"After," she said, her voice low but steady, stripped of any tremor, "you can deduct it from whatever you were planning to pay me."
The words fell flat, clinical, as though she had already divorced herself from her own body. No seduction. No plea. Just a cold transaction to make the inevitable bearable.
Then she moved.
She leaned forward without hesitation, lips brushing the side of Santiago's neck. The contact was deliberate, almost mechanical, lingering just long enough to be unmistakable before she trailed lower, tracing the torn edge of his shirt where the white vest gaped open, exposing the hard line of his collarbone and the faint scar that ran beneath it.
The room watched in heavy silence.
Not with lust, but with the sharpened focus of men who understood violence and power better than desire. Their masked faces turned not only to her, but to Santiago, waiting to see whether their patrón would allow this breach of protocol or crush it.
