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"You're right. Sheisjust a girl." I held the cigarette packet to him, and he absentmindedly took one, lighting it up with his own lighter.
“This was why I was waiting,notbecause of everything else on my plate. I'm able to keep a woman happy at the same time as running my business, Raul," my voice was mocking.
He sputtered in indignation, and her parents chuckled. I turned to them, delighting in the way all three of them were puffing on their cigarettes. "Had I known you were going to sell her for so little, I’d have taken her years ago.”
The laughter died in their throats, and I glanced down at the contract on my desk. "Only one mil?”
"It's plenty," Raul growled out, "she isn't even a virgin."
I studied him, putting my own cigarette out. "And if she was one? Satisfy my curiosity, what would she be worth?"
Both her parents’ faces swiveled towards him, hunger in their expressions. The idiots thought I was going to allow this exchange to take place.
What they didn't know was that they'd already signed their own death warrants.
“Maybe a few hundred thousand more?” Raul struggled to come up with an answer that would satisfy me but wouldn’t require much more from him.
“Only that much?” Her father huffed, and I leaned back in my chair to watch the ensuing argument as the three of them began to bicker over a new number.
I watched without amusement, knowing that this night would change everything between me and Tatiana.
I'd made a promise to her that I was breaking, and I knew that she would never forgive me.
I was willing to take her wrath though, for her protection and retribution.
It was the mother who realized that something was wrong first. She placed her hand on her chest, trying to clear her throat. She did this several times, then began to wheeze.
Her husband grew distracted, torn between his negotiations for more money and his wife’s distress. He kept glancing between her and Raul, still arguing.
Then his own breath grew short, and he stopped arguing as a foam slid down the woman's chin, her lips turning a shade of blue.
“Anna, what's wrong--" Her father didn't finish, as his own hand went to his throat. He began to cough.
"You bastard!" Raul jumped to his feet, understanding washing over him first. He lunged for the door, but didn't make it before he collapsed to the Italian rug, his whole body jerking.
“You have no idea,” I growled, but he didn’t hear me.
Both Pedro and I watched emotionless as the three people I hated the most struggled to breathe, their bodies twisting torturously as they suffocated to death.
My only regret was Tatiana.
Their deaths would be devastating to her. For some goddamn reason, she still loved her parents, despite what they did to her.
When the room was still, I stood, buttoning my suit as I addressed Pedro. "You'll take care of the bodies?"
"Yes, of course.”
“And Tatiana?”
He nodded. “You don't have anything to worry about."
After pocketing Abuelo’s lighter, I strode towards the door, not even glancing towards the three bodies. I stopped to point at Pedro. "If I hear that you haven't protected her as we've agreed, I will be back, and your death won't be as kind."
He met my gaze. "I have no desire to fuck a seventeen year old kid." His words were fierce, and I knew them to be true. Pedro was more like Abuelo. He'd been married to his wife for over thirty years, and, as far as I knew, he'd never cheated on her.
And he always kept his word.
I nodded, leaning over to kiss him once on the cheek, then walked out the door, never to return to Cuba again.