Chapter 7 Nina
NINA
“You look like shit,” Melor says when I am finally permitted to leave my room after a week of forced bedrest. My phone, when I’m allowed to check my messages, shows that I’ve been texting Kinsley that I’m down with a bad case of the flu. My father lying to cover his tracks.
“Whose fault is that?” I ask sweetly, but my act is ruined when he raises his hand to strike me and I flinch. I’ll never forget the pain he inflicted. I’m pretty sure he broke my ribs. It still hurts to breathe too deeply. Even lying in bed hurts.
Worse, my mother’s purse with all my money and the fake identity card is gone.
Any truce that had existed before my twenty-first birthday is irreparably broken now. I never respected Melor before. But now? I hate him with blinding fury. I wish anyone other than this monster was my father. Judging from the hateful way he glares at me, he feels the same way toward me.
“Get dressed. The outfit is in your dresser. Top drawer.” He points at my bedroom door.
“I’m not doing this,” I argue. Melor pulls a pistol out and aims it at my forehead. “Go ahead. At least it will be fast.”
He lowers it, cursing, and puts it away. “Put the goddamn dress on, or your friend Kinsley dies.”
Rage and fear spike through me. He would do it. He’s that much of a madman. They might be poor-adjacent by upper-crust social standards, but people would still notice if she were murdered or went missing.
But if anyone knows how to make a body disappear, it’s Melor Kotov. That’s what he did to my mother, after all.
I put on the so-called dress. It’s just a sheer white silk nightgown with a matching white triangle masquerading as a thong.
The stupid thing is barely a postage stamp of fabric with a couple of elastic bands attached.
Humiliation rolls over me just wearing it.
I pull on my nicest black silk coat over it and buckle the only pair of shoes left in my closet onto my feet, a pair of five-inch platforms.
Out of pure stubbornness, I don’t bother to style my hair or put on makeup.
At the doorway, Melor puts a thick white silk blindfold over my eyes. “Do not take that off.”
I can’t see where I’m going, and I’m wobbling in these ridiculous heels.
I’m desperate to rip the stupid thing off, but he puts zip ties on my wrists and guides me roughly to the car.
I fumble my way inside by touch and his rough guidance alone.
I’m sure I’m flashing the entire world in this ridiculous costume—which is, of course, the whole point. To prove that I am powerless.
We drive for some time. I don’t speak. I listen to him talk with his driver, but neither of them say anything of interest.
Things get worse when the car stops and the engine cuts out.
Melor yanks me out of the car and leads me into a dark venue.
Even through the blindfold, I can tell that it’s a club of some kind.
I’ve never actually been to his sleazy strip club, so I don’t know if this is it or not.
Could be another club he’s rented for the purpose of selling me off, for all I know.
Strobe bursts burn through the fabric, stealing what little vision I had behind the folded silk over my eyes.
Men’s voices echo in my ears. They’re excited. Is Andrei here to witness my shaming? I hope he is. I fully intend to strangle him if he’s here.
I hope he is for other reasons, too—ones I hardly want to admit to myself and wouldn’t dare to speak out loud. He was…not unattractive. My offer to suck his cock might have been impulsive and desperate, but I also liked doing it. Liked the way he ordered me around.
Besides, he owes me a favor. I know what Melor’s men are like.
If anyone is going to win me tonight, I want it to be Andrei—so that I can make the rest of his life a misery, obviously.
It’s not as though I’m secretly in love with the much older man who spent years quietly stalking me, who left me inappropriate gifts from time to time just to prove he could reach me inside my gilded cage.
I might be slightly curious and, under the circumstances, indulging in revenge fantasies is keeping my mind off the horror of what’s to come.
“Mind the steps,” Melor shouts over the throbbing music and roaring crowd. I stumble my way to the top, where he strips the silk coat from my shoulders. All I can do is hold my head high. “You. Do something about her hair.”
“Yes, sir.” A woman touches my head. She says nothing as she unties my blindfold and replaces it immediately after freeing my thick locks.
She teases my hair up and applies lipstick to my mouth.
I stand there like a proud cow before the slaughter.
Protest will only gain me more pain. She won’t help me, whoever this woman is.
Her only response to seeing the bruises around my eyes was to tie the blindfold a little tighter.
I suppose two fading black eyes aren’t very appealing to men—an important consideration when you’re selling a woman against her will.
Theoretically. Not if your name is Melor Kokov, apparently.
I haven’t the faintest idea what I look like when she’s done. What does it matter? The cold mouth of a pistol prods me between the shoulders.
“Walk,” Melor says in a tone of icy command.
I do. Unseeing, I totter forward, tripping when the flooring changes from carpet to bare wood.
A whoop fills my ears. I’m on the fucking stage.
My nipples tent the fabric of the skimpy nightgown that barely covers my ass.
My crotch is nearly visible with this flimsy excuse for a thong, and my feet ache almost as much as my still-healing ribs.
I am forced to stand there, consumed by rage and humiliation, as he begins his disgusting sales pitch.
“Nina is my only daughter. Tonight you all have the privilege of bidding upon her virgin body.” Loud cheering.
So he does know I’m untouched and yet he called me a whore to my face.
“Whichever one of you wins will marry her here, tonight. There will be no question about the legitimacy of the Kotov heir.”
More whoops and cheers. I don’t hear him. Andrei. His voice is distinctive. A low and threatening growl, though he doesn’t speak all that loudly. Unmistakable—I’d know him anywhere, even in a crowd like this. At any rate, I can’t tell if he’s here or not.
Thinking about how I’m going to kill him for letting me give him a blow job and then sending me back to my father is the only thing that’s keeping my mind clear enough to try and formulate a plan. I can’t run in this ridiculous costume, which I’m sure was the entire point of forcing me to wear it.
“Bidding will begin at half a million.”
“That seems low, father,” I blurt out. The crowd laughs as if I’ve told a hilarious joke. “Surely you wouldn’t sell your own daughter for so cheap?”
A hush descends. I brace for his fist. I will not flinch away in fear. I won’t. Pain crackles like shattered glass along my still-healing ribs. The bruises have faded to ugly splotches of yellow and green, pale enough to be concealed behind a scrim of silk.
Melor calls out in Russian, “Six hundred thousand.” That threshold is met easily.
Eight hundred. Nine. Ten. At a million dollars, they start dropping like flies.
I know I’m not the real object that’s being bid on—not one of these men wants me for myself.
They want a shot at leadership in the Kotov faction of the bratva, and a chance at raping a woman without penalty.
Weirdly, it hurts to know my father thinks I’m worth so little. A million dollars for a human life is nothing. But then, I am only a woman.
“No one else is willing to bid?” he shouts, apparently annoyed that he isn’t getting more for me.
“Shouldn’t have started so low,” I say loudly enough for the men to hear.
I can’t see them, but I can hear them chuckle.
It’s strange not being able to see anything because of the blindfold.
I imagine a sea of men, but it’s probably only ten or fifteen.
Not many can afford to pay a million dollars for a chance at siring the next pakhan.
“Shut up, you stupid—” Melor snaps, but he’s interrupted by a low voice.
“I see you started without me,” a man’s voice interrupts. The hairs on the back of my neck rise, prickling upward with awareness. I turn toward the sound, wishing I could rip the blindfold off. “Rude of you not to extend me an invitation. What happened to honor?”
“What would a Volkov dog know about honor,” my father sneers.
“One point two million,” Andrei says. “That is my starting bid.”
“Too low,” Melor says. “I refuse to let my daughter go to Volkov scum for such a low price.”
“If the others want her, then let them bid.”
Male laughter ripples around me. I can picture Melor’s face turning red with anger. He’s hot-tempered and Andrei is pushing his buttons on purpose. Trying to set him off so he makes a mistake. The tiniest smile touches my lips.
Bidding turns brisk again. We pass two million dollars. Three. It becomes clear to me that Melor’s loyalists don’t intend to win this ghoulish auction, they’re just pushing Andrei as high as he can go. Trying to break him.
He doesn’t so much as bend.
At five million dollars, the others start dropping like flies.
“Sold,” Melor snarls when no one pushes the price past $10 million. “Get the damned priest up here, if the Volkov dog can pay for his win. I wish you the joy of her.”
If those are the last words my father ever speaks to me in this lifetime, I will be glad never to hear his voice again.