Page 94 of Devoured By Peace

“One learns pretty fucking quickly that it’s all about survival and nothing else. It’s hurt or be hurt, especially where I come from. The trailer park was full of people like me. Only God saw fit to give me a nice set of tits, a pretty face, a hungry pussy, and a cold heart.” She sniffed. “Being nice was never going to feed me. I dropped out of college because I was too hungry to concentrate. My mother drank too much to care, and I didn’t know my father. I soon discovered that I could survive using this”—she tapped her pussy—“and this.” She touched her head. “So you can call me whatever the fuck you like. But I play this game to win. And I won. And that’s all there is to know. Don’t jump on your fucking high horse with me. You probably would have hocked that sexy ass of yours if all you had were your fucking wits to survive.”

“You can’t say that. There’s such a thing as honest hard work,” I said.

“Honest hard work doesn’t buy one this.” She stretched out her arm. “Honest work buys one a bad fucking back, a shit marriage, children that suck the life out of you, and a husband that thinks being married entitles him to bash you around when life sucks.”

An icy wind blew my way. I remained silent. Tamara had never shared so much about her former life. She painted a grim picture of reality. And I wasn’t so naïve as to believe that such desperation didn’t exist.

She sauntered over to the bottle again and refilled the glass.

It was barely five in the afternoon.

“One billion,” I said at last. “I’ll give you a billion for all of this and you to go away. I also want to adopt Manuel.”

Her plump lips rose at one end. “You’ve always had a thing for your brother’s son.”

Anger burned in my gut. “Hey. Don’t you fucking dare go there.”

“Go where?” She smirked. “That’s your garbage head thinking.”

“One billion,” I said, dying to see the back of her. My soul had been polluted. And while she’d tweaked a sympathetic muscle when showing me what life growing up with nothing looked like, I still hated the woman she’d become.

After staring at me with a blank expression, she said, “I’ll get my lawyer to draft an agreement, then.” She was about to walk off but paused and added, “You’re free for now. But you’ve got a month to raise the cash.”

As I watched her sway off, the breath that had been trapped in my lungs finally left my mouth, and my chest untangled.

Although her deceitful game had left a bitter taste, at least I wouldn’t sit on a bug-infested bed or endure the stench of a foul prison cell again. I would go to Geneva, get the gold owed to me, and pay her off. And I would put that dirty money to good, honest use to atone for its origin.

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