Sin Senos No Hay Paraiso -

“Run,” Ximena whispered, gripping her wrist. “Run before the first bruise. Before the first time he holds a gun to your mother’s head.”

She took a deep breath, turned away from the mirror, and opened a textbook. Biology. She had decided to become a nurse. It was not paradise. It was not the cover of a magazine. But when she walked down the street now, men did not turn their heads, and for the first time in her life, Catalina Santana felt completely, terrifyingly, wonderfully free. Sin Senos no hay Paraiso

The village of Pereira clung to the side of a mountain like a secret. For Catalina Santana, a girl of fourteen with ink-black hair and eyes too old for her face, the village was a cage. The only window to the world was a cracked television set in her mother’s kitchen, and through that window, Catalina saw paradise. “Run,” Ximena whispered, gripping her wrist

But Albeiro bought her. He moved her out of the village into a beige apartment with a jacuzzi that never worked. He gave her a white purse with gold buckles. He gave her a cell phone that rang only with his voice, always asking where she was, who she was with, why she had taken five minutes longer than expected to buy milk. Biology

One afternoon, she borrowed a push-up bra from Paola, stuffed it with toilet paper, and walked to the edge of the village where the black SUVs with tinted windows idled. A man named Albeiro, a thin, cruel-faced sicario with a gold front tooth, leaned against his truck.