I smiled at María José in a reassuring way, hiding the hurricane brewing beneath my skin.
"And what exactly did Luis Miguel do?" I asked in a deceptively calm voice.
Because I needed to know.
Because if he had done anything—anything—to make my precious, innocent flower suffer…
Then I was going to make him suffer, too.
Tenfold.
I was never a patient man. I preferred my problems to be solved swiftly, preferably with a knife between someone's ribs or a bullet lodged in their skull.
It was cleaner that way—efficient. But as María José recounted what those kids did to her, I found myself gripping the wooden crate beside me so tightly that my fingers ached.
"Wait," I said in a dangerously calm tone. "You're telling me they made you trip over a tomato stall, then stole your father's money to pay for it?"
She nodded, her fingers twisting in the hem of her skirt.