Alexander exhaled slowly, almost imperceptibly, but it drew me away from the memory and back into the present. He leaned in close enough for me to feel the warmth of his breath against my ear. “Do you see now why Creed is needed?” he murmured.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My fingers were numb, curled into the fabric of my dress. I didn’t believe in coincidences. It was startling enough to know Alexander had some kind of connection to Viktor, but for him to then have a connection with Halden too? I’d thought Viktor and Halden being his targets for me was purely to get me on his side, but I began to believe that there were far more stakes involved for him than he was letting on. Was Florence a sibling?A sister. I could see it so clearly the more I thought about their resemblances.
What I didn’t know was if I should reveal that I knew Florence. I didn’t want any woman within an inch of Halden for any longer than they had to be, but I also had to keep my family in mind. If all of this was about getting his sister back, then maybe Alexander would be open to further negotiation. Up until that point, I had nothing to use against him. Florence changed that.
The auction continued one body after another, one quiet transaction after the next. Faces blurred. Numbers lost meaning. My focus narrowed until the only thing I could feel was the steady pressure of Alexander’s arm, the cadence of his breathing, and the way the room bent around him. I didn’t register when the auction ended or when the Buyers began to rise from the table, chairs scraping softly. I was barely there asthe car ride back to the townhouse passed in a blur of streetlights and silence, my body moving through it without me, every sound distant, every sensation dulled like I was wrapped in glass.
When we were back in the bedroom, the door closing softly behind us, the weight of it all finally landed. I reached for the foot board of the bed and gripped it hard, my fingers whitening as I bent forward. Then the room tilted, and I bolted for the bathroom. I fell to my knees, heaving into the toilet, my body purging what my mind didn’t want to believe. I knew Alexander was behind me, watching me,looming. Taking up space that didn’t belong to him. Rafe. I wanted Rafe and Thorne and Kane. I wanted to hold my family, to know that they were safe.Leah.I wanted to braid her hair like she always did mine, and I wanted to see her smile again like she did that first year we met. I wanted her to be alive, and I wanted even more to know that she never, ever saw the inside of that auction room.
Lies. I wanted lies.
“Syndicate of International Need,” Alexander’s voice came heavy at my back. “S.I.N. disguised as a nonprofit and available globally to anyone with deep enough pockets.”
I dry heaved into the toilet, closing my eyes against another wave of nausea, but what came next wasn’t more vomit. A scream tore out of me hard enough that the water in the toilet rippled. My stomach caved with the effort of its release, and I shoved up to my feet, spinning to face Alexander. I closed the distance between us and wrapped a hand around his tie, lifting it between us in rage. “While I’ve killed men with far less,” I said, giving him a firm tug so that his dark gaze held mine. “I’ll spare you, Alexander. I will help you, but you have to help me. I can’t just be some contracted Doll or murderer. Not anymore. I will burn this townhouse to the ground and sacrifice my own life before I let you use me against my will any further. I want toknow Creed is safe. I need proof of life. In exchange, I’ll give you everything I have from my skill set to information.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Mayhew,” I said, and his lips parted. “That your real name? Your family name?”
He looked frantic. “Why?”
“Florence,” I said. “I met her.”
Alexander ripped back as if I’d struck him. His hands shook as he gaped at me. “What?”
“Clearly she’s important so I think you should agree to my terms,” I told him. “From now on, this marriage is a fucking partnership. You will not order me around. If you want me to do something, then it’s my decision. Am I clear?”
“Tell me right fucking now where youmether,” he spat, moving in like he planned to grab me by the neck and shake the answer out of me.
But I was quicker. I was fucking Creed. He may have had the mark, but he didn’t earn it in the same way I did. I swept to the side as he charged and plowed my hand forward, grabbing the back of his neck and shoving him. It was enough to knock him unsteady. He fell forward, his knees knocking into the bathroom tile and his palms slapping down.
“Answer me,” I demanded. “Agree to this compromise or I swear to god, I will kill you right now.” Familiar cool steel pressed into my palm. I’d kept my hand slight as he passed, nicking Viktor’s lighter from where I’d watched Alexander shove it into his pocket hours before. Thrill radiated through me, cold indifference settling over my features in the same way it always did when I was faced with my blood lust. I clicked the lighter, the little flame greeting me. “You have thirty seconds,” I mocked him, using his own words against him that he dared to torture me with. “Twenty-nine…twenty-eight…”
“Fine,” he grit out and stood, wiping the back of his hand under his nose. A bit of blood smeared over his knuckles when he did, and I frowned, confused by it. Then my interest easily pivoted to his towering frame as he moved closer. “Proof of life will be available within the hour.”
“And my ability to make choices?” I asked.
“I’ll run everything by you,” he said.
I let the lid to the lighter fall closed. “I want your fucking signature.” Then I ripped off the wedding ring and tossed it at his chest. It bounced off and clattered to the tile between us, our glares matched. “And I only wear that disgusting ring if we’re meeting Buyers. I amnotyour wife.”
?Arden?
They called themselves Ravens, and they were the answer to S.I.N.. Every asset purchased was taken to a townhouse similar to the one I was trapped in and given time to rehabilitate. They were then offered a choice I was never given: stay and join the cause or take Alexander’s money and start over at a safe house.
Creed was too valuable to let go of. Alexander meant it as a compliment, but I still would’ve liked to have been given that choice. The penthouse, the kidnapping—it was all to put the blame back on Halden for Creed’s disappearance. As far as Halden knew, I’d been taken by masked individuals, my last known footage at the rest stop, while the guys had removed their own trackers and disappeared in the wind. Alexander, having been our Buyer, now was capable of holding it over Halden, demanding that he be delivered new assets, especially since he knew his sister was trapped there.
Delivery, Halden promised, wouldn’t be for another few months. I was sick thinking of what Florence would be forced to endure, and it was evident Alexander was too. He seemed tospend every waking hour negotiating with S.I.N. Sellers, trying to get Halden to release his ‘prized assets in training’ earlier.
It was no use. I knew better than anyone that Halden was a perfectionist. “Ask for the assets to be untouched,” I told him. “For virgins or an equivalent.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him why, but I knew he could see it in my eyes. I swallowed. “Demand it, Alexander.”
He did, and that was when I started to let go of some of my resentment toward him and the Ravens.
Around week three, he took me to one of the foster homes the Ravens operated. There were so many kids, all of themfree, and I realized that even if I’d been given the choice, I would’ve chosen to save more. I never could’ve walked away from what he had built. I don’t think any Creed could have.
“This still doesn’t mean I’ll willingly wear your ring,” I told him as we stood at the edge of a green backyard, kids with healing bruises playing on a swing set. Tears burned in my eyes as I watched them, hating myself for theenvyI felt. If there’d been an Alexander when I was a girl, then the smiles I saw could’ve been mine. The amount of pain and suffering that those kids would never, ever have to endure was thawing me from the inside out, no matter how hard I tried to keep my walls up around him.
“Bringing you here wasn’t about that.” Alexander wasn’t in a suit that day. He’d dressed down and told me to, as well. Suitsand wealth made the kids wary, rightfully so. It was critical we arrived as just us, not as Buyers. He was in a black hoodie and jeans, a baseball cap shading his eyes, and I was in my jeans, converse, and leather jacket, Viktor’s lighter tucked in my pocket. I remember watching his profile and thinking how much younger he looked without the facade, the sunlight bathing him in golden rays. “Bringing you here,” he said with a small shrug, “wasn’t really about you at all. I just wanted to come and see them.”
