My nostrils flared as I tore myself out of his grip and spun to face him. “I amnota Doll,” I snapped, the word scraping on old scars. My pulse hammered, loud in my ears. I had spent too much of my life being hollowed out, stripped of name and will and worth, turned into something ornamental and quiet. Then I spent two fucking years with Halden being beaten into the opposite. Both were shriveled versions of who I actually wanted to be. “I’ve been conditioned to have that part of me ripped away,” I continued, my voice tight. “So no. You’re not understood.”
He stepped closer. “I assumed as much.” From the inside of his jacket, he pulled something small and white, round enough to disappear between his fingers. My stomach twisted. “This will help,” he said.
I stared at it. “A pill?”
“You’ll remain lucid, still be able to take in everything I need you to see,” he replied calmly, “but you’ll be more relaxed. The dinner will pass quicker.”
Something cold and furious unfurled inside my chest. “Absolutely not,” I breathed. “You want to drug me?”
“It’s an option.” He slipped it back into his pocket as if it meant nothing at all. “Play docile or be docile, Arden. I don’t care how you manage it, only that it’s done. If you ruin this—”
“You’ll kill Creed,” I cut in, my jaw clenched so hard it ached. “I get it.”
His gaze lingered on me for a moment, unreadable. Then he moved past me. “Let’s go.”
I hurried after him as he pressed a concealed button for an elevator. The doors slid shut, the descent swift and silent, and then we were spilling out onto a crowded sidewalk as if the building had simply exhaled us into the city. Manhattan hit me all at once. Sound, motion, light. Too much after the hush of the parlor. My breath caught, a shiver racing through me justas Alexander closed his hand around my wrist and steered me toward a waiting limo. One moment I was blinking against the city, the next I was being folded into leather and tinted glass, placed neatly into the seat across from him. The door shut. The world dulled. The limo slid into traffic with practiced ease.
And I’d never felt emptier.
Alexander poured himself a fresh glass of brandy as if nothing had changed. The familiar amber caught the light, and the association landed hard in my gut. Viktor’s drink. Of course it was. I slouched back into the seat, its luxury doing nothing to soften the tightness in my chest.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“This?” He lifted his glass slightly, one brow arching as the city lights raced across his face. The gold chain at his throat caught and released the glow with each passing streetlamp, his arm draped along the back of the seat. “I have no intention of enduring a dinner with Buyers without alcohol.” He tipped his chin toward the bottle of brandy. “Can I make you a glass?”
I stared at him, the hum of the engine vibrating through the floor. “Yes,” I said, because liquid courage felt like the least dangerous thing in that moment. “But that isn’t what I was asking, and you know it. You didn’t have to make marriage part of any of this. You know that holding Creed over my head is enough to make me compliant, so why the ring?”
He poured me a glass and passed it over. Our fingers brushed, brief and accidental, and I recoiled, lifting the drink to my mouth and taking a cautious sip. Strangely enough, Alexander seemed to recoil too. Frowning, the burn of the brandy flared across my tongue. It had been a long time since I’d tasted hard liquor, but the sting was familiar. There was something defiant in letting the taste belong to me too. I wondered if that was why he was drinking it.
“The specifics of the marriage won’t make any sense to you until I’veshownyou what I need to,” he said cryptically.
“Creed,” I pushed, changing directions in an attempt to get something out of him I could use. “Why do you have the mark? Who are you to Viktor?”
He watched me for a long moment. “Those are two very different questions,” he said, “with two very long answers.”
“But you were his, weren’t you?”
“Yes.” That was all he offered. His gaze stayed on me, heavy and unblinking, and for the first time since I’d met him, he looked unsettled.
“And?” I pressed.
“And you think sharing a past with the same monster makes us kin,” he said sharply. “That it gives us something to bond over.”
My stomach twisted. “I just want to understand what this is.” I gestured between us, at the space, the ring, the glass in my hand, all of it.
“This is a transaction,” he said flatly. “I bought you. Start acting like it.”
My brow furrowed. “No.”
“A fan of that word, aren’t you?” he muttered, annoyed. “I thought for sure it would’ve been erased from your vocabulary.”
I gripped my glass. “This is you then? That fake charming asshole from before was just an act?”
“I had to start somewhere. Usually it works on people.” He shrugged and swiveled the liquor in his glass. “But you made it clear quickly that it wouldn’t so I adjusted.”
“As in this too isn’t you?”
“As in why do you care who I really am, Arden?” he wondered. “Would it really change anything? I’m not going to release Creed.”
