Guest! I suppress a snort at the irony and then immediately click on the profile. I was very rarely allowed to watch TV living at my grandfather’s home. It was deemedunnecessary and distracting. However, when he used to go away for a few weeks every summer, I would be allowed to watch some in the late afternoons so long as I’d completed all my lessons, and I was good and didn’t bother Larissa. It was always our secret, the only one I ever kept from my grandfather. It stopped when I turned eighteen and Larissa told me I was too old for childish television. I had more important tasks to focus on, such as learning how to sew and bake, and how to never show emotion. I can bake a delicious rabbit pie with my eyes closed, sew a stitch as neat as any seasoned dressmaker, and as for hiding my emotions... well, I’ve been told I’m pretty good at that too.
With little knowledge of current TV shows, I choose the number one pick in the US. It’s a program about a maid but it could be a show about a turkey farm and I’d watch it. Something about seeing people on a screen makes me feel less alone. Less afraid.
I don’t see much of it before my eyelids start fluttering closed.
Chapter 5
Lincoln
It’s a relief to pull off this damn mask. I toss it onto my desk, and feel like I can finally breathe again. Rarely leaving the house, at least as Lincoln Knight, I’m unaccustomed to wearing it for any long periods of time. I could have sent Edgar to the auction in my stead, my occasional driver and my connection to the outside world. But he’s not me, and there’s no acceptable level of chance when it comes to Imogen. She’s far too precious to risk losing for a second time.
Flicking the switch on my console, I light up the bank of screens in front of me. Time to get to work. I haven’t slept in over a day, but a new auction means fifty more women sold into a life of slavery and fuck knows what kind of pain and cruelty. A lot of the men who go to these auctions to actually buy them are ghosts—men like me, who live in the shadows—much like the Brotherhood they buy from. I’ll be lucky if I manage to track down half of them, and that knowledge hurts me as much as it did eighteen years ago when I first discovered their sick little trade. That was also when I discovered I had an older sister, Olivia—another woman I couldn’t save. She died in my arms believing I was one of the men responsible for her misery. Even after eighteen years, the rage at how badly I failed her wouldswallow me whole if I let it, so I push it all down, storing it away for when I can put it to better use.
Pierre’s familiar footsteps draw closer as he descends the spiral staircase to my haven. Or mylair, as he describes it, particularly when he’s berating me for spending too much time down here, which I sense he’s about to do again.
I don’t ask if she’s okay, even though the question is the first thing that pops into my head. Of course she’s not. She was just bought and sold, from one monster to another.
“What are you doing down here? Shouldn’t you be seeing to your guest?” His voice drips with the sarcasm I’m accustomed to.
“Is she settled?” I ask instead, keeping my eyes on the screen in front of me while I load up a computer program that will trace the payment of ten million I recently made. Ten million is pocket change to the Brotherhood. Auctions aren’t a moneymaking business for them, more like a loss leader. And while I hate that I gave their cause a single cent, I would have given it all for her. The truth is, I would sacrifice every soul on this earth to save Imogen’s, and I would do it in a heartbeat. And if that makes me a monster, then that’s what I am.
“I made her some sandwiches. Showed her to her room.” He flops down onto the seat next to me.
“And what’s she doing now?”
“I have no idea, sir.” I hate when he calls me that, but pointing it out is futile. “I hope I’m not expected to babysit her while she’s here. I have more important things to be doing.”
He’s such a liar. “Things like?”
He huffs indignantly rather than answering my question, before spinning idly in his chair. “Why did you lie to her?”
I’m lying to her about a lot of things, so he’s going to have to be a little more specific than that. “About what?”
“You said you were the only person who could access the exterior doors.”
“I thought it would be easier for you if she didn’t know the doors can also be opened with your thumbprint.”
He snorts. “You’re worried a one-hundred-pound girl could knock me out and carry me to the door to secure her escape?”
Actually, I’d say she’s more like one-thirty than one hundred, but I don’t tell him that because then I might reveal to my old friend that I’ve spent far too much of the past twenty-four hours looking at her body and wondering how it would feel in my hands. I don’t even want to admit that to myself. “How do you know how much she weighs? She could be bigger than both of us, for all you know.”
He snorts again. “From the sound of her footsteps. From the way she moved. She is slight,non? Or she is used to having to make herself appear small. Per’aps both.”
I concentrate on the screen, not wanting to think about Imogen making herself small for anyone, nor how much she weighs, because that makes me think of the curve of her hips and her long lean legs. And thinking like that is more than fucking wrong.
Pierre mutters something unintelligible in French, and disapproval is practically seeping from his pores.
“What else was I supposed to do, Pierre?”
“I have no idea what you’re referring to, sir.”
“I can hear you cursing me in your head. You think I made a mistake bringing her here, don’t you?”
“And you do not,non?”
Yes, I absolutely fucking do. And not only for the reasons he’s thinking about, but also because I haven’t seen her for eighteen years and I did not expect her to look the way she did. She was a child when I knew her and now... now she’s very much a woman. A beautiful one too. Although it wasn’t her beauty that made my body light up with desire when she walked out onto that stage. It was her defiance. Her strength. She lookedout into that room full of goddamn fucking animals and dared them to come for her. “What other choice did I have? Let one of those sick fucks buy her. I made a promise to protect her.”
He huffs. “You can protect her without bringing her here. You could have sent her to one of the safe houses. Anywhere but here.”
