But Adán sees her eyes.

Blue as a Sinaloan mountain lake.

And the classic bones of her face.

“What’s her name?” Adán asks.

“Magda something,” Francisco answers. “I don’t remember her last name.”

“Find out,” Adán says. “Find out everything about her and get back to me tonight. In the meantime, make sure they give her a blanket. And have a doctor attend her. And not one of the prison butchers—a real doctor.”

“Sí, patrón.”

“And no one touches her,” Adán says.

The word—greatly disappointing as there have already been knives out over who gets to rape her first—goes out: Any part of you that touches her gets the chop. You touch her with your hand, you lose the hand. You violate her with your dick…

She’s the patrón’s woman.

—

Everyone knows this but Magda.

When the blanket arrives, from a guard who seems uneasy even being in her presence, she thinks it’s normal. Same when a respectful woman doctor comes into the cell and asks to examine her. The doctor gives her a mild sedative to help her sleep and says she’ll call back to check up on her.

At first Magda is afraid to close her eyes for fear of the threatened rape, but the sedative takes hold and, anyway, a guard posts himself outside her cell with his back to her, his eyes never on her.

She starts to suspect that she’s receiving special treatment when breakfast comes on a tray and it’s actually edible, but she attributes it to her celebrity.

Two days later a guard comes in with a set of new and quite decent clothing—two dresses, some blouses and skirts, some pants, a nice sweater—with labels from chic Guadalajara shops. Magda asks the guard who sent these things and gets just a shrug in response. The clothes are in her sizes, and Magda wonders if her family got them in, or maybe Jorge did it.

She hasn’t heard from him, nor from her family, but the prison shrink also told her that she’d be held incommunicado in COC, so perhaps there are phone calls or messages waiting for her.

The clothes make her feel a little better, but she can’t shrug off the profound depression, imagining even a few months in this place, never mind fifteen years. She expresses this at her first evaluation with the prison psychiatrist, who insists that the door remain open and sits behind his desk as if it’s a barrier.

He tells her that these feelings are perfectly normal, that she’ll adjust, especially when she’s out of COC and integrated into the general population. But Magda can’t imagine how that could even happen in a place with thousands of men, and wonders if they’ll put her in a cell with the two other women, and doesn’t know if that would be a good or a bad thing.

Cosmetics arrive the next day. Expensive makeup, exactly the kind she normally uses, with a small hand mirror. At the bottom of the box she finds a note—“Courtesies of a fellow Sinaloan.”

So much for Jorge.

But who is it?

Magda is not stupid.

She knows the narco-world and its players. There are dozens of Sinaloans in Puente Grande, but maybe a handful with the means to pull off the sort of privileges she’s experiencing. Like most Sinaloans in the business, she knows that Adán Barrera, the former Señor de los Cielos, is a resident here.

Could it be?

Step away from yourself, she thinks, looking into the mirror as she applies the makeup, such a simple thing that is now a great pleasure. He’s Adán Barrera—he could bring in the most beautiful women in the world if he pleased.

What would he want with me?

Magda makes a frank self-assessment—she’s still beautiful, but closer to thirty than to twenty. Women her age back in Sinaloa are considered old maids.

But three afternoons later, a bottle of good Merlot arrives with a glass, a corkscrew, and another note: “A few friends and I are having a ‘movie night’ and I wonder if you’d like to come as my guest. Adán Barrera.”

Magda has to laugh.

Inside the most brutal prison in the Western world, the man is courting her as if they’re high school students.

He’s asking for a date.

To “movie night.”

She laughs even harder when she realizes what else she’s thinking—oh, God, what should I wear?

The guard stands there, clearly waiting for an answer.

Magda hesitates—is this just a setup for a gang rape?

If it is, it is, she decides. She has to take the chance, because she knows that she can’t survive fifteen years in this place as a “normal” inmate.

“Tell him I’d love to,” Magda says.

—

What first strikes Magda about Adán Barrera is how shy he is.

Not a quality you usually see in a buchone.

His entire affect is subdued, from the tone of his voice to his clothes—tonight a black Hugo Boss suit with a white shirt.

Adán’s a little shorter than she is; there are a few flecks of silver in the temples of his black hair. He smiles shyly and then looks down as he shakes her hand and says, “I’m so glad you came. I’m Adán Barrera.”

“Of course,” she says. “Everyone knows who you are. I’m Magda Beltrán.”

“Everyone knows who you are.”

Adán notices the wine bottle and glass in her left hand. “You didn’t like the wine? I’m sorry.”

“No,” Magda says. “I just didn’t want to drink it alone. I thought it would be more fun if we drank it together.”

She’d decided on one of the blue dresses that he sent. At first she went with the sweater and slacks as appropriate for a “movie night,” then decided that he’d sent dresses for a reason, and didn’t want to disappoint him.

Adán walks her to the front of five rows of folding chairs that have been set in front of a large-screen television. She notices that their whole row is empty, but that the others are filled with inmates who try to look at her without staring. Other inmates stand by the door of the dining hall, clearly on guard.

Adán pulls out a chair for her, she sits down, and he sits beside her. “I hope you like Miss Congeniality. Sandra Bullock?”

“I like her,” Magda says. “It’s about a beauty pageant contestant, isn’t it?”

“I thought…”

“That’s very considerate of you.”

“Would you like something? Popcorn?”

“Popcorn and red wine?” Magda asks. “Well, why not?”

Adán nods to an inmate, who hustles to a popcorn machine and comes back with two bowls. Another inmate hands Adán a corkscrew and another glass.

He opens the bottle and pours. “I know nothing about wine. It’s supposed to be good.”

She rolls the glass and sniffs. “It is.”

“I’m glad.”

“Do I have you to thank for the clothes?” she asks. “The cosmetics?”

Adán dips his head in a slight acknowledgment.

“And my safety?” she asks.

He nods again. “Nobody will touch you in here unless you want him to.”

Does that include you? she wonders.

“Well, I’m very grateful for your protection,” Magda says. “But may I ask why you’re being so generous?”

“We Sinaloans have to look out for each other,” Adán answers. He nods to an inmate and the movie starts.

—

She doesn’t go to bed with him that night.

Or the next, or the next.

But Magda knows that it’s an inevitability. She needs and wants his protection, she needs and wants the things he can give her. It’s no different in here than out in the rest of the world, but it’s entirely different in the sense that he is her only choice.

Magda wants and needs affection, companionship—admit it, she tells herself, sex—and he is the only choice. She knows that he will never accept anyone else having her. It would be not only a rejection and a disappointment, but a humiliation.

Magda has been around enough to know that a man in Adán Barrera’s situation cannot allow himself to be humiliated. It could be literally fatal—if you’re humiliated, it’s because you’re weak. If you’re weak, you’re a target.