“Ana, mija!” She approaches me, arms open. I plant my feet and brace myself. Her arms wrap around me, crushing me to her ample bosom. I turn my face to the side. Mija. It’s a term of affection but it’s also a sham, like so much else about her. She’d barely looked at me the day I’d packed up my meager belongings—a cracked mirror with a painted backing one of the girls had given to me on my tenth birthday, a thin stiletto blade I’d lifted from a patron too drunk to keep track of his weapons, and a small brass locket I guarded with my life. Esmeralda had probably assumed she’d never see me again.

But I have not forgotten where I come from. I don’t want to. I have seen what wealth can do to people. It has the power to make them callous and cruel. It renders them unable—or unwilling—to know the suffering of others. It can make their worlds so unbearably small. And besides, even if I did want to forget my humble origins, no one would let me.

Kiki shoots me a wry grin as Esmeralda does her level best to suffocate me in her cleavage. To her, Esmeralda is a benevolent force of a woman. The truth is less rosy. Doña Esmeralda may consider herself a maternal figure to me, but she is not. She allowed me to sleep in a nice warm corner of the kitchen so long as I brought in my share. I was too young to work the brothel like the rest of her girls, but I had other usable skills. Nimble fingers that could slip into pockets or empty a purse without anyone being a single bit the wiser. I was useful to her then. I’m less useful to her now, but my meteoric rise in station makes her treat me with a kindness she never showed when I lived under her roof, sleeping in a shivering huddle by the dying embers of a kitchen hearth and eating scraps.

I extricate myself from Esmeralda’s arms. The cloying scent of her perfume clings to my nostrils. “Is Rosalita here?” I hold up the purse. “I have something that belongs to her.”

Doña Esmeralda’s fingers twitch with the repressed desire to snatch the purse right out of my hand. It’s such a fleeting gesture, I wonder if Kiki’s even caught it. She’s come a long way from the naive, brave little girl I met all those years ago, but she’s still as much a product of her environment as I am of mine. We are what we are, and a change of clothes can’t alter that simple fact.