Page 193 of The Sins of Noelle

“What do you mean? What do you have in mind?”

“What do the people around the hacienda think of me?” Noelle suddenly asked.

Lucero tilted her head to the side as she studied her.

“The foreign bitch,” she answered with a straight face.

“They hate me, don’t they? Even when they saw me with bruises all over my face, they still hated me.”

Reluctantly, Lucero nodded.

“I don’t blame them. To them, Iama foreigner, especially someone who doesn’t seem to obey their master. But what if I wasn’t?”

“I don’t follow,” Lucero frowned.

“What I mean,” the corners of her mouth curled up, “if I want to get out of here alive, I need to have the same power Sergio has. More, even.”

“But Noelle… You must know that is impossible.”

“No, it’s not,” Noelle smiled, a plan slowly unfolding in her mind. “I just need to become a symbol, too.”

23Noelle

The months slowly trickled by and Noelle did her best to learn more about the hacienda while keeping her distance from Sergio. She did her best to stay out of his way, hoping he would forget about her existence and the grudge he carried for her. After all, that was the only way she could put her plans into motion without being interrupted.

Luckily for her, though, Sergio soon became embroiled in a drug deal gone wrong at the border with Texas and split his time between the hacienda and up north.

“You’re sure about this?” Lucero asked worriedly as she watched Noelle put on a pair of loose pants and a light shirt.

She tied her hair tightly at her nape before taking a small flashlight and checking if it worked.

“I’ve been thinking about this for months now. It’s the only way I can escape the curse of my position,” Noelle pursed her lips.

Though she hadn’t interacted much with Sergio, she’d had enough time to see just what the people at the hacienda thought of her.

Whenever she walked by the staff, they didn’t hide their disdain of her, cursing her in Spanish and sometimes even spitting on her.

At first, she’d thought that their behavior was due to the fact that she was a foreigner where all Sergio’s previous wives had been local women or from neighboring regions. Yet as the situation escalated, Noelle had to ask herself if there wasn’t something more. After all, why would they be so against a foreigner?

They could ignore her, and they could not like her, but it seemed that theydetestedher.

It was only a few months after the wedding that she realized what the issue was.

Though maybe a few had had issues with her being an outsider, their abhorrence of her had resulted from the fact that they believed her to be responsible for the drought that had taken over the region.

Noelle had been shocked when she’d heard the whispers. But slowly, she’d come to realizewhythey believed it to be so. Just like why they believed Sergio to be some god who came to save them from their human woes.

It was all embedded in the culture.

The god could bring about the rain, but an evil spirit could come and take it away.

And since Noelle was the only new visitor, who also happened to be an outsider, she automatically became the evil they used to explain their lack of irrigation.

Sergio, on his end, had been unable to do much due to his embroilment in the cartel business. But that hadn’t stopped Noelle from figuring outhowhe did it in the first place.

Nuevo León had some very arid regions, and the area where the hacienda and its neighboring villages were located happened to be one of them. The locals lived off their fields, and as Lucero had recounted, since Sergio had taken over power, there had never been such a period of drought before.

Since nature wasn’t forthcoming with rain, Noelle knew that Sergio must have been doingsomethingto ensure the fields were always irrigated. And with that thought in mind, she’d begun her exploration.

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