So if she wants a man, it has to be Adán.

And why not?

True, Adán’s older and not beautiful like Emilio or handsome like Jorge, but he’s kind of cute and not at all repulsive like some of the older bosses she’s seen. He’s nice, he’s polite, he’s considerate. He dresses well, he’s smart, interesting, and well-spoken.

And he’s rich.

Adán can provide her with a life in this prison vastly better than she could otherwise have. With him, she’s protected, privileged, and she has the “little” things that make life in this hellhole just tolerable.

Without him, those things go away, along with—much more important—his protection. If he withdraws that, she knows that sexual assaults will quickly follow, and she’ll become a pass-around item among first the guards and then the prisoners.

She sees it happening with the other two women.

They have sex for liquor, food, and drugs. Especially drugs. One of the women looks catatonic most of the time, the other—clearly psychotic now—sits naked in her cell and displays her genitals to anyone who passes by.

So Magda knows that it’s just a matter of time before she gives herself to Adán, and while she tells herself that it’s not rape, she’s also smart enough to know that it’s definitely a power relationship with her on the bottom.

Adán has the power, so he can have her.

They both know this, neither speaks it, and he doesn’t press things. But she knows that she can’t let it go on until it becomes a joke, until laughs and whispers go around the prison that she is making a fool of the lovesick patrón.

If Adán ever heard one of those jokes, she knows her throat could be slit and her body tossed literally to the dogs.

He would have to do it, to restore his honor.

Magda has heard the stories about the woman who spurned Adán’s uncle and ended up with her head cut off and her children tossed to their deaths off a bridge. This man Adán, she reminds herself—this polite, shy man—threw two small children off a bridge.

Or so the story goes.

So when, after four “dates,” he asks her to dinner in his cell, they both know that the evening is going to end in his bed.

—

Adán looks across the table at Magda.

“Are you enjoying your dinner?” he asks.

“Yes, it’s good.”

It should be, Adán thinks. The swordfish was specially flown in from Acapulco packed in ice. The wine should meet her approval. He knows all about Magda by now, of course, about her background, her youthful affair with the young cocaine trafficker; more important, her longer relationship with Jorge Estrada.

The Colombian had made a foolish mistake in not paying Nacho to bring product in through the airport. It would have been a simple matter of setting up a meeting, paying a modest fee, and Nacho would have graciously offered the use of his turf.

But Estrada was too arrogant or greedy to do that, and his willful disrespect had gotten his woman thrown into prison. Worse, he knew there was a problem, that’s why he sent her instead of doing it himself. Now it was too late—her case, like his own, was too high-profile for a quick, quiet fix.

Magda is staring at him.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “A business distraction.”

“Do I already bore you?” she asks, with the practiced, pretty pout of a pageant contestant.

“Not at all.”

“If there’s something you’d like to talk about…” She reaches across the table and touches his hand.

It’s an intimate gesture. “Adán, I don’t want to wait anymore.”

She stands up and walks to the partitioned area that comprises his bedroom. Turning her back to him, she starts to unzip her dress, but then stops, looks over her shoulder in a way that makes her neck long and elegant, and says, “Help, please?” because she knows that he wants to unwrap her like a gift.

Adán steps behind her and pulls the zipper down, past her shoulder blades and the small of her back, then he leans in and kisses her neck.

“If you do that,” Magda says, “I can’t stop you.”

He keeps kissing her neck and then pushes the dress down below her shoulders and cups her breasts. Then he slides the dress over her hips and down her legs until it pools like water at her feet.

She steps out of it and turns to him.

“Turnabout is fair play,” she says, unzipping his fly. “What do you like?”

“Everything.”

“That’s good,” Magda says, “because I do everything.”

Her love with Emilio had been pure passion.

Simple and direct.

With Jorge had come more sophistication, and he taught her things in bed, things he liked, things that any man would like.

Now she uses them all on Adán, because this cannot be, cannot be, a one-night stand after which he figures he’s had what he wanted and throws her back into the pool. He has to know that the whole sexual world is in her fingers, her mouth, her chocha, and that she could give him things no other woman can.

But it’s also clear that he’s had some experience himself, because Adán knows his way around a woman’s body and isn’t selfish. Magda is surprised when she feels a climax building inside her, more surprised when she feels herself toppling over that waterfall, even more surprised that he’s still hard.

When she looks at him curiously, he says, “I was always taught, ladies first.”

There’s something in his eyes, this small superior glint, that makes her competitive with him, so she does something that she was going to save up for another time and she watches his eyes go wide, feels his breathing get hard, then hears him moan (you’re not distracted now, are you?), and she keeps him there for a moment and cranes her neck up so her mouth is by his ear and demands, “Say my name.”

He doesn’t and she stops what she’s doing and feels him tremble.

“Say my name.”

“Magda.”

She starts to move. “Say it again.”

“Magda.”

“Scream it.”

“Magda!”

She feels him come inside her.

It feels like safety.

—

They start a life of odd domesticity, given their circumstances.

Officially transferred from COC into the unit with the two other women, Magda actually moves to the cell next to Adán’s and spends most of her nights with him.

He gets up early to work and then joins her for breakfast. She goes back to her cell to read or work out, then they lunch together. He goes back to work and she reads more or watches television until they have dinner together.

Some afternoons he takes an hour or two off and they go out into the yard and join one of the volleyball games with other inmates, play basketball, or just get some sun. In the evenings it’s television or movie nights, although more and more often he wants to go to bed early and make love.

He’s enamored of her.

Lucía was pretty, petite, and thin. Magda’s body is lush—full hips, heavy breasts—a fruit orchard on a warm, damp morning.

And she’s smart.

A bit at a time, Magda reveals the extent of her knowledge about the business. She lets drop small bits of information about the cocaine trade, people she’s met—friends, acquaintances, connections. She casually mentions the places she’s been—South America, Europe, Asia, the United States—to show that, while she’s a proud Sinaloan, she’s no mere chuntara, hillbilly, either.

That she could be an asset to him, and not only in bed.

Adán doesn’t doubt that, actually.

It isn’t a matter of doubt, it’s a matter of trust.

—

Magda sees the blade.

A glint in the sunshine.

“Adán!” she screams.

He turns as the small, thin man—perhaps in his thirties—steps toward him, knife leveled horizontally and held back at the waist like a professional. The man thrusts the blade, Adán pivots, and the knife slices the small of his back. The attacker pulls back the blade to try again, but two of Los Bateadores are already on him, pin his arms behind him, and start to drag him off the volleyball court.