Chapter 4 #2
I can see the flicker behind her eyes. Shame. Anger. Something frantic that wants to become tears and refuses.
Then she gathers herself like she’s stitching her courage together with shaking hands.
“What are you doing here?” she asks again, voice tighter now.
“Stopping you from doing something fucking stupid,” I snap.
That snaps her out of her shock. Her chin lifts. Her spine straightens.
It does exactly what it shouldn’t do—pulls her posture up and forward, makes her chest rise with the breath she drags in, makes it impossible not to notice how exposed she is, the dark circles beneath the white fabric.
I keep my eyes on her face.
Not because it’s easy. Because it’s necessary.
“I’m not stupid,” she says, cold, and it’s a good attempt. But not good enough. “What I do is none of your—”
“None of my business?” The words come out low, dangerous. “You work for me.”
Her jaw sets. “I work for you. I don’t belong to you.”
Tonight, you do.
I throw that thought aside and keep locked into the problem.
“No, just anyone with enough money, right?” I say coldly.
She flinches again, but she holds her tone steady. Almost.
“I know what I’m doing.”
“You have no fucking idea what you’re doing,” I snap.
Her shoulders jerk, but she doesn’t step back. She holds her ground on pure stubbornness.
I gesture, sharp and controlled, toward the door. “Did you hear them? Did you hear the way they reacted when you walked out?”
Her throat moves when she swallows.
“That bid, that number, doesn’t happen to just anyone,” I continue, voice tight. “You think they throw that kind of money at any woman? They put that kind of money up because they wanted to own you for one night. Do you understand what that means?”
“Y-yes, sir,” she says. “They explain—”
“They told you the bare minimum. That’s what they do to lure women like you in,” I say. “The men you saw out there, they turn into animals in the dark, behind a locked door, when they think they’re owed something.”
Her face goes paler.
She wets her lips, trying to keep her voice from wobbling. “I’m safe.”
The lie is almost convincing.
“There’s a guard outside,” she adds quickly, like she’s grabbing the first solid thing she can find. “And they—”
I cut her off, a sound in my throat that isn’t quite a laugh and isn’t quite a growl.
“The guard is there to make sure you go through with it,” I say. “And to make sure you’re breathing in the morning. That’s it.”
Her eyes widen.
“No,” she whispers, but it’s not denial. It’s disbelief. Like she’s been clinging to that promise as the only thing keeping her upright.
“They don’t give a shit if you want it or like it,” I say, relentless now, because she needs to understand. “They don’t give a shit if you regret it and want out. They don’t give a shit if you’re scared out of your mind. Those guards aren’t there to protect you. They’re there to protect them.”
Whatever color is left in her face drains in slow motion.
I watch it happen, and it makes my anger sharpen instead of fade because I need to drill my point home.
“You think they’re going to come running in here if you start screaming?” I ask, voice low. “If you beg for help?”
Her breath catches. Her arms tighten around herself as if she can physically hold the panic inside her ribs.
I don’t let up.
“They won’t,” I say. “They’ll wait. They’ll listen for the worst of it to stop. And if you’re still alive, they’ll call that a successful night. And if the night isn’t a success… Then they don’t have to give you your share of the money, do they?”
Silence swallows the room.
Her eyes shine, but she refuses to let anything fall. She stares at me as if she blinks, she’ll crumble.
And under the fear—under the shock—I see something else start to surface.
Anger.
Not at me. Not yet.
At herself.
At the trap she walked into.
At the fact that she can’t brute-force her way out with pride and a spine of steel.
I take a breath, force my tone down a fraction. Still hard. Still controlled. But not cutting her for sport.
“Why?” I ask. “Why would you do this? What? For fun? Some kind of fantasy shit?”
Her mouth trembles once, and she presses it tight, like she’s trying to keep the truth from spilling out.
“No, sir,” she says, and the words scrape out of her. Then her voice drops so low, she might as well be talking to herself. “I needed the money.”
I step back, time to compose myself.
“For what? How much?”
“Twenty thousand.” Her shoulders lift on a shaky breath. “My dad’s sick.”
Twenty-thousand. Less than I have in a throwaway account at any given time.
“Twenty,” I repeat, flat. “And you ended up here.”
Her eyes flash again, defensive even now. “You don’t get to judge me.”
It intrigues me how she drops the “sirs” when she’s got her spine back.
“I’m not judging you,” I say, and it’s the closest thing to honesty I’ve given anyone tonight. “I’m thinking about how much money I could’ve saved if you’d come to me first.”
I throw that thought aside and keep locked into the problem.
She looks at me like I’ve just told her the sky is green.
Her eyes are wide, fixed on my face, and for a second, all the fear drains out of her expression and leaves only disbelief so pure it’s almost insulting.
“You’d have… loaned me money?” she says.
I have to clamp down on the laugh that wants to come out—not because it’s funny, but because it’s absurd. Because she’s saying it like I’m her bank manager and she’s asking about interest rates.
Loaned her money.
That’s kind of what we do in my line of business.
I keep my face flat.
“Yes,” I say.
Her throat works as she swallows. She glances away like she needs a second to keep herself upright. Her arms tighten around her body again, white fabric shifting with the movement. She stares at the carpet as if the pattern might give her answers.
I can see it in her posture—the exact moment her brain tries to rewind and rewrite every decision that got her here.
If she’d come to me first.
If she’d knocked on my office door and told me her father was sick and she needed money.
She’s young enough to still believe she’s supposed to handle everything alone.
And proud enough to make it worse.
She stays silent, but I can hear her breathing. It’s uneven. She’s trying to make it steady and failing.
I watch her for a beat, keeping my hands at my sides. Keeping my distance.
Then she lifts her gaze back to me. Her eyes shine, but she won’t let the tears fall. That stubbornness is still there, threaded through the fear.
“Instead,” she says, and her voice is thin, “you spent… seventy thousand dollars tonight.”
The words sound obscene in her mouth, unreal.
“Yes,” I say again.
Her lips part like she’s going to argue, then she doesn’t. She just swallows hard, shoulders rising with a shaky breath.
She looks at me like she doesn’t know who I am anymore. Like the man behind the desk at work and the man standing in front of her now don’t fit into the same world.
They don’t.
Her voice comes out smaller when she tries again. “Why?”
I frown slightly, not because I don’t understand her, but because I do. Because I can already see where her mind is going, and I don’t want her going there yet.
“What’s that?” I ask anyway.
Her eyes flick toward the door, toward the unseen guard on the other side. Toward the bolted windows. Toward the whole trap.
“Why would you do something like that, sir?” she says.
Then she hesitates, the next part catching in her throat. Her jaw tightens as if she’s biting down on words she doesn’t want to think.
“I know you said—” she starts, then stops.
She cuts herself off hard, like the image that flashed through her mind was too much. Like she doesn’t want to imagine what might have happened if I hadn’t stepped in. Like she doesn’t want to picture another man walking in here instead of me.
But she forces herself to finish anyway.
“You still didn’t have to,” she says, and there’s something raw under the stubbornness now. “Why would you?”
I hold her gaze.
There are answers I could give that are easy. Answers that make me look like a decent person.
Because I care.
Because I didn’t want you to get hurt.
There are other answers that I can’t give.
Because you work for me.
Because of my reputation.
Because of the Family.
Then there’s the real answer.
So I don’t give her an easy answer.
I give her the truth I can live with.
“Because you shouldn’t have been there,” I say, which is as close as I can get.
Her brows draw together, confused again. “That’s not—”
“It is,” I cut in.
I keep my voice low. Controlled. The anger is still there, coiled beneath my ribs, but it’s not aimed at her anymore. Not really.
“It shouldn’t have gotten that far,” I continue. “You shouldn’t have walked onto that stage. You shouldn’t have had to stand under those lights while a room full of men decided what you’re worth.”
Her throat bobs. She blinks, fast, like she’s trying to clear the shine from her eyes.
Then she lifts her eyes back to me.
“But—”
And I know before she says the next word that she’s not going to let it go. Not until she gets the real answer.
“—why? Why do you care?”
I feel something in my chest tighten—not anger. Something more dangerous because it’s harder to control.
I keep my expression blank. I keep my voice even.
“I wasn’t going to let someone else walk in here tonight.”
Her eyes widen slightly.
“Because you belong to me.”