside me, his arm wrapped protectively around my shoulders. The Eiffel Tower pierces the low clouds behind us.

We’re both smiling.

Oblivious to the future.

Oblivious to how little time he and I had left together.

It’s been years since Cesar’s death and yet it still hurts to think about him.

You should be here with me,I think. Maybe then things would be different.

My fingers caress Cesar’s face for a moment. But when tears start to prick at the corners of my eyes, I pin the picture back up on the bulletin board—facedown, so I don’t have to look at it and remember everything I’ve lost.

A knock on my door interrupts my thoughts.

I turn to face the door. “Yes?”

“Señorita Esme, your father requests your presence downstairs in the formal sitting room.”

The muffled voice belongs to Sofia, one of the maids who works here at my father’s compound. I close my eyes for a moment and breathe deeply.

The only reason Papa would “request” my presence in the formal sitting room is so I can be his show pony.

My father likes to flaunt his possessions.

And unfortunately for me, I’m his crown jewel.

I open the door and come face to face with the woman. She’s small, Mexican, shy, beautiful.

“I guess I shouldn’t ‘request’ that he go fuck himself, should I?” I drawl.

Sofia flinches like I slapped her.

It’s just a joke, of course. But she’s seen what my father is capable of.

We both know that saying that to his face would earn me a month in the cellar.

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