I placed my palm over hers beneath the edge where no one else could see.
The auctioneer saw her and looked away.
“Look at me,” Nadia said.
His eyes snapped back to her.
Everyone around the table went still.
Nadia’s voice didn’t shake. “You knew he paid you.”
The auctioneer swallowed once.
“Answer Mrs. Sorin,” Mikhail said.
Nadia’s fingers twitched under mine.
The auctioneer’s voice came thin. “Mr. Kask’s representative made it clear that Lot Fourteen should be advanced in the order and settled quickly.”
Nadia’s face tightened at the lot number.
I wanted his teeth on the table.
My hand stayed over hers.
“Why?” I asked.
“He believed there would be competing interest.”
“From me.”
“I wasn’t given your name.”
“You were given enough to move her before I arrived.”
“Yes.”
“And you accepted money.”
His eyes dropped to the folder in Lev’s hand. “Yes.”
“How much?”
“Forty thousand.”
Nadia’s breath stopped for half a second.
It was more than Petya’s debt.
Of course it was. Men like Gennady always spent more to own a woman than they would to solve the problem that cornered her.
Mikhail leaned back in his chair. “You allowed an auction tied to multiple families to be altered by a Kask collector because he wanted one woman.”
The auctioneer’s voice thinned. “I was under pressure.”
“You will learn the difference between pressure and consequence,” Mikhail said.
Lev took him out.
