He wanted me to see him. He wanted me to know he’d let me walk all the way here, undress, sign, stand under the lights, and hope. He’d let me choose the sale because it made the ending sweeter for him.
The auctioneer looked over the room. “Fifty. Do I hear fifty-five?”
The man at the rear looked down at his table.
“Fifty going once.”
My hands curled at my sides.
Someone else. Anyone else.
“Fifty going twice.”
I stared past the amber table lamps and the raised glasses, past the men with money and no reason to spend it saving me from the one monster I knew by name.
Gennady rested one elbow on his chair and gave me a small, pleased shake of his head.
My stomach pitched.
“Sold,” the auctioneer said. “To Mr. Kask.”
Men shifted in their chairs. One lifted his drink. Another checked his phone. The room had watched me lose and then moved on before I left the stage.
My feet stayed on the brass circle where the attendant had told me to stand.
The auctioneer was already turning a page on the podium. “Settlement will proceed immediately. Lot Fourteen will be held for transfer.”
Gennady rose.
The stage tilted.
I didn’t fall. Pride or terror kept my spine straight. I had walked into the room on my own feet. I would not collapse at his first step toward me.
Gennady buttoned his jacket and came to the edge of the stage. “Nadia.”
My skin crawled at the sound of my name.
I stared over his shoulder, not at his face.
He laughed softly. “Still pretending I’m not the man who owns the room?”
“You don’t own me.”
His smile sharpened. “You signed papers saying someone would.”
The auctioneer cleared his throat. “Mr. Kask, transfer will occur through the side—”
The doors at the back of the room slammed inward.
The crash cut through the piano, the murmurs, the breath trapped in my chest. Men turned. Chairs scraped. A glass hit the floor and shattered.
A massive man in a black suit came through the doors with two men behind him.
Something in me recognized the shape of him without giving me a name.
Maybe The Samovar Room. Maybe one of those nights when Petya had come in bruised and angry and I had been too busy trying to get him out safely to remember every man in the room. Maybe fear was making every dangerous face feel familiar.
I couldn’t place him.
