I stared at him.This man who sat across from me in his expensive suit, in his expensive office, asking me to trade my body for money like it was nothing.Like I was nothing.
But underneath the horror, underneath the revulsion, something else stirred.A treacherous heat that I didn’t want to name.I was aware of his body.The breadth of his shoulders.The darkness in his eyes.The way his presence filled the room until there was no space left for anything else.
His scent wrapped around me, making it hard to think.Making it hard to remember why I should be running.
I hated him for making me feel this way.Hated myself more for feeling it.
“I need time to think.”
“You have until Friday.”He stood, and I understood the meeting was over.“That gives you three days.Don’t make me wait longer than that, Ms.Hughes.”He moved toward the window again, dismissing me.“My patience has limits.”
I rose on legs that barely held me.Made it to the door somehow.Made it to the elevator, the lobby, the street.
In the reflection of the glass doors, I caught a glimpse of myself.Pale.Hollow-eyed.Terrified.
I didn’t recognize that woman.Didn’t know who she was becoming.
Three days to decide.Sell myself to a monster, or lose everything.
The city stretched around me, bright and indifferent, and I’d never felt more alone.
7
LENA
The nightmares came every night.
Three days of them.Three days of waking up drenched in sweat, heart pounding, sheets twisted around my legs like restraints.In the dreams, I was in his office, but it wasn’t an office anymore.It was a cage.And he was circling me, those dark eyes burning, that predatory smile fixed on his face.
What will you give me, Lena?What do you have that’s worth twenty million dollars?
I knew the answer.I’d known it since the moment he said the words.My body.My freedom.One year of my life.
But knowing and accepting were two different things.
The worst nightmare came Thursday night.In it, I was kneeling on that cold marble floor while he stood over me.His hand in my hair, tilting my head back.His voice, low and certain, telling me exactly what he was going to do to me.And the terrible part, the part that made me wake up gasping, was that I didn’t try to run.I just looked up at him and waited.
Would he laugh at me?Would he be cruel?Would he use me roughly, carelessly, the way you’d use something you’d bought at a discount?I didn’t know what men like him wanted.Didn’t know what submission meant in practice.The word felt foreign in my mouth, like a language I’d never learned to speak.
I lay in bed afterward, staring at the ceiling, running the numbers one more time.As if they might have changed overnight.As if some miracle might have materialized while I tossed and turned.
They hadn’t.It hadn’t.
Friday arrived like an executioner’s footsteps.
I hadn’t slept more than two hours.The sun came up over the mountains and I watched the light creep across my bedroom wall, marking the minutes until I had to face what I already knew I would do.The sheets smelled like my own fear.Sour.Human.
I dragged myself out of bed and went through the motions.Shower.Coffee that tasted like ash.A piece of toast I forced down because I needed something in my stomach.The hotel was already humming with activity when I made my way downstairs, staff moving through their routines like nothing was wrong.Like their entire livelihoods didn’t hang by a thread I was about to cut.
Michael caught me in the hallway outside the back office.
“Lena.”He fell into step beside me, coffee cup in hand.His boyish face was creased with concern, and something about his expression made my throat tighten.“You look exhausted.Have you been sleeping?”
“Not really.”
“Is there anything I can do?”His voice was gentle.Sincere.The kind of voice that made you want to lean on someone, to let them carry part of the weight.“I know you’re under a lot of pressure.Whatever it is, you don’t have to carry all of this alone.”
I stopped walking and looked at him.Michael, who knew every inch of the building, every quirk of the plumbing, every staff member’s birthday.He’d shown me how to run the front desk software when I was fourteen.He’d covered for me when I snuck out to meet Joe last summer.
