I turned toward Petya’s half-open door.
He couldn’t know. If he knew, he would run straight into Gennady’s men trying to stop me. If he knew, he would make this about his guilt instead of his survival. If he knew, I might let him talk me out of the only door left that didn’t open directly into Gennady’s room.
I typed with both thumbs.
I typed the answer.
Three dots appeared. Vanished. Appeared again.
Then: Send photo. First name. Age. Confirmation you enter willingly.
The word willingly made something bitter pull through me.
I was standing in an apartment with old locks, cold floors, an empty refrigerator, and my brother crying behind a broken door because men with money had decided our lives were theirs to squeeze. Willing was a clean word. A word for women with options stacked neatly in front of them.
I had one option that might save Petya and keep me from being handed privately to Gennady Kask.
So I lifted my phone, took a picture with my dark hair loose and my face scrubbed pale by exhaustion, and sent it before I could study myself like merchandise.
Then I typed:
Nadia. Twenty-three. I enter willingly.
The message delivered.
My phone sat warm in my palm.
I didn’t feel brave. I didn’t feel pure or ruined or any of the words men liked to attach to women when they wanted to set a price. I felt tired down to the bone, and scared, and awake in a way I knew I’d never sleep off.
In the bedroom, Petya went quiet at last.
I gathered the cash, the bills, the marker, and Tamar’s receipt. I put the receipt inside my phone case where Petya wouldn’t find it. Then I turned off the television and stood in the dark apartment while rain ran down the window.
Gennady had given me three days.
I wasn’t taking them.
Tomorrow was the only deadline that mattered.
I had walked all night through rooms where men decided what women owed them.
Now I had sent my name into one.
And before Gennady could drag me into his private version of mercy, I had chosen the sale myself.
Chapter Two
Lev Moroz sat across from me, his phone face down beside his drink.
I sat in the back booth with the wall behind me and the room in front of me. My black wool coat lay folded at my side, gloves tucked into the pocket. The charcoal suit fit because my tailor knew how to cut cloth around shoulders most men tried not to look at twice, and the gold watch at my wrist caught the lamp each time I moved.
The Samovar Room was full enough that no one crossed it quickly. Men leaned close over low tables. Women in silk and diamonds sat under brass lamps, their laughter mixing with piano notes from the corner. A waiter carried a tray of cognac snifters past our booth. At the bar, a man in a navy suit argued over a bottle of Japanese whisky while the bartender kept smiling.
Late-autumn cold slipped in every time the door opened. It brought the smell of wet pavement and car exhaust before the heat closed around it.
“Anything else, Mr. Sorin?” the waitress asked.
She was blond, pretty, and careful. She’d brought Armagnac because I’d ordered it once three weeks ago and The Samovar Room remembered men like me.
