"Laws." The crying woman wipes her face, smearing her makeup further. "That's cute. Tell me, sweetheart, who do you think is buying? Politicians. Businessmen. Men with enough money to make laws disappear."
I back up until I hit the door. My heart is hammering now—one sixty, maybe one seventy. Tachycardia. The medical term floats through my mind, absurd and clinical. I press my palm flat against my chest, feeling the rapid flutter beneath my ribs. A heart in distress.
"My father," I say. "My father wouldn't—"
"Who's your father?"
"Carmine Benedetti."
The room goes quiet. The crying woman stops crying. The still woman finally moves, turning to look at me with something like pity.
"Oh, honey," she says softly. "Who do you think organized this?"
Time moves strangely after that.
I sit on the couch, wedged between the crying woman—Mirella, I learn, from somewhere in Eastern Europe—and the still one, who never gives her name. We don't talk much. What is there to say?
I keep waiting to wake up. Keep waiting for someone to burst through the door and tell me it's all a misunderstanding,a test, some kind of twisted prank. My father is many things—distant, cold, more interested in his sons than his daughter—but he wouldn't do this. He couldn't.
"The Benedettis are broke," the still woman says flatly, as if reading my thoughts. "Word is they owe the Morozovs more than they can pay. So they're liquidating assets." Her eyes flick to me. "All of them."
The words hit me like a blade. Liquidating assets. That's what I am to my father. Not a daughter. Not family. An asset to be sold when times get hard.
Except.
Except I've spent twenty-one years deliberately not looking at what my family actually does. Deliberately not asking questions about the money that pays for my education, my apartment, my entire life. Deliberately choosing ignorance because the alternative is too horrifying to contemplate.
The heart compensates, I told Misha once. It finds new pathways. Works harder to keep you alive.
I've been compensating for years. Building walls between myself and the truth, finding new pathways around the obvious, working so hard to maintain my illusions that I've missed what is right in front of me.
My family is in the business of selling people.
And now they're selling me.
Mirella reaches over and squeezes my hand. I don't know why—I'm the daughter of the monster who put her here. But her fingers are warm, and the human contact is grounding, and I squeeze back because it's the only thing I can do.
"First time?" she asks quietly.
I almost laugh at the absurdity of the question. "Is there any other kind?"
"For some girls, no. They get bought, they stay bought." She shrugs, a gesture of defeated acceptance. "Others get resold. Passed around. Depending on how well they behave."
The clinical part of my brain files this information away. The rest of me wants to scream.
The door opens without warning.
A man in a suit steps inside, clipboard in hand. He looks us over with the dispassionate gaze of someone inspecting livestock. His eyes linger on each of us in turn, assessing, calculating. I feel his gaze like a physical weight when it lands on me.
"Benedetti," he says. "You're up first."
The other women look at me. I see relief in some of their faces—relief that it isn't them, not yet—and hatred in others. Fair enough. I'm the daughter of the man who put them here.
I stand on legs that feel like water.
"Where are we going?" My voice comes out steadier than I expect.
"The floor." He checks something on his clipboard. "Lot one. You should feel honored—your father insisted you open the bidding. Said you'd fetch a good price."
