The Cartel of Veracruz

My father testified against the Fuentes family in a federal courtroom in 2019. In 2023, I married the son. The wedding was for the families. The marriage is for the truce. I walked into it knowing I was a public statement and not a wife, and I walked into it with something else nobody at the ranch knew — something that started in a hotel in Mexico City two months before the ceremony. Emilio Fuentes takes over both families in March. In April, my father dies on a road in Culiacán. In May, I find a file in my nightstand that proves nothing about either of those things and everything about my mother's name. I read it twice. I burned it in the kitchen fire in front of my husband and did not give him a single page. A forced marriage, secret pregnancy cartel thriller — told between two winters.