Punishment

The whole campus envied the guy Rebeca’s group had taken in. No one knew what it would cost him to belong to them.

I came to Madrid to make beds and mop floors. No one warned me I’d also learn to kneel before two women who would decide everything about me.

I was the impeccable stepmother, the woman who made the rules. But when my stepson appeared naked before me, I knew my rules were made of paper.

When I crossed the dungeon’s threshold, she held out her hand for me to kiss. Then she pointed to the floor. I knew the night would be long.

She came into the study with a look that left no room for questions. She ordered me to strip. Her meeting started in twenty minutes, and I was going to be her entertainment.

She tied the ropes to her wrists and stepped into the muck, unaware that someone was watching from the undergrowth, a razor-sharp knife in hand.

I thought facing an untrained woman would be easy. Her first bear hug erased that idea from my mind forever.

She always said my body betrayed me before my voice did. That afternoon, after running into an old friend, she was going to prove it in the rawest way possible.

When Sebastián came into my apartment, he thought he was the king of the night. He had no idea I had something in my purse that would flip the roles before dawn.

They told me the client was special. They didn’t tell me he was the city’s most feared man—or that once I tied him up, he would truly begin to break.

I lost 22 kilos. My body bears scars I never saw coming. And every week I lie to my family with a forced smile on the screen.

The Mistress announced the inspection with that smile that always made my blood run cold. I knew at once that this day would be unlike any before it.

Santiago walked into the classroom that Monday in that fitted shirt and with a deep voice that raised goosebumps on my skin from the first word he spoke.

When they told me I was their property, I thought it was an empty threat. But when Celestina appeared with the crop in her hand, I knew there was no turning back.

She came intending to tell Elena she wouldn’t come back. She rode up in the elevator repeating it to herself. But when Elena crossed the room toward her, everything she had rehearsed came apart.

When they shut the door and the darkness became absolute, I knew it wasn’t a punishment. It was something worse: the transformation that would erase me forever.

I pressed the buzzer with trembling fingers. I knew that beyond that door awaited someone capable of turning me into what I had always dreamed of being.

Raquel thought she would always be the one setting the rules. That night on the pier, with the metal bit and the fresh mark on her thigh, everything changed.

The bamboo rod hissed through the air and Clara didn’t blink. We were friends. Now she held the stopwatch and I was on my knees on the cold grate.

I asked him to meet me outside the clinic as if we were going to have a quiet talk. I didn’t tell him I wouldn’t be alone—or that the sidewalk was perfectly visible from the second floor.