“Mr. Chernykh,” he said, voice careful. “Everything is in order. As requested.”
Avgust held out a hand. The man fumbled to open the case and slid a set of documents onto the desk.
“Leave.” Avgust said.
The lawyer blinked. “Should I—”
“Leave.”
The word hit like a bullet. The man nodded quickly, retreating without another sound, the door clicking shut behind him. It would have been funny if I were not this man’s property right now and was observing all of it from a third eye. But right now, it almost felt as if my life was on the line. Quite literally.
My stomach tightened.
I took a step forward towards Avgust. “What was that?”
Avgust didn’t look at me. He flipped through the papers, scanning, then set them down neatly. “A marriage license.”
For a second, I thought I had misheard him. “I’m sorry, what?”
He met my gaze now, calm, cold, detached. “You’ll sign it.”
I laughed, the sound sharp and brittle. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“Marry you? You bought me!”
His expression didn’t change. “I bought your safety. You are a person, not property that can be bought and sold.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works!”
He tilted his head slightly, studying me like I was some puzzle he hadn’t decided whether to solve or destroy. “It’s exactly how it works here. You were being sold at an auction, and if it hadn't been for me, you would have been bought by that man in the red tie. Do you think the men in that room were going to let you walk away if they had bought you, or would they be giving you marriage contracts to sign? You’d be dead by the morning or something even worse might have happened to you.”
I swallowed hard, the memory of the eyes of the men present in that room making my stomach twist. “So what? You’re my savior now? Is that it?”
He pushed the papers towards me, a pen balanced on top. “You’ll sign this. It’ll make you untouchable.”
“Untouchable?”
“No one touches another man’s wife,” he said simply. “Not in this world and definitely not of a Chernykh.”
The words hit me harder than I wanted to admit.
He leaned forward slightly, forearms resting on the desk, voice low and measured. “You think I wanted to be there tonight? That I make a habit of buying women from cages? I don’t. But when I saw you on that stage, I knew I couldn’t leave you there. You looked at me like you’d already given up. And I don’t like seeing something break before I decide what to do with it.”
My pulse jumped. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s not supposed to make you feel anything. It’s supposed to keep you alive and safe.”
Safe. There was that word again.
I stared at him. The arrogance, the calm, the absolute conviction in his tone terrified me more than the men who’d dragged me off that stage. He stood up then, walking around the desk until he was close enough that I could feel the faint heat radiating from his body.
“Sit,” he said again, quieter this time.
My knees moved before my mind caught up.
He placed the pen in front of me, his voice dropping lower, rougher. “Sign it, Ilana.”
