laughter.
“I’ll give you 100 million if you open the safe,” the billionaire declared — and the room exploded with laughter. Mateo Sandoval clapped his hands and pointed at the barefoot boy trembling next to the titanium safe.

“One hundred million dollars,” he shouted, smiling like a man who fed on cruelty. “All the money is yours if you crack this beauty. Well? What do you say, little street rat?”

The five businessmen around him laughed so hard they wiped tears from their eyes.

For them, it was the perfect spectacle:
An eleven-year-old child — in torn clothes, with a dirty face — staring at the most expensive safe in Latin America as if it had fallen from the sky.

“This is pure comedy,” howled Rodrigo Fuentes, a forty-nine-year-old real estate magnate. “Mateo, you’re a genius. Do you really think he understands what you’re offering him?”

Please,” snorted Gabriel Ortiz, a fifty-one-year-old pharmaceutical heir. “He probably thinks a hundred million means a hundred pesos.”

“Or he thinks he can eat them,” added Leonardo Márquez, a fifty-four-year-old oil tycoon, triggering another wave of ugly laughter.

In a corner, Elena Vargas, thirty-eight years old, clutched the mop so tightly her hands were shaking.