Liam
The first lot after the women is a construction contract in Prague. I don't bid. Neither does anyone I care about.
The second is a partnership stake in a casino in Montenegro. The Russian actress bids and the price climbs, then the hammer falls and the deal is struck.
The third is what I'm here for.
"Next," Sergei announces, "we have the Kozlov Nordic routes. Comprehensive access to shipping lanes through Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Current infrastructure included. Starting bid: fifteen million."
I nod my head immediately. Someone across the room raises their hand and flicks their finger.
The bidding climbs steadily. Twenty million. Twenty-five. Thirty. I keep my face neutral, my paddle movements economical. This is what I'm good at. Reading the room, knowing when to push and when to wait, understanding that whoever wants this second-most will eventually back down.
At thirty-eight million, the other bidder drops out.
"Sold," Sergei says, nodding to me as the hammer drops.
I feel the satisfaction settle in my chest, cold and clean. Those routes are mine now. Six months of preparation, and it paid off exactly as planned.
The paperwork will take a few days to finalize, but the deal is done. I could leave now, go back to my room, start planning how to integrate the new routes into my existing network.
I should feel satisfied. I should be thinking about logistics, transport, contracts. But the moment I turn, my focus fractures.
She’s gone.
The woman with the simple mask and sharp mind, the one who’d managed to make me forget where I was for a whole five minutes, isn’t beside me anymore.
The empty space feels too deliberate, like she’d been pulled from it.
I scan the crowd, irritation pricking at the base of my neck.
The ballroom is a tide of shine and suits, faces I know, masks I recognize. And then—
There.
She’s on the steps to the stage, walking with that same quiet grace, every spotlight catching on her pale hair. For a second, my brain refuses to connect the image with reality. Then she steps into the center of the light, and the sound in the room dies.
Recognition prickles in the back of my mind.
“The terms of sale,” she says, her voice clear and steady, “is that I get protection for life, from everything, in exchange for everything I know.”
The name clicks into place just before she says it out loud. Grace Casey.
I’ve seen her face on every news feed for the last three days.
The disgraced consultant, the political scapegoat, the woman who supposedly sold state secrets for sex and cash.
I’d skimmed the reports between meetings, filing her away as another casualty of power games I don’t lose sleep over.
Pretty, clever, ruined. The kind that gets eaten alive because she still believed in rules.
But the woman on that stage doesn’t look ruined. She looks like she’s shedding her skin.
The crowd stirs. I can feel the calculation ripple through them. What she knows, what it’s worth, how dangerous it could be. To them, she’s information wrapped in scandal.
To me, she’s the woman who stood beside me and made the room go quiet.
The auctioneer hesitates only a heartbeat before recovering his composure. “Bidding starts at one hundred thousand.”
I’m still staring at her when the first hand goes up.
“One-twenty.”
The number barely registers before my hand rises. “Two hundred.”
The auctioneer nods. Another bidder across the room, some financier I’ve seen sniffing around Kozlov, calls, “Two-fifty.”
“Three.” My voice is low, even.
The numbers climb. Four hundred. Five. A senator I could destroy with a single phone call grins behind his mask and raises his card. My pulse doesn’t spike, but my jaw tightens.
She doesn't flinch. Doesn't look away. Just stands there like a queen surveying her subjects, letting us compete for the privilege of protecting her.
“Seven hundred thousand,” I say.
A hush rolls through the room. They’re not bidding for her anymore, they’re bidding against me.
Grace sways slightly under the lights. Her mask hides most of her face, but I can see the tremor in her hand where she grips the microphone. It hits something primitive in me. Protect, claim, shield.
Someone offers eight.
“Nine,” I answer before the word finishes leaving his mouth.
The auctioneer’s gaze flicks between us, sensing blood. “Do I have—”
“One million.”
The room exhales.
I keep my expression neutral, the perfect mask of calm calculation, but inside there’s nothing calm about it. I’m not bidding for information, not even for leverage. Every man here wants to own her story, her body, her power. I just want them to stop looking at her.
“Sold.” The gavel hits the block.
She flinches at the sound, and for a moment her eyes meet mine across the ballroom, pale and defiant. But under it all I can see she is terrified.
My pulse hammers slow and deep as the spotlight cuts out and the crowd begins to move again. Business as usual. Masks tilt toward me in wary acknowledgment. No one looks too long. They know better.
I hand my bidder’s card to the attendant who materializes at my side. “Where is she?”
“She headed towards the terrace, sir.”
I don’t wait for directions.
I’ve walked through war zones that felt less charged than this. Voices murmur behind closed doors. Laughter, negotiation, the click of heels on marble.
She’s standing there, her back to me as she braces against the stone balustrade. Her shoulders rise and fall, shallow, uneven. The illusion of composure she wore on stage has slipped, and for a moment I just watch her.
She doesn’t hear me at first.
“Grace Casey,” I say.
She freezes. Then, slowly, she turns. The mask hides half her face, but her eyes, God, those eyes are exactly as I remember them from earlier. Pale, searching, sharp even in fear.
“I suppose congratulations are in order,” she says quietly. “You just bought yourself a scandal.”
“I’ve bought worse.”
Her chin lifts. “You don’t know what you’ve bought.”
“I know enough.” I move closer, each step measured. “You’ve spent three days on every major network, being torn apart by people you once advised. You walked onto that stage tonight offering to sell what you know to the highest bidder.”
She swallows hard, the motion dragging my attention to the elegant line of her throat. “And you decided to save me out of… what? Pity?”
“Pity isn’t something I feel.”
“Then what?”
I don’t answer right away. Because the truth sounds too raw, too irrational. Because she’d see it for what it is. A fracture in a man who’s spent his whole life controlling every variable.
“I didn’t like the way they were looking at you,” I say finally.
Her laugh is low, brittle. “You paid a million dollars because you didn’t like their gaze?”
“I paid a million because I could.” I let the pause stretch. “And because I wanted to make sure no one else could touch you ever again.”
Her breath catches. She masks it well, but I see the flicker in her expression, the battle between outrage and something that looks dangerously like relief.
“This isn’t how protection works,” she says.
“It is with me.”
I step close enough that I can smell the faint sweetness of her skin beneath the champagne and nerves. She doesn’t move away.
“You have information,” I murmur. “And I have the means to make it useful. You want safety and protection; I can give you that. But understand me, Grace, when I take something under my protection…I don’t let it go.”
Her voice trembles but doesn’t break. “You talk like you own me already.”
I lean in, close enough for my words to graze the shell of her ear. “I do.”
For a long moment, neither of us moves. The noise from the ballroom fades into nothing. There’s only the sound of her breathing and the sharp, quiet pulse of something I haven’t felt in years. Want, threaded with fury and control.
Finally, she steps back, breaking the spell. “Then you’d better decide what you’re going to do with me.”
“I already have,” I say. “You’re coming with me.”
Her eyes flash with defiance. “And if I say no?”
I allow myself a faint, humorless smile. “Then I remind you that you asked for protection. And I’m a man who always delivers.”