I turn to find Rita. "The woman in the blue dress. Who is she?" I flick through the portfolio at the same time, looking for her photograph.
Rita consults her tablet. "Katriona Bontoft. Twenty-six. No significant family connections. She came through Grace Orlova's referral. Her file is... somewhat unusual, but Lionel will have more information."
"Unusual how?"
She hesitates. "Her vetting materials include medical records. Quite extensive ones. It's irregular."
"Send me everything you have on her."
Rita nods and taps at her tablet. I look back across the room. Katriona Bontoft has found a position near the fireplace, where the warmth might ease whatever she's hiding, and she's watching the room with the same quiet calculation I use.
She hasn't seen me yet, but by the time the night is out, she will know exactly who I am.
Katriona
The dinner is a performance, and I am a very good performer.
I've been seated between a heavyset man in his fifties who smells of cigar smoke and sandalwood, and a younger man with nervous hands who keeps adjusting his napkin. Neither of them interests me. Across the table, two other women are engaged in the delicate choreography of auction dinner flirtation, laughing at the right moments, touching their hair, leaning forward to display carefully calculated angles of collarbone and throat and cleavage.
I don't flirt. I eat my soup, slowly and carefully, because my stomach has been unpredictable all day, and the last thing I need is to excuse myself to be sick in the bathroom of a mansion owned by some Russian criminal aristocracy or another.
The women beside me are younger than I am. Twenty-two, maybe twenty-three. They have the buffed, expensive look of girls raised for exactly this kind of night, hair blown out, nails perfect, every word chosen to show good breeding and an easy yes. One of them is telling the man across from her about her charity work with such fake modesty that I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from saying something I’d regret.
I don't judge them. I can't afford to. Every woman in this room has a reason for being here, and none of those reasons are simple.
But I notice the way some of them avoid looking at each other. The way they assess the competition with quick, darting glances before returning to their performances. There is a loneliness in this room that cuts across every income bracket, the loneliness of women who have been taught to see each other as rivals rather than allies.
Liv, a woman I met earlier who was upset in the hallway, catches my eye from three seats down and gives me a small, nervous smile. I smile back. It costs me nothing and it gives her something, and in a room that operates on the principle of extracting maximum value from every exchange, that small rebellion feels important.
The second course arrives. Seared duck with something involving figs. It looks beautiful, but the smell of it turns my stomach. I breathe through it without anyone noticing, the way I’ve been breathing through nausea in public for years.
I cut a small piece and eat it. It stays down. I cut another.
"You're quiet," says the older man beside me. His name is Petrov, and he has the thick hands and sharp eyes of someone who has been weighing value his entire life.
"I prefer to listen before I speak."
"A rare quality." He studies me. "Most of the women who come to these dinners are eager to impress."
"I'm not here to impress anyone, Mr. Petrov. I'm here to make an informed decision."
His eyebrows rise. Across the table, I feel another pair of eyes on me and I know, without looking up, that it's the second Mostovoi brother. Akyl. I identified him the moment he entered the reception room. Leaner than the older brother, sharper in the face, with the kind of stillness that makes the air around him feel colder.
He has been watching me all evening. I felt his attention settle on me in the hallway when Liv and I returned from fixing her makeup, and it hasn't moved since.
I let him watch. I have nothing to hide except the thing I'm always hiding, and I'm better at hiding it than he is at finding it.
After dinner, the room shifts into what the broker calls "informal introductions," which is a polite term for the part of the evening where men circulate among the women and decide which ones are worth conversing with, and negotiating with. I stay by the fireplace. The heat helps. The cramping has been steady for the past hour, a low, persistent ache that radiates from my pelvis into my lower back and down my thighs, and the warmth takes the edge off it just enough that I can keep from screaming.
The nervous younger man approaches me first. He introduces himself as Emil, tells me about his property development business, and asks what I do.
"I'm a temp," I say. "Administrative work. Data entry. Filing. The kind of work that makes rich men's businesses run while they attend dinner parties."
Emil blinks. He is not used to women at these events being honest about their circumstances. "That's... refreshingly direct."
"Directness is efficient. I assume your time is valuable, so let me be equally efficient with mine." I set down my water glass. "I have some questions, if you don't mind."
"Questions?"
