Chapter 4 Chapter 4 — The Cloth Bag
I put the only thing I had in the world into the bag, and it didn’t even fill half of it.
Two old dresses of Regina’s, the kind she didn’t even wear anymore. A comb missing half its teeth. A bar of soap. And the little money I’d been saving up coin by coin over the years, hidden inside a sock, stealing a little bit at a time from the change at the market when Ofelia didn’t count it right.
That was my whole life. It fit into a cloth bag with room to spare.
My hands were shaking, but not from fear. Or maybe they were from fear, too, but beneath the fear there was something else—something that had been boiling inside me ever since that night in the cellar and wouldn’t let me sleep or eat or look anyone in the face.
The girl who scrubs my pots is the only Ferreira left alive.
The daughter of the true owners of this port.
Without knowing that she’s sitting atop the entire port.
Every time I set the table, I’d tell myself that. Every time Ofelia yelled at me, every time Regina ordered me to polish her shoes, every time Tobías handed me the dirty plate without looking at me, I thought the same thing. You raised me like a dog, knowing exactly who I was. You let me sleep on a cot next to the stove, you made me be grateful for the leftovers, you called me “foundling” my whole life—knowing. Knowing perfectly well.
You didn’t raise me out of charity. You raised me like someone who fattens up an animal for the day it needs to be sold.
And I wasn’t going to wait for that day to come.
I zipped up the bag. I looked around the room that wasn’t really a room—that hollow space next to the kitchen where I’d been sleeping my whole life—and I felt nothing. No sadness, no nostalgia. Nothing.
Leave before dawn. Walk to the highway. Hop on whatever comes along.
I had no plan beyond that. I didn’t know where I was going. I only knew that somewhere in the world there had to be a place where no one knew I was the last Ferreira, and where no one could use me for anything.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and opened the kitchen door.
And there he was.
Tobías. Standing in the doorway. His face red and his jacket wrinkled, with that look he always had when he came back from the street with something stuck in his throat.
I was stunned.
“Where are you going?” he said, very slowly.
“To… take out the trash.”
He looked at the bag slung over my shoulder and his gaze darted back and forth, from the bag to the door, from the door to me. It didn’t take long.
“With your rags and your shoes on,” he said. “At three in the morning.”
“Tobías, I…”
The slap turned my face away.
It was so hard that I fell sideways against the kitchen table, and the bag slipped off my shoulder and spilled open on the floor. The comb. The soap. The sock with the coins, which rolled everywhere, clinking on the tile floor.
A horrible silence fell as those coins rolled.
Tobías just stared at them. Then he looked at me, lying on the floor with my hand over my face.
“You stole from me,” he said.
“It’s mine,” I managed, my voice breaking. “It’s from the errands—it’s what…”
He grabbed me by the hair.
He yanked me to my feet—my scalp burning—and slammed me against the wall, so close that I could see the veins in his eyes.
“Nothing here is yours,” he said quietly, and that was worse than if he’d yelled. “Not even the clothes you’re wearing. Not the food you eat. Not the air you breathe in my house. Everything you have, I gave you, you bitch, and I can take everything away from you whenever I feel like it.”
“Let me go.”
“Your whole life,” he continued, tightening his grip. “I’ve spent your whole life supporting you. I took you in when you were nothing. Nothing, do you hear me? And this is how you repay me—by stealing from me and sneaking out of my kitchen like a thief.”
I wasn’t crying. I don’t know how, but I wasn’t crying. My eyes were dry, my throat was tight, and my whole body was shaking with a rage that I couldn’t contain.
Tell him. Tell him what you know. Tell him you’re not the thief—that they stole everything from you and turned you into a nameless dog.
The words stuck in my throat. Because if I told him, it would all be over. If Tobias knew that I knew, I wouldn’t make it out of that kitchen alive. I was a hidden card as long as I remained silent and grateful. The day I opened my mouth, I’d be of no use anymore.
So I did what I’d done my whole life. I lowered my head.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
And I hated myself. I hated myself with all my soul.
He let go of me. He straightened his jacket, ran his hand through his hair, and turned to pour himself a drink as if nothing had happened.
“Pick that up.”
I knelt down and started picking up my things from the floor. The comb. The soap. The coins, one by one, while he looked down at me with the glass in his hand.
“They almost killed me today,” he said suddenly.
My heart skipped a beat.
“The new boss.” He downed his drink in one gulp. “Everyone thought he was a meek kid, raised far away, easy to handle. And today he smashed a man’s head open right on top of the conference table. In front of everyone. And he left him there, bleeding on the papers, for us to see.”
He poured himself another drink.
I kept picking up coins with trembling hands and a burning face, and inside, everything came crashing down on me all at once.
The plan failed. Someone tipped him off. Someone tipped him off, and he survived.
Me. I warned him.
The stranger at the pier. The man I bumped into. Everything I blurted out in a panic, everything I yelled at him before I realized what I was doing.
They want to kill him. They’re going to kill the heir.
I told someone. And that someone let him know.
Without meaning to, I had saved the life of the man whose father killed my entire family.
My stomach churned.
“And now the bastard wants to get married,” Tobias continued, talking to himself, more for his own sake than for mine. “The Circle forced him to. A man without allies has no power, even if he’s the owner. So in a few days, all the families in the port will bring their women to the mansion so the boss can choose a wife.”
He raised his voice toward the back of the house.
“Ophelia! Regina! Come upstairs—we need to talk!”
Footsteps and groans could be heard from upstairs.
I was still on my knees.
Tobías looked down at me, as if he’d only just remembered I existed, and snorted.
“Oh, and you’re coming too.”
I looked up.
“Me?”
“You.” He poured himself a third drink. “The boss gave the order: every woman from every house, without exception. Even the orphans. Even you, ungrateful trash.”
He looked me up and down, his mouth twisted in a sneer.
“Though I doubt he’ll even look at you for a second.” He laughed again. “You’re just going to be there to make up the numbers, that’s all. So it looks like this house did its part. You stand in the back, don’t talk, don’t cause any trouble, and thank God we let you breathe the same air as decent people.”
He set down his glass and stepped closer to me again, and I flinched without meaning to.
“And if you ever think about walking out that door again,” he said, very softly, “I’ll come looking for you. I’ll find you. And this time, it won’t just be your face that hurts. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good girl.”
I’d never been dressed like that before.
Ofelia had me spruced up because she had no other choice. She spent the whole week grumbling about it—what a waste, spending money on this one, who couldn’t be made to look anything but ordinary even with gold. But Tobias was clear. If the boss said so, they had to make me look presentable, because treating me like a maid was also a way of disrespecting the man who had just killed a guy on top of a table.
So for the first time in my life, they put me in a dress that didn’t belong to anyone else. They did my hair. They put makeup on me. And when I saw myself in the big mirror—Regina’s—I didn’t recognize myself.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Regina said behind me, looking over my shoulder. “A dress doesn’t change who you are. You’re still the street kid. Only now you’re the street kid in disguise.”
I held her gaze in the mirror a second longer than I should have, and she fell silent, because she didn’t know what to make of that.
The Arteaga mansion was packed.
Women everywhere. Every household in the port had brought whatever they had, and it was a sea of dresses, perfumes, rehearsed laughter, and mothers pushing their daughters to the front. Regina led the way, radiant, greeting everyone as if she were already the mistress of the house.
I was at the back.
And the only thing I wanted in the world was to be invisible.
I slipped into the crowd. I looked for the corner farthest from everything, behind a group of ladies, and stood there, still, with my hands clasped so no one would notice they were shaking.
No one’s going to look at you. You’re just a blob in the crowd. You’ll tough it out for two hours, hop in the car, and it’ll be over.
Later I’d figure out how to escape. Not now. Right now I just had to go unnoticed, let Regina put on her show, and get out of this house without anyone noticing me.
Because in this house, somewhere, was the man whose father had killed my parents. The man who owned what, according to Tobias, belonged to me. And in this house, on that night of the wake, I had said too much to a stranger on the pier.
But that was in the past. It was over. That night was dark; that man never saw my face, and I didn’t see his. He could have been anyone. He could be dead. He could have left the harbor. Just some random stranger on a pier—nothing more.
I breathed. For the first time all week, I truly breathed.
“You can get through this okay,” I told myself, but the universe had other plans,
“Good evening, beautiful lady.”
I heard behind me, very close by, a man’s voice—cold and commanding. My blood ran cold. My throat tightened. All the air left me in an instant, just as it had that night on the pier, and my whole body went rigid before my mind could even comprehend why.
I didn't turn around. I couldn't turn around—my body refused to move—but I recognized that voice.
It was him.
