Page 66 of Spice and Revenge

“So, you became resentful?” I say.

Pedro doesn’t deny it.

“He had everything easy, without having to do the hard work. He took the position that I loved, the woman I loved, and had the family that I always wanted.”

I see him clench his jaw.

Pedro is a calm, jovial man who never loses his temper. Or rather, he never lets anyone see him lose his temper. He’s cunning and calculating, always having a plan and a backup plan for every situation.

Yet, as I watch him tell this story, I see a glimpse of his true emotions which he hides from everyone, including himself.

“He stole your lover. Is that why you never had a family?” I ask, wanting to prod, to stoke his fire.

Pedro surprises me by chuckling.

“I decided to not have children when my brother and his family were wiped out. I saw how easy it would be for my enemies to kill all my offspring. I didn’t want any weaknesses.”

“So, you'll let the Cuban empire die with you?” I question.

“You haven’t been paying attention,” he tsks. “I don’t believe in birthrights or inheritance based on blood. I believe in merit—every man has to prove himself worthy.”

He doesn’t say who he will hand it over to, but I can assume it would be the most loyal among his men.

“I used Ares Rizzo to wipe out my brother’s family. Then, I pretended to come to the rescue after I was sure they would have died. The youngest daughter, Laura, wasn’t dead. She fooled you all by playing dead,” he chuckles to himself. “Laura was always the clever one.”

Laura.

Laura Rodriguez, not Lorena Romano.

My chest squeezes painfully from her betrayal. She has been fooling me all this while, pretending to have a thing for me while planning to kill me. And she would have killed me. I would have been a dead man if Lorena—Laura had found the opportunity to end my life.

“Enzo always taught the girls what to do if they were ever captured. He taught them to play dead. It wasn’t a guarantee of not getting killed, but it could give them leverage to think of a plan. I thought it was stupid advice until I busted into the room that day and saw that Laura was the only one with a pulse. Her eyes and fists were tightly shut, and when I touched her body, it was shaking.”

He runs a tongue over his teeth before continuing.

“I would have killed her there, but I didn’t. I took her, and I trained her. Maybe it was because I saw myself in her—the younger, yet smarter child. I treated her as my own…”

“And yet, she ran away from you,” I say.

It takes a lot to successfully run away and hide one’s identity from a mafia group as big as the Cuban Mafia. I refuse to think of Pedro’s idea of training, and what he did to prompt Lorena to plot her escape.

“Some traits are hereditary,” he muses. “She inherited her cowardice from her father. She could have been the biggest assassin in the mafia world, a threat to clans spread far and wide, my trusted confidant…”

But he would have never given her the throne.

“You were using her as a mere weapon. She clocked that and ran away. That’s smart of her,” I say instead.

A hint of humor dances in Pedro’s eyes as he regards me.

“You are defending the same woman that tried to kill you,” he chuckles. “Don’t tell me you’re in love with my niece.”

I only clench my jaw in response, and that makes him chuckle.

“Ah. You must be as stupid as your father was, then. I mean, I managed to make the man do all the hard work for me in the pretense of forming an alliance— exploiting him for years, then disposing of him when the opportunity arose.”

His eyes turn into slits as he snarls. “I never knew he had an illegitimate son somewhere old enough to take over. I alreadyplanned how I would kill his three little children and make his young wife my whore.”

I want to kill him. I want to kill him so bad but doing that now would be stupid of me.

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