He walks away before I can respond. His footsteps fade down the hallway, a door opens and closes, and then I'm alonein the foyer with the chandelier and the marble and the echo of words I don't know how to process.
Mrs. Novak reappears, her expression carefully neutral.
"This way, Miss," she says. "I'll show you to your room."
I follow her up the sweeping staircase, down a corridor lined with closed doors, to a room at the end of the hall. She opens the door and steps aside.
The blue guest room.
It's beautiful. A four-poster bed draped in silk the color of the ocean. Windows that overlook the gardens. A fireplace with a fire already crackling. An en suite bathroom through a door left artfully ajar, all white marble and brass fixtures.
A cell. A gilded, gorgeous cell.
"I'll have clothing brought up within the hour," Mrs. Novak says. "And breakfast shortly after. Is there anything else you need?"
I need to wake up from this nightmare. I need my old life back. I need to understand how the man I loved became a monster who buys women at auctions and threatens to dismember people in public.
"No," I say. "Thank you."
She nods and withdraws, closing the door softly behind her.
I stand in the middle of the room, still wearing my wrinkled black dress, still smelling of the auction house and Misha's jacket and my own fear. The fire crackles. The bed beckons. Dawn light spills through the windows, painting everything in shades of gold and rose.
I never stopped, he said.Not for a single day.
I sink onto the edge of the bed, my legs finally giving out. The silk coverlet is cool against my palms. Everything is soft and beautiful and utterly surreal.
Leaving was the only way I knew how to love you.
I don't sleep. I lie there in the blue room as the sun rises over Misha Kashkin's fortress, replaying his words until they lose all meaning, until they're just sounds, just rhythms, just the echo of something I'm not sure I can survive understanding.
Outside, the guards patrol their routes. Inside, somewhere in this massive house, the man who bought me is making calls, arranging security, preparing to explain the inexplicable.
And I stare at the ceiling, counting my heartbeats, wondering what kind of love requires two years of silence and five million dollars and a cage disguised as a castle.
Wondering if I'll ever find my way out.
Chapter 4 - Misha
The office is dark except for the lamp on my desk.
I prefer it this way. Shadows make it easier to think, easier to shed the mask I wear in public and confront the man underneath. The man who just paid five million dollars for a woman he promised himself he'd never touch again.
My hand is steady as I pour two fingers of vodka. I don't drink it. Just hold the glass, letting the cold seep into my palm, anchoring me to something real.
Three hours since we left the auction. Three hours since I saw her standing on that stage, chin raised, terrified but refusing to break. Three hours since I destroyed seventeen years of careful discipline with two words.
Five million.
I didn't plan it. Didn't strategize or calculate or weigh the costs. I saw her, and I acted. Instinct. Emotion. Everything I've trained myself to suppress since I was seventeen years old, watching my parents bleed out on a roadside.
Dmitri is going to kill me.
I pull out my phone and dial Alexei. He answers on the first ring.
"Talk to me," I say.
"We weren't followed from the auction. I had two cars run counter-surveillance the entire route—clean." His voice is clipped, professional. "The staff at the house has been briefed. Additional security is en route. She's safe."
