CHAPTER 1: THE PETALS OF SAN CRISTÓBAL

POV: Xitllali De La Rosa (living as "Esperanza")

It's freezing in San Cristóbal this morning. The streets are still wet from last night's rain, and everything smells like damp earth and pine.

I open my flower shop, La Calandria, at five every morning.

The streets are still dark at that hour, and the lock on the door is always cold against my fingers. I never bother wearing gloves because the sting from the cold always wakes me up better than coffee does. It reminds me that I am here, standing on solid ground, miles away from the life that I ran away from.

The shop is very quiet when I step inside. The flowers are waiting where I left them, and for a while, there is nobody else around.

It's just me in here, completely alone as usual.

I tucked a strand of dark hair behind my ear and glanced out the window. It's something I've been doing for years now. I always check out the window, the streets, and watch the people outside. Even when the street is completely empty, my eyes still scan the alleys, the doorways, and the dark space beneath the streetlamps.

Even after two years of living under the fake name Esperanza, I still can't seem to stop. It's one of the survival instincts I developed during my two years as a captive bride in Guadalajara.

To the people who come into La Calandria for eucalyptus and marigolds, I'm just the quiet girl behind the counter. The girl who never talks about her family, who rarely leaves the shop except to buy groceries at the market.

They think I'm just a young widow from the north who came to San Cristóbal to get away from whatever happened back home. I let them believe it.

They don't know why I always look toward the street when a car slows down outside. They don't know that I always try to find escape routes whenever I walk into a new place. I check the back doors, the window latches, and how many seconds it takes to reach the alley if someone comes through the front.

Nobody knows what I saw in Guadalajara.

I've watched cartel hitmen bleed out on marble floors. I’ve stood there and watched life leave their eyes.

So yes, I know how to trim a flower without cutting my fingers, but I also know how to survive. My hands know how to wrap twine around roses, but they also know how to hold a gun.

I filled a zinc bucket with cold water and set it beside me. Some of it splashed on the terracotta floor.

I took a slow breath and wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, and my fingers touched the little scar near my hairline.

I don't like touching it because it serves as a reminder of what happened.

Two years ago, there was a fire outside an expensive restaurant in Guadalajara. A car went up in flames, and by the time the police arrived, they couldn't find anything much because everything was burnt already.

They found bone fragments, and they also found enough DNA to identify the person they thought was inside.

Xitlali De La Rosa. Guillermo Tzotzil-Vargas's wife.

The cartel and everyone believed I died that night, except Consuelo, my nanny. She was the only person in the world who knew the truth. 

After she helped me get away that night, we agreed to cut off all contact completely. No phone calls, no letters, nothing. It was the only way to protect her from Guillermo if he ever suspected anything, and the only way to make sure nobody could ever trace me down to Chiapas.

Everyone else was completely wrong. There was nothing accidental about that fire.

I'd spent two years preparing for that night.

I learned the guards' schedules. I hid money wherever I could. I also kept little things people wouldn't notice and waited for the right time to use them. I planned the explosion.

But the explosion was the easy part, getting out wasn't easy at all.

I remember crawling through a drainage pipe with blood running down the side of my face. My ears were still ringing from the blast, and I could barely hear anything around me. It was completely dark, and I had to stop every few seconds because I thought I was going to pass out.

But I kept going, I had to keep going. If I stopped, I knew Guillermo’s men would drag me back, and there would be no second chance.

I didn't know what was waiting for me on the other side. I only knew I had to get there before anyone found me.

Then, I moved to San Cristóbal. For two years, I had slept through the night without waking at every little sound outside my door. In San Cristóbal, nobody knew my real name, or where I'd even come from.

I didn't feel trapped, I felt safe.

I picked up a red rose and pulled the thorns off with my gloved thumb.

By eleven, the sky had already turned grey. It's going to rain, I could smell it in the air as I went outside to bring the display rack of marigolds closer to the shop.

That's when I noticed the street had gone quiet. I stopped.

The fruit seller across the road wasn't talking anymore. Even the dogs that usually slept around the plaza had disappeared.

Then I saw the SUV.

It moved slowly down the street, it was too large and too clean to belong there. The windows were tinted dark, so I couldn't see what or who was inside.

I stood there with one of the flower pots in my arms.

For a second, I told myself it was nothing. People passed through San Cristóbal all the time. Wealthy folks usually came up to the highlands for weekend trips.

Then the SUV slowed down.

I couldn't see the person inside, but I just knew they were looking at me. I could feel their gaze on me.

My mind started racing. The vehicle drove toward the lower river road and eventually disappeared around the corner.

I didn't move from where I stood, I couldn't even move. The pot I was holding slipped from my hands, and it hit

the stone floor and broke.

I got really scared. What if someone had found me?