Every last one thoroughly researched, leverage locked and loaded.
It was go-time.
I went into the meeting calm and collected, as is my standard. Polite, charming, articulate and affluently attired. The white hair and impeccable dress fooling their olfactory senses into thinking I was older than I was, which was at least ten years younger than even the youngest of them.
I let them blather on about theirplans, and attempt to impress me with their pedestrian knowledge of my organization. But before they could really whip their dicks out and start measuring, I had to intervene.
“Yes, well, this is all fascinating,” I’d injected, sitting back in my leather boardroom chair at the head of the conference table in the Midtown law office. “However, I must admit, there is something else on the agenda for this meet-and-greet that I would like to discuss.”
The room went quiet as they all stared.
That was when I brought up something I’m positive they hadnotexpected me to bring up.
There was a small, undergroundsubsidiary, for lack of a better word, of Arturo’s business that I never knew about until the day I killed him.
Now, I can’t say for certain whether he played a direct hand in these operations, or if he simply allowed them to function while profiting and looking the other way. But as far as I’m sure most of us are concerned, there is no real difference.
Arturo had two small children. Twins. A boy and a girl.
I knew he had them. I remember his wife getting pregnant shortly after I started working for him. Still, I’d never actually met them. Arturo kept his work and home lives separate, understandably. Plus, they were babies. Barely four years old when he died, I believe.
I wouldn’t know the first thing about interacting with infants.Clearly, being that I killed their parents in front of them.Whoops.
Anyway, that day, Pablo took the girl, which I hadn’t understood or really even noticed in the moment. Honestly, I’d forgotten they existed until he told me to find the boy andtake care ofhim.
I found the boy, yes. But I didn’t kill him.
Andno, I didn’t tell anyone that because, quite frankly, it’s none of their concern. The moment I took Arturo Alvarez’s last breath, this business became mine. I didn’t have to kill the petrified little doe-eyed thing hiding in the closet, and I certainly didn’t have to explain or justify my actions to anybody.
But the fact remained that my nowemployeeshadtakenthe kid’s twin sister. And I couldn’t fathom what for.
It wasn’t as though they were rescuing her… They’d expected me to kill the boy.
My first day in charge, I dug around into what they could have possibly been planning to do with a three-year-old girl, wishing like hell it wasn’t what I’d thought it might be.
Of course it was.
Not only human trafficking, butchildtrafficking. And neither were things I had any interest in, let alone things I wanted taintingmyempire.
I immediately cut off all funding to anything that could be tied even slightly to those networks, and fired everyone involved on our side—that’s a nice way of saying I put a bullet in each of their brains.
And now, it was time to purge the rest of it.
I’m not an idiot. I knew this type of shit existed, and I wasn’t so naïve to think that I could stop it from happening, no matter how powerful I was. But Icouldmake damn sure it stayed far the hell away from my business.
Mira, I’m not saying I have aconscience, or that I’m out here trying to save children, like some criminal with a moral compass,trust me… I am no better than any other of the evil billionaires out there.
This was a matter of principle.
Children are weak, and I don’t deal in the weak. My trade is not in the defenseless, because I’m not ahack. I work with grown-ass adults who are cognizant and capable of making their own poor decisions, and anyone who has to make their money by taking advantage of helpless beings is pathetic in my eyes.
I love dirty money, but there’s a line.
Those were the grievances I brought to the attention of the board in New York.
I won’t bore you with exactly what I said, or how the conversation went down, though I was verbose and sanguine, as I tend to be. Let’s just say, I had themall the wayat the edge of their seats.
At the end of my long-winded monologue, I gave them an ultimatum: get their goddamn creepy child trafficking shit the hell away from my business and everywhere I conduct it, or I’ll expose them—worded differently, of course.
