T-misha
Yvonne Beltrán built her life from scratch: a celebrated television presenter with a sharp investigative reputation, a prime-time slot at a respected New Mexico newsroom, a quiet countryside home, financial freedom. Then a con artist dismantles it all, leaving her publicly disgraced and cornered at thirty.
Out of options, Yvonne turns toward the one force in New Mexico that still bends rules and opens doors: power. Seducing Esteban Vásquez -- the elegant, elusive, obscenely wealthy mayor -- looks like leverage.
It isn't.
What Esteban calls politics survives on blood that never makes the news. Beneath the luxury and charm is a man embedded in the state's quietest, deadliest criminal empire.
According to Yvonne, marriage to power so clean seems like the fastest way back to the life she lost; until Yvonne learns too late that it doesn't protect her. It implicates her.
It was meant to be temporary. Strategic. But life beside Esteban changes the math. Ruthless and impossible to escape, he is also the first man who has made her feel chosen rather than used. Having already lost one wife to betrayal, Esteban refuses to lose another.
Yvonne's mistake, however, is believing she still holds the advantage. So when a source comes to her seeking protection from powerful men who wash their hands with blood, she takes the story -- believing she can still control how far the truth travels -- only to realize why it was never meant to make the news.
She isn't investigating power from the outside. She married the center of it.
And in Esteban's world, loyalty is non-negotiable.
Now Yvonne must decide who she's willing to betray: her husband, devastatingly gentle in love; her source, facing prison for a crime he didn't commit; or herself.
Because time is closing in. And when the reality of that finally dawns, there will be no clean exits, only consequences for staying when she still could have left.