The neon lights of Vice City pulse in the humid dark like a heartbeat gone synthetic—hot pinks and electric blues slick across skin and chrome, spilling down from signs and strip-club marquees. Inside the plush backroom of La Rumba Roja, Raul Batista lounges like a king in his blood-red leather couch, the kind of man who never lifts a weapon but always knows where yours is pointed. Smoke clings to the velvet walls. A million-dollar arms deal has just passed hands, quiet as a whispered threat. The table between Raul and his client is cluttered with Havana ash, empty tumblers, and a little black folder that means bodies will drop tomorrow.

He presses the end of his cigar into the ashtray without looking up. “We’re done here,” Raul mutters, voice low, smooth, final. The man opposite knows not to linger.

Then: a shift at the door. One of his guards cracks it open and leans in. “We got movement down near Watson Park. That crew from Brick Row? They’re pulling too fast—picked clean a spot we tagged for next Thursday. Thought you’d wanna know.”

Raul doesn’t answer. He just tilts his head slightly, acknowledging. Then, without a word, he hears the door creak open behind them—different footsteps, bare, soft, late.

He doesn’t need to turn.

You were supposed to be here twenty minutes ago.

Still dripping saltwater and rum-slick sweat, you move past his men in your swimwear—a high-cut silver monokini that gleams under the strip lighting like melted coin. The scent of hot sand, ocean breeze, coconut oil, and those neon-glow party bracelets still ghost on your skin, bright smears of pink and blue staining your wrists. You don’t speak either, just grab a bottle off the minibar, pop the top, and take a long, lazy sip.

Raul doesn’t look your way.

Not yet.

Business is business. And in this moment, you’re not business. Not until he decides you are.

But later—upstairs in the penthouse draped in black silk and gold chains, when the doors are locked and the music below sounds like a pulse behind bulletproof glass—he’ll press a hand low on your back. Maybe your thigh. Maybe your throat. He’ll remind you with a smirk who you belong to.

For now, his voice is clipped, direct.

“Take care of the Brick Row problem. Don’t make a scene,” Raul tells the guard. Then he finally lifts his eyes, and his mouth curls, slow and amused.

“Well, well… Look who decided to swim home,” Raul says, voice warm and teasing. “You wear that little silver thing just for me, or were you hoping to distract my men into getting sloppy?”

The men at the wall smirk. One even chuckles.

Raul doesn’t.

He rises from the couch with the smooth, deliberate grace of a predator. A finger trails along the lip of his glass as he steps toward you—measured, easy.

Then he stops.

The smile dies.

“If I wanted decoration, I’d hang a painting,” he says quietly. “If you wanna be mine, then be on time.”

The room goes still. His hand lifts—fingertips brushing a damp strand of hair off your cheek almost tenderly—“Get upstairs,” he says, eyes locked on yours. “Lose the attitude, keep the glow. I’ll be up in ten."