Sitting in front of his computer in the overcrowded bedroom, Greg whooped and hollered over a successful eBay bid he had just scored while Gabriela rolled her eyes. When her husband wasn’t doing online math tutoring to high school and college students on Zoom, he was bidding for items on eBay that he would supposedly resell at a profit. Most of his free time was spent on his get-rich-quick, buy low, sell high eBay schemes. His “wins” were piled up in various corners of their kitchen, living room and bedroom. From Gabriela’s perspective, her husband had turned their small apartment into a junkyard, and his frequent purchases had also depleted their bank account. She was not happy.

Twenty-five-year-old Gabriela had higher aspirations than a crappy apartment on East 10th Street. When she had met Greg five years earlier, he had told her he was a teacher at a private New York City high school and a part-time import-export entrepreneur. More importantly, he had a small inheritance from his parents, and owned his apartment in the trendy Lower East Side. New to America, Gabriela was in a bit of a jam and needed to quickly vacate her current home where she worked as a nanny for a well-to-do family. When the father had lost his job, the family could no longer afford her and terminated the young woman’s living arrangement. Always the survivor, Gabriela took a fast fly on Greg Harmen and deftly orchestrated a marriage proposal from him that he thought was his idea. It wasn’t.

Determined to stay in New York forever, Gabriela had entered the United States from Mexico on a temporary travel visa. From the day she arrived, the Big Apple felt like home. A woman that men seldom forgot, she was petite and lean but curvy in all the right places. Her flawless sun-kissed complexion made her look like she had spent the weekend at the beach. With huge dark-brown eyes rimmed by thick rows of curly lashes, her perfectly manicured, almost black eyebrows made a statement and framed her face.

Growing up in a relatively poor town an hour south of Mexico City, Gabriela decided by the age of fourteen that she wanted to live in New York. Throughout her teens, she worked at a high-end store in downtown Mexico City saving every penny she earned for her future life in America. She also supplemented her savings by doing small favors for men—for cash.