I put my face in my hands, because my hands hide my shame. The first sob is a stranger, then the body remembers its script. I am silent as a hunted thing, but my ribs lift and drop like misfiring wings. I think, wildly, that in the building there is a screen where my white room is being watched by someone who is, at this moment, confused—she is not on the chair, she is not pacing—where? And then I think, no, the cameras here see everything. I think, I do not care, and then I think, I do, I do care so much it hurts to know that anyone can witness this break, this crack, this weakness.
I am going to be sold.
The word does not take my breath the way it used to.
I have said it silently so often that its edges have worn smooth. But here, under this trivial luxury of leaves, it flares like a brand fresh from the fire.
Sold. Owned. Used.
The words do not need elaboration. They sit on my tongue like a foul taste I can’t scrub out.
I press a fist against my mouth not to stop the sound—I have already smothered the sound—but to feel the pressure. It comforts in the way of tight spaces. We think of freedom as a vast horizon, but sometimes it really is just the width of a knuckle.
Someone coughs. The cough has that impatient politeness men wear when they are reminded of the bodies of women behaving in ways not on their agenda.
I lift my head. I have been gone perhaps twenty seconds, perhaps ten. Time in a bush is not the same as time on a clock. I wipe my face with my palm. My tears leave a sheen on my skin like rain on a statue before I smooth my hair back with that same hand, making order out of the chaos my face has created.
It is astonishing how quickly one can make the mask presentable.
The trick is to believe in it, pouring your dignity into it.
I step sideways out of the leaves, once more composed. I find the older guard’s gaze just long enough to remind him we have both seen me, and then I let it fall.
I do not gift him the satisfaction of a repentance. He can tell himself I was adjusting my shoelace for all I care.
“Stay on the path,” he says, almost gently. If I wanted to be generous I would hear concern in it, but I am out of generosity. I hear only protocol.
He does not look at the dampness I could not quite erase. He pretends there is nothing unusual about my sudden interest in the horticulture. Apparently, this is his gift to us; a small collusion on both our parts.
We resume. The loop around the garden is narrow. I hold myself with the ice a queen wears to walk to the scaffold, ensuring the crowd doesn’t see her as a woman whose knees are water.
I do not feel better.
I do not feel worse.
The private violence of my tears lingers in the way my body is now tuned. Terror and pride sit in opposite pews inside me, both praying. My pride prays for composure, my terror prays for release.
I belong to me.
Even when a price has been agreed and the gavel comes down, I belong to me. My tears belong to me. My brief moment in the leafy embrace of a hedge belongs to me.
The rest I will negotiate one indignity at a time.
The silence of my office is delicate thing, only interrupted by the soft hiss of clean air through the vents and the faint, rhythmic tick of the Patek Philippe on my wrist. It’s a sound that speaks of control, of order, of a universe perfectly calibrated entirely to my will. The scent of aged leather from the Chesterfield sofa and the sharp, clean aroma of lemon oil on the mahogany desk are the only perfumes this temple requires.
I am its god, and the world outside these soundproofed walls is a distant, irrelevant murmur.
Discreetly set into the desk’s surface is an intercom system. The single, amber light glows next to the label ‘Dog House’. I press the button, my finger lingering for a moment. The connection opens with a soft click, no voice on the other end, only the sound of waiting. That is the rule.
“Send Anya to me,” I say, my voice low. The line closes with another click, and the amber light dies.
I lean back in my chair, the supple Italian leather sighing in acceptance of my weight. The summons has been issued, the machinery of my domain is in motion. I let my eyes drift over the panoramic window that forms one entire wall of the office. The city sprawls below, a glittering, chaotic circuit board of ambition and desperation. From up here, it is a toy. I own large parts of it but the ownership I truly cherish is far more intimate, far more… visceral.
It doesn’t take long. A soft, almost timid knock sounds at the heavy oak door. It is a specific rhythm: two light taps, a pause, a third. The sound of obedience, the sound of a pet remembering its training.
A slow smile touches my lips. “Enter.”
The door opens just wide enough for her to slip through. Anya doesn’t walk in. The moment she is over the threshold, she drops. Her knees hit the polished parquet floor with a soft thud that is both submissive and practiced. She keeps her head bowed, a fall of glossy, dark hair obscuring her face. She is wearing a simple sheer dress I permit the pets to wear when not in training or presentation. It does nothing to hide the lovely lines of her body, the gentle curve of her spine as she kneels, the delicate shape of her hands resting palm-up on her thighs.
