The man in the porcelain mask doesn’t wait for the pneumatic hiss of the cage to finish. He reaches in and snaring a fistful of my hair, his knuckles scraping against my scalp as he yanks me forward. My heels skid over the blood-slicked velvet, my legs finally slipping from the gold stirrups with a dull, wet thud.
“Out,” he growls.
He drags me over the threshold of the cage. My knees hit the hard stage, the impact vibrating through the heroin haze like a distant explosion. He doesn’t let me stand. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a heavy, matte-black collar—industrial steel, cold as a grave. He snaps it around my neck. Click.
Attached to the collar is a short, thick lead of heavy-link chain. He wraps the other end around his glovedfist, jerking it tight until my head is pulled back, my throat exposed to the freezing air of the ballroom.
“You are the most expensive thing I have ever paid for,” he rasps, his breath hot against my cheek. He leans down, his porcelain mask inches from mine, his eyes wild and dark behind the slits. “And I am going to fuck you until every single penny is earned back. I’m going to spend years getting my return on investment out of your skin.”
I try to shake my head, but the drug has turned my brain into a bowl of heavy, golden syrup. Everything is slow. Everything is beautiful and horrific all at once. The lights of the chandelier are spinning, turning into long, shimmering ribbons of fire that dance across the chrome masks of the men in the shadows.
“V-v…” I try to speak, but the silver tape is a wall.
Viktor steps into my line of sight. He looks down at me, his face a mask of pure, triumphant greed. He reaches out, his thumb and forefinger catching my chin, tipping my head up until I’m forced to look at his smile.
“You should be thanking me, Wendy,” Viktor purrs, his voice a low, vibrating hum that feels like it’s coming from inside my own skull. “A widow like you? Left in the gutter with Peter’s debts? You would have ended up on the streets, or in a shallow grave within a week. I’ve given you a future. I’ve given you a master who knows your worth.”
He taps the heavy steel collar around my neck. “A hundred million dollars. You’re more than a woman now. You’re a monument.”
The man in the porcelain mask reaches for my face. He doesn’t peel the tape. He ripsit.
Rrip.
The sound is a thunderclap. My skin feels like it’s being flayed, the adhesive tearing at the corners of my mouth and pulling the fine hairs of my face. I let out a jagged, broken whimper, my lips tingling, raw and bleeding.
“Speak,” the man commands, jerking the chain. “Tell me how grateful you are.”
I look at him, but I can’t see him. I see the colours of the room bleeding into the dark. My tongue feels like a heavy, wet blanket in my mouth.
“P-peterrr…” I mumble. The word is thick, slurred, the syllables melting into each other. “He… he had… red… the ring… is red…”
I look down at my hand. The ruby is glowing. Or maybe it’s just the blood. It’s hard to tell when the world is made of rubies and shadows.
“Peter is gone, you stupid bitch,” the man snarls, yanking the chain again, forcing me to my feet. My four-inch heels wobble on the marble, my ankles threatening to snap. “I’m the only thing that’s real now. I’m the one who paid for the right to ruin you.”
“F-f-fire…” I whisper, my head lolling to the side. I can feel the heroin singing in my veins, a warm, golden hum that tells me everything is okay, even as the man begins to drag me toward the edge of the stage, toward the darkness where the cars are waiting. “The… the walls are… dancing…”
Viktor laughs, a sharp, cold sound. “Take her. She’s exactly what you paid for—a broken doll who doesn’t even know what year it is.”
The man jerks the lead, and I stumble forward, mybody a puppet on a string, my mind floating somewhere high above the ballroom, watching the girl in the black silk and the steel collar disappear into the dark.
He drags me through the heavy velvet curtains and out into the biting winter air of the private hanger. The transition from the stifling heat of the ballroom to the freezing night is a physical blow, but the drug turns the cold into a strange, tingling lace against my bare skin.
He jerks the chain, and I stumble, my stilettos skidding across the oil-slicked asphalt until we reach it.
The car is a nightmare of engineering and opulence. It’s a custom-built Maybach Exelero, a long, predatory beast of matte-black carbon fibre that looks like it was forged in the fires of hell. Its edges are sharp enough to draw blood, the chrome accents gleaming like serrated teeth under the floodlights. It doesn’t look like a vehicle; it looks like a coffin for a god.
“Get in,” he snarls, clicking a remote. The heavy door swings upward like a wing, revealing an interior of blood-red leather and polished obsidian.
He shoves me onto the seat. I collapse into the leather, my head hitting the headrest with a dull thud. The scent of new car and expensive tobacco fills my lungs, thick and cloying. He climbs in beside me, the door hissing shut, sealing us into a tomb of silence so absoluteI can hear the frantic, wet thrum of my own heart.
He reaches into a built-in chiller and pulls out a bottle of Cristal. He doesn’t look for glasses. He rips the gold foil off with his teeth and pops the cork, the explosion of foam spraying over the black silk of my dress.
“A toast,” he whispers, his voice low and jagged. “To the most expensive whore in the history of the world.”
He snares the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my matted hair, and yanks my face up. He tilts the bottle, pressing the cold, jagged glass rim against my raw, split lips.
“Drink, Wendy. Drink for your new master.”
