Punishment

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.

When I opened my eyes it was already too late. Two bodies were pinning me to the mattress, and the cold steel on my wrists told me that night had changed everything.

When my stepmother locked the bedroom door and started unbuttoning her blouse, I knew that punishment wouldn’t be like any sermon before it.

When Beatriz locked the office door, neither man yet understood that the meeting had become something else.

Nine months of failed independence sent her back to her father’s house, to Carmen’s rules and Marcos’s gaze, which from day one made her feel things she shouldn’t.

What happened in that room was confidential. Nerea saw everything through the keyhole, her hand braced against the wall and her breath caught.

I was on my knees in the dog run, handcuffed and unable to move, while they laughed and their dogs circled closer and closer.

When the blonde warrior sat on his back, he stopped being a man: he was the living stool where a goddess breakfasted with the queen.

When Marta told me she’d found the four perfect women for my punishment, I knew there was no turning back. That same afternoon I signed the contract without reading half of it.