PART 1
“This is how you educate a wife in this family”, said Julián, lifting the aluminum bat as soon as the cruise ship left the coast of Yucatán behind.
Camila Ríos did not scream.
Most would have screamed.
Most would have run to the closed door, slapping their fists on the fine wood of the presidential suite, begging for someone to listen to the noise of the sea, the engines and the elegant music of the ship.
But Camila stayed still.
She was wearing a simple white dress, one of those that seems made for honeymoon photos, with her hair up and some pearl earrings that her mother-in-law had forced her to wear because, according to her, “a woman from the Arriaga family should always look fine, even if it comes from below”.
Julián Arriaga smiled.
A clean, perfect smile on the cover of a business magazine.
Heir to a luxury construction company in Monterrey, owner of towers in San Pedro, apartments in Tulum and land in half the country. For everyone, he was the ideal husband: handsome, educated, generous, from a powerful family.
For Camila, until that night, it had been a story that seemed too good to be true.
And it was.
Months earlier, when they met at a charity dinner in Mexico City, Julián treated her as if she were the only woman alive. He sent flowers to her office, took her to expensive restaurants, paid for trips, dresses, jewelry. At first, Camila thought it was love.
Then came the small orders disguised as affection.
“Don’t wear those pants, it makes you look tough.”
“Don’t go to the gym so much, you look like a bodyguard.”
“You don’t need to work so much anymore, you will be protected with me.”
Camila had been a women’s self-defense instructor in a special unit of the Mexican Navy before retiring. He had trained police officers, bodyguards and volunteers who arrived broken inside. But when he got married, he wanted to keep that part of his life under lock and key.
She wanted to be calm.
She wanted to be a wife.
He wanted to believe that the force could also rest.
The Arriaga family was in charge of convincing her of that.
At the wedding, held at a very expensive hacienda near Mérida, Doña Rebeca, Julián’s mother, adjusted her veil in front of the mirror and whispered to him:
“In this family, intelligent women do not contradict their husbands. Those who contradict end up alone.”
Camila smiled politely.
But something in his chest tightened.
During dinner, Julián’s father made a strange toast. Don Ignacio Arriaga raised his glass and said that a marriage lasted when the man knew how “to put order from day one”. Julián’s brothers laughed too loudly. His wives didn’t laugh. They just looked down.
Camila noticed old bruises on the wrist of one of them.
He asked softly if he was okay.
The woman responded without moving her lips:
“Don’t ask.”
That phrase accompanied her to the cruise.
The trip left Cozumel. Seven nights in the Caribbean. Private suite, champagne, balcony with ocean views, bed full of petals and a golden card that said: “To start our life”.
Camila barely managed to leave her bouquet on the table when Julián locked the door.
Not with normal insurance.
With manual insurance.
Then he slid the chain.
Then he turned off her cell phone and left it on the bar.
“Today we are going to talk about rules”, he said.
Camila tried to smile.
“Rules?”
Julián opened his Italian leather suitcase. He took out a folded shirt first. Then a box of cigars. Then the bat.
It wasn’t new.
It had bumps, scratches and a black ribbon wrapped around the handle.
Camila felt her blood get cold.
Julian took it with frightening familiarity, as if it were not a weapon but an inherited object.
“My dad used it with my mom the first week they were married”, he explained, almost proud. “My brothers also learned. It’s not violence, Camila. It’s tradition. It’s character. It is so that a woman understands early on who is in charge.”
She looked towards the balcony.
Dark sea.
Nobody around.
Nobody listening.
“Julián, put that down”, he said.
He laughed.
“That’s just what my dad said you were going to do. Talk to me as if you were my equal.”
He took a step.
Camila backed away.
Not out of fear.
By distance.
By calculation.
