“I already signed the contract.You know I?—”
“I want to hear you say it.Right now.While you’re standing outside your father’s hospital, where you just told him all about how you’ve sold yourself to save his mess.”His voice dropped to barely a whisper.“Say it, or I’ll find something else to take from you.Something you’ll miss more than your pride.”
The January wind cut through my coat.My hands shook.
“I belong to you.”
“Again.Like you mean it.”
“I belong to you.”
“There it is.”Satisfaction curled through his voice.“That wasn’t so hard, was it?Now go enjoy your brunch with Clara.Tell her all about the monster who owns you.But remember this conversation when you’re tempted to disobey me again.”
The line went dead.
I stood there for a long moment, the phone clutched in my frozen fingers, my pulse hammering against my ribs.He had made me say those words.Made me capitulate with nothing but the threat of harming someone I cared about.
And the worst part, the part I couldn’t admit even to myself, was how some small, twisted piece of me had thrilled at the command in his voice.
The fresh air hit me when I stepped outside the hospital’s sliding doors.I hadn’t realized how much the house had felt like a gilded cage until I was out of it, breathing in January air that smelled like pine trees and snow and freedom.The cold stung my cheeks and made my eyes water, and I welcomed it.I felt more awake than I had since I’d opened my eyes this morning.
Parsons drove in silence, which I appreciated.I watched the mountain landscape blur past my window, the pine forests giving way to the manicured grounds of Paradise Peaks’ luxury estates, and tried to organize the chaos rattling around in my skull.
I had a year of this ahead of me.Three hundred and sixty-five nights in that house, in that room, subject to his whims and his desires and whatever dark games he wanted to play.Last night had been just the first.Twenty-nine more nights to go before I’d earned my first payment.
I could survive this.I had to survive this.
But the memory of his fingers sliding between my lips, the chocolate melting on my tongue while his dark eyes watched me with an intensity that made my stomach flip, suggested that survival might be more complicated than I’d anticipated.
Clara was already waiting when I arrived at Café Montagne, one of those upscale brunch establishments where the coffee cost eight dollars and the avocado toast cost twenty-five.She’d claimed a corner table near the windows, her dark hair catching the winter sunlight, her posture perfect even in casual clothes.
She took one look at me and her perfectly sculpted eyebrows climbed toward her hairline.
“You look like death warmed over and then frozen again.”
“Thanks.”I collapsed into the chair across from her, grateful for the padded seat.“You look annoyingly perfect, as always.It’s exhausting.”
She did.Clara Hughes was everything I had never been allowed to become: polished, confident, assembled.Her dark hair fell in a sleek curtain past her shoulders, not a strand out of place.Her makeup was subtle and flawless.Her cashmere sweater was the color of butter and shimmered like silk under the sun.At twenty-five to my twenty, the five-year gap between us felt like a lifetime.
She had a Harvard degree in finance and political science.An Oxford MBA that she’d completed in record time.A seat on her family’s bank board and a corner office waiting for her whenever she wanted it.A life mapped out in promotions and accolades and international acclaim.
I had a dying hotel, a mountain of debt, and a contract that sold my body to pay for it.
“What’s going on with you?”Clara leaned forward, her sharp eyes scanning my face like she was reading a financial report and finding the numbers concerning.“And don’t say nothing.I’ve known you since you were four years old.I know that face.”
I waited until our server had taken our orders and retreated to a safe distance.Then, keeping my voice low, I told her.
Not everything.Not the virginity clause, not the kneeling or the stripping or the way he’d made me confess my sexual fantasies like items on an inventory list.Just the architecture of it: the debt, the deal, the year of my life in exchange for saving everything my family had built.
Clara’s expression shifted as I spoke.Confusion melted into disbelief, which sharpened into horror.
“Are you completely out of your mind?”
“Probably.”I stared at my coffee cup.“Almost certainly.”
“Lena.”She reached across the table and grabbed my hands, her grip fierce.“Raphael Antonov?Do you have any idea who he is?What he’s connected to?”
“I know he’s a billionaire with connections to dangerous people.I know he could crush me with a snap of his fingers if I displease him.”
