I pressed my hand against the wall to steady myself, the room spinning around me. This couldn’t be Father talking. This had to be some kind of misunderstanding, or maybe someone had a gun to his head.
Carefully, I edged closer and peered through the crack in the door.
My father had his back to me, and facing him were the very same men who had kidnapped me in the first place.
The ones from the crew who had put me on that stage.
The world started to spin as the ground shattered beneath my feet.
Every single thing I believed to be true turned to mist. I had come here hoping to help my father, believing in my heart that he’d protect me if I needed.
And all the while, he was the reason I was in this mess in the first place.
“I don’t care how you do it,” my father was saying, “but you need to get her back. I have people waiting for her, a groom getting impatient.”
I clutched my heart, trying to stand still as my knees shook beneath me.
“Marc, be reasonable,” one of the men said. “The Lebedevs have her now. Maybe we can offer them something else—”
“No!” My father slammed his fist on the desk. “I promised them my daughter, and they’ll get her. She’s the only thing that will satisfy their demand. Find a way.”
Each word stole more air from my lungs.
He promised them. My father promised them his daughter.
He arranged it all.
The kidnapping.
Maybe not the auction.
But he had already sold me to get ahead.
I stumbled back, feeling sick to my throat. The floor seemed to tilt beneath my feet. I needed to get out of there before I passed out.
I turned and ran, not caring who saw me. Down the corridor, past startled faces, into the elevator that thankfullystood open. I jabbed at the button for the lobby, pressing it repeatedly, as if that would make the doors close faster.
When they finally did, I collapsed against the wall, wrapping my arms around myself to keep from shaking apart.
This couldn’t be real. The man who taught me to ride a bike, who took me hiking as a kid, who helped with every math problem I had—he couldn’t have done this. Yet even as the memories come rushing back, another layer resurfaces, a side of him I had made myself forget because otherwise, it would have meant holding on to rage.
Everything he did when I was younger felt like control I could have mistaken for devotion. When I couldn’t get a math problem right, he’d call me a fool. When I couldn’t complete that hike, he pushed me forward despite the tears rolling down my face.
But none of those things are enough to help me make sense of what I heard with my own ears. Whether my father was controlling or devoted, it didn’t matter. He was my father, and no father just sells their daughter off like a prized pig.
So how could he have done that to me?
By the time the elevator reached the lobby, I’d managed to pull myself together just enough to walk.
I pushed through the revolving doors and gulped down the city air, suddenly desperate to put as much distance between myself and that building with my father as possible.
I ran down the courthouse steps, blindly heading to the street. People blurred past me, and some of them cursed as I brushed past them, but I didn’t care.
All I could see was my father’s face as he said those words: “I promised them my daughter.”
Tears streamed down my face, but I didn’t bother wiping them away.
What was the point?
