Cartel Wives

by Mia Flores

  I saw Peter motion to Junior, who was right next to me. Then he came up to us and whispered, “I just missed Chapo.”

  “Let’s go upstairs,” said Junior. They turned, walked away from everyone, and escaped up to the bedroom.

  Mia

  Olivia and I knew what was about to happen. Junior and Peter had told us that night they were going to get Chapo on tape, so when they went upstairs, we moved inside, too, and situated ourselves on the couch.

  We couldn’t talk much; there were too many people around. But we were both thinking the same thing: If Junior and Peter get this recording, they won’t have to spend a lot of time in jail. The government’s going to be so grateful they may actually pardon them. After what we’ve been through, it’s the least they can do for us.

  Of course, it was all wishful thinking. And when Peter and Junior came back downstairs, the looks on their faces made any happy thoughts go away.

  Olivia

  Peter was holding the recorder in his hands like his life depended on it. He looked like something was horribly wrong, like he’d just seen a ghost.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “We got it,” Peter said.

  Junior added, “I think we’ve nailed Chapo.”

  In the home I’d built with the love of my life and, only six weeks before, carried our newborn baby into, I suddenly knew there was no turning back. My family was about to be torn apart.

  Mia

  Peter had called Chapo back, and he’d answered.

  “Hola, amigo!” Chapo said happily. “How is your brother?”

  Over the course of only a few minutes, Peter negotiated the price of a twenty-kilo shipment of heroin down from $55,000 per kilo to $50,000. It was business as usual, and in fact, it was warm and friendly.

  Olivia

  But with that one call, the countdown to the end was over. Chapo had incriminated himself, and the United States had officially netted the biggest drug dealer in history.

  It was time to bring Junior and Peter home.

  CHAPTER 22

  Surrendering

  Mia

  About two weeks before my due date and days before Peter got Chapo on tape, I started to have a bad feeling in my gut. Something was telling me that Peter and Junior’s cooperation was going to end soon, and that they’d be taken away. At a time when I had so little control over anything in my life, and when the stress was becoming almost too much, I needed some peace. I wanted Peter to spend as much time with the baby as he could, so I told him we should schedule a C-section as soon as possible.

  “Pay the doctors more if you have to,” I said. “I just need to have the baby early.”

  Thankfully, the doctors were fine with it. When we checked into the hospital, I was a bundle of emotions: so scared of childbirth but so excited about being a mom. I’d never wanted anything so badly in my life.

  After we ate dinner together, Peter helped me take a shower, and we made love. Then I got in my hospital bed, and he set up his bed on the couch. We started to talk and joke about all the memories we’d made together over the last decade, remembering everything from the first time we laid eyes on each other as teenagers to the day he fell to his knees on the beach and asked me to marry him. We talked about how excited we were to bring our baby girl in the world, and I said how proud I was of him for sacrificing his freedom for our family. Peter told me that I’d grown into a beautiful woman, one he was privileged to be married to and one he was so grateful was about to be a mother for the very first time.

  “I never could have done this if I didn’t have you by my side,” he said.

  Every now and then, Peter’s phone would ring. He’d put in his earbud, press record, and answer the call. When he hung up, we’d start talking and laughing again. Finally, I dozed off. Then I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of the phone ringing.

  “Please, baby,” I said. “Don’t answer it. We need rest.”

  “Okay,” he said, and he willingly let the phone go to voicemail for the first time in his life.

  “Get off that couch and come to bed with me,” I added with a smile.

  He crawled into my hospital bed and didn’t answer a single call till the next day, after our daughter, Bella, was born.

  When they wheeled me into the recovery room, I looked around and couldn’t find Peter. Junior and Olivia were there, though.

  “Where’s Peter?” I asked.

  “He’s in the nursery, just staring at the baby,” Olivia said.

  For the next eleven days, I don’t think he left her side once.

  Olivia

  For almost two weeks, we did our best to keep on living just like we always had. The prosecutor, Tom, and the feds were in a panic about the possibility that their star witnesses might be murdered by the cartels—something we didn’t know at the time—and on top of that Junior and Peter owed at least $15 million to Puerca. But we tried to stay calm.

  On Thanksgiving, I cooked a massive, picture-perfect dinner.

  Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated in Mexico, but in my house, it was. Our friends and associates were always so amazed by how we did things, and that Thanksgiving, I made sure everything was bigger and better than ever. We had four huge birds and every side you can imagine. I set the table with white linens and put flowers and candles everywhere. Our babies were so tiny, but they still filled the house with warmth. Brandon was loving every single second, too, because everyone spoiled him with attention. I remember Junior looking at me in the middle of all of it, and I knew what he was thinking. The same thing was going through my mind: This may be our last holiday together. I just wish to hell we could freeze this moment forever.

  Of course, we couldn’t.

  Mia

  Junior and Peter didn’t just owe Puerca money; they were also running a huge debt to Sinaloa, somewhere over $40 million. The DEA was about to search and seize a few of their warehouses in LA, and the feds were concerned that Chapo would be on to them any minute. If that happened, our heads were going to get separated from our bodies.

  All that’s why, three days after Thanksgiving, on Sunday, November 30, our world changed.

  Olivia

  Sunday had always been our day to relax and watch TV, just sitting around our house. We always had people cooking and cleaning for us, but on Sundays we didn’t want anybody around because it was family day. I’d get up and cook breakfast, then later Junior would make lunch. At night Junior and I would cook dinner together, and Mia and Peter would come over. Now that we had these little angels, we’d put them next to each other in their bassinets while we ate.

  In the morning, all Junior wanted to do was be with Benjamin. He’d rock him, give him his bottle, and just sit there, looking at him. That Sunday, he was holding him like he always did when his phone rang.

  He answered, listened for a little, and finally said, “I see, yes. Okay. I understand.” Then he closed the phone and brought the baby to me. He was dead serious. “We have to turn ourselves in.”

  I fucking flipped out. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

  “We have to report to Guadalajara International Airport in two hours. You’re going to have to pack up the babies and get out of the country now.”

  “With you?”

  “No, with Mia. They’re taking me and my brother back to the United States. If anyone comes here and finds out we’re gone, they’re going to kill you. Liv, I need you to take our babies and leave. There’s so much money at stake. We owe so much.” Junior turned away from me and started packing up. “I have to call Peter.”

  I was in disbelief, but not just because I was about to lose my husband. I realized right then, I may also lose my life.

  But if there was anything I’d learned in my years—from battling my way out of an abusive marriage to keeping my head on straight in jail to escaping from a kidnapping by the skin of my teeth—it’s that I could never, ever stop fighting for myself and my family.

&nbs
p; “We’re US citizens!” I screamed. “How could they just leave us here to die?”

  Junior grabbed me. “Listen to me. I need you to be strong, Liv. You have to keep our family safe. You know how to get to the border. I need you to grab only what you need and go. If they find you, Liv, they’re going to kill you, Mia, and our babies.”

  I knew, right then, my babies needed me. Mia needed me. I had to get us out of Mexico.

  Mia

  Bella was so tiny, just a totally innocent little thing, when Junior called that Sunday morning and told Peter they had two hours to get to the Guadalajara airport. I was busy throwing a few outfits and a toothbrush into a bag for Peter, and tossing bottles into my diaper bag. Then, I stopped and looked around. There was my husband on the edge of the bed, cradling the baby. He was holding her tight in his arms, staring at her and talking to her softly. She was looking back at him, her eyes barely open. It was like she believed as much as he did that they had to hold on to this one moment for as long as possible.

  The phone ringing broke the silence in the room. It was Junior on the other end of the line.

  “We’ll be right over,” Peter said, putting the baby on the bed. “Mia’s just packing up. You should call Adrian, too. He’ll need to drive us to the airport.”

  I walked over to him and sat down. “I don’t think I can do this. You can’t go.”

  “Baby, I have to.” Peter pulled me to him, and for another moment we just sat there, the three of us.

  We’d finally moved into our dream home. It was our sanctuary, where we could escape all the madness, and Peter’s favorite room was the nursery. When we finally stood up and started walking, Peter stopped outside the nursery and just stared into it. He loved that room; he’d spent days and days making it perfect for Bella.

  He’s saying goodbye, I thought. And I’m going to have to accept that I am, too. I just hope that one day Bella knows that she’s the reason her father wanted to change his life.

  Then we both turned and headed toward Olivia and Junior’s house next door.

  Olivia

  Mia and Peter came in with the baby, looking like they’d just come back from a funeral. They were moving in slow motion, holding hands, and generally looking awful, which is how we all felt. I watched Mia sit down slowly on the couch and take the baby from Peter, then stare off into space.

  How the hell is she so calm? I thought. After the feds had called, I’d sprung into nonstop action.

  I’d been running around the house like a freaking tornado, checking for papers or anything that had our information on it. I’d been yelling orders, “We have to get everything out of here! There can’t be any sign of us! Get rid of everything!” I had a stack of magazines with our names and Chicago address on them in one hand and a pile of papers in the other. I ran to the garbage and ripped them up, then grabbed a garbage bag and headed over to the walls to get the framed wedding and family photos that were hanging on them. I threw the garbage bag at Junior and screamed at him, “Take that out to the car!”

  We had video cameras scattered around our house for security. I ran through every single damn room and pulled down each and every one, then headed outside and got up on a ladder to pull down the cameras that were hanging near the entrance, I hardly thought about those cameras most of the time—we’d lived with them for so long that I forgot they even existed—but at that moment, they were the most important thing in my world. I had to get rid of them.

  When all that was done, I started looking for my babies’ birth certificates. There was no way we were getting across the border if I couldn’t prove that they were my children. Benjamin was so little he didn’t have documentation of his dual citizenship, so getting his paperwork together was pretty much a life-or-death situation. I went through every drawer in our house, and finally I found the papers.

  Why weren’t we prepared for this? I kept asking myself. I suppose we thought we’d have a few more months, maybe years. Or maybe we were in denial, thinking we could all be together forever. The truth was we’d known nothing. No clue how much more they’d need to record, no idea of whether or not what they’d gathered was useful, and no idea if fucking Rambo was at our back door ready to kidnap us. We’d had no protection, no feedback, no nothing.

  And now, we had no instructions about how to get the hell out of our house and make it to the border without being killed.

  Mia

  I remember just sitting there on Olivia and Junior’s sofa, holding Bella in one arm and her diaper bag in the other. Olivia was running around from room to room, looking like a crazy woman, pulling photos off the wall and throwing pieces of paper into garbage bags. I wanted to help her—to do something—but I was just too lost. My in-laws—who Peter and Junior had told about their plans a few months back—had just come over. While my father-in-law looked disgusted, my mother-in-law was crying her eyes out. I didn’t even think she noticed me, but days later she told me, “When I saw you on that sofa holding Bella, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so small.”

  I’m tiny, one hundred pounds most of the time, but that morning, I felt like I’d shrunk. My head wasn’t on straight, and I couldn’t even move. How am I going to go through life without Peter? I kept thinking. I can hardly sleep without him beside me.

  Peter approached me, took Bella from my arms, and removed her changing pad and a diaper from my bag. “I’ve got her,” he said. Then he placed her gently on the sofa, cradling her little head and neck, and changed her diaper. “Here you go,” he said as he passed her back to me.

  I watched as he walked to the kitchen to make her one last bottle. When he came back, he handed the bottle to me, leaned down and kissed me.

  “What is it?” I asked. He looked so serious.

  “Mia, it’s time,” he answered.

  Then I watched the man I love do the absolute hardest thing he’d ever done in his life: turn and start to walk away from his family. Even though my heart was breaking, I remember thinking, I’ve never been more proud of him.

  Olivia

  I’d been racing through the house for the last hour, but I’d made a point of putting Brandon in his room with some toys. He didn’t need to see his mom breaking down. I was frantically crying and couldn’t believe that Junior had to leave us. Junior was my rock, my everything, and I was terrified of being alone. As strong as I’d always been, at that point I was at my weakest. The only thing that kept me going was the deep sense that I had to protect my babies, and if I couldn’t keep it together for myself, I had to do it for them.

  I have to keep going, I told myself. Just keep moving.

  But as I walked downstairs into our living room, the enormity of everything hit me again. We had our Christmas tree up already. I’d already put out all my little Santa Clauses and decorated the entire house. Brandon’s birthday was a few weeks away, and Christmas right after that. Junior’s going to miss them both, I thought. Thanksgiving was our last holiday as a family.

  Daniela saw me and came out of a side room, leading Brandon by his hand. Junior was standing by the door, holding his bag. Brandon had always been Junior’s little shadow. If Junior had to leave the house, our son would literally cling to his dad’s leg while he started walking. Junior would pry him off, then walk him back across our hardwood floor. There were even a few times that Junior canceled plans because he didn’t want to leave Brandon behind.

  When Brandon saw his dad by the door, he ran toward him.

  “No, don’t leave!” he said, diving toward Junior’s legs. “Don’t go!”

  Junior looked broken. “Brandon, it’s okay, baby. Daddy’s going to come back.” Junior pulled him up close. “I love you, and I promise I’ll be back. You have to take care of Mommy, and never forget how much I love you. You’re my little best friend.”

  I carried Benjamin over to the two of them, and we stood together in the foyer, holding on to each other for dear life, trembling. I wanted to fall to my knees and beg him not to leave me. As se
lfish as it was, I thought to myself, I should have never pressured him to change his life. I’m not sure breaking up my family is worth it.

  Then Junior let us go, and he and Peter moved together toward the door. When they walked out, I heard the click of the lock.

  Mia

  When Peter and Junior closed the door and started heading toward Adrian’s car, I heard a loud cry. It was sort of like a high-pitched siren. I looked over and saw that it was coming from Brandon, who was hanging from the doorknob with both hands, screaming, “No, Daddy, no!”

  Seeing a child in that kind of pain is agonizing, and when I looked over at Olivia, shaking as she rocked Brandon back and forth, I wondered why we’d ever decided to put ourselves through this.

  Olivia and Junior had installed a deadbolt way high up on their front door, not for security, but because Brandon had learned how to unlock the bottom lock and let himself out. Before they put the deadbolt on, Peter and I would sometimes see him toddling out the door toward our house, wearing his little onesie and carrying his blankie. Peter would always go scoop him up, give him a big kiss, then call Junior or Olivia and say, “Your son just came over to play with my dog.”

  I realized that if the door hadn’t had a deadbolt, Brandon would have sprinted right out, dragging his blankie behind him, and run after that car all the way to the Guadalajara airport.

  It was the most painful thought I’d ever had in my life.

  Olivia

  If I could have taken away Brandon’s pain, I would have. But I had to stay strong and come up with a plan to get us the hell out of there. My family’s life depended on it.