Liv
Pietty watches us with a combination of annoyance and confusion.
"Then I suppose congratulations are in order," he says, and it takes me a second to understand he's congratulating me, like I've won something instead of just having watched a man write a number with my name attached to it that could probably buy a small country.
"The formalities are simple. Transportation home will be arranged for you both this evening, Mr. Mostovoi, unless you'd prefer your own car. "
The words land somewhere behind my ribs, cold and sudden. "Tonight?"
"That's how it works," Pietty says, not unkindly, just matter-of-fact, the way you'd explain a flight schedule. "The arrangement is finalized this evening. The lady accompanies the winning bidder home."
My pulse climbs into my throat. I knew, in some distant theoretical way, that tonight was going to end with me leaving this building belonging to a stranger. Knowing it and standing three feet from the reality of it turn out to be two very different things.
Volody must see it on my face, because he steps slightly between me and Pietty, a wall of warm wool and quiet certainty.
"Give us a minute," he says to Pietty, who nods and melts back into the crowd like he's done this a hundred times, which he probably has.
Volody turns to me fully then, and whatever charm was running the show on the terrace dials itself down into something steadier.
"I know what people say about my family," he says, low, just for me. "I'm not going to pretend the rumors come from nowhere. But I need you to hear me when I tell you this. You are safe with me. Safe like nobody touches you unless you want them to. Including me."
"You don't even know me," I say again, my vocabulary woefully inadequate in this situation apparently.
He reaches out and tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear, the gesture so careful it makes my breath catch. "We'll figure it out. Tonight you just have to trust that I meant every word I said. That's all I'm asking."
I nod, because I don't trust my voice not to crack if I try to use it. He gives me a small smile, the kind that doesn't ask for anything back, before stepping away to deal with whatever else needs his signature.
I use the moment alone to find my scarf and my clutch, hands still not quite steady, and that's when my phone buzzes against my palm.
Two texts from Cole.
Did you talk to any of the men? Tell me you caught someone’s eye.
My stomach drops before I've even processed the second one.
I told Pietty you'd be amenable. This could fix everything, Liv. Please don't screw this up.
I read it twice. Then a third time, because some small, desperate part of me is hoping the words will rearrange themselves into something less ugly if I just look hard enough.
They don't.
I already told Pietty you'd be amenable. Like I'm a clause in a contract he negotiated before bothering to mention it to the person the clause is actually about.
The room tilts. My ears do that ringing thing again, the one from the cloakroom, except this time there's no folder to blame it on, just six words from my own brother that have somehow managed to hurt worse than the night itself.
I gave up everything for him. Work. Relationships.
My own life rearranged around making sure he had a future worth stepping into.
And this is what he did with that future the second he got his hands on it.
He shopped me around like inventory and felt confident enough in the deal to promise my compliance in advance.
I don't realize I've gone completely still until Volody's voice cuts through the noise in my head.
"Liv."
I look up. He's watching me with an expression that's gone sharp and focused, all the easy charm stripped away, replaced with something that looks almost like alarm.
"You've gone gray," he says. "What happened?"
I know the polite thing would be to say it's nothing, fix my face, get through the rest of tonight without handing this stranger another piece of the wreckage my brother keeps generating.
But he's looking at me like the lie wouldn't survive contact with him anyway, like he'd see right through it the same way he saw through everything else tonight.
I hand him my phone instead.
He reads it. I watch his jaw tighten, watch something cold and still settle over his features, the first time all night I've seen the version of him people must actually fear.
"I see," Volody says, quiet, almost to himself as he hands my phone back to me.
"He sent me here blind," I say, and my voice cracks right down the middle of the sentence. "I don’t know what could have possessed him to think I’d be okay with this."
It comes out broken and a little hysterical.
I press a hand over my mouth, mortified, because this is not how grown women behave in rooms full of strangers.
Volody doesn't flinch. He doesn't look at me like I'm being difficult or dramatic.
He just steps closer, giving me every chance to step back if I want to.
When I don't, he reaches out and takes the phone gently from my hand, sliding it into his own pocket like he's taking custody of the thing that hurt me.
"I'm going to find out exactly what he wants," he says. "And exactly what he thinks he's getting. But that's tomorrow's problem. Tonight, I just need to know what you need."
"What I need," I repeat, like the concept is foreign.
"You." His voice gentles further, the cold edge folding away somewhere I can't see anymore. "When was the last time you did something for yourself?"
The question stuns me almost as much as the texts did. Nobody has asked me what I want in longer than I can remember.
"I don’t even know. Would you let me go home?" I say slowly. "Even after everything that just happened in there. The bid." The blood, I almost add.
"The number doesn't buy me a vote on what you do with tonight.
" Something flickers across his face, brief and unguarded, gone before I can fully read it.
"I didn't put my name on that card so I could own a decision that should always be yours.
I did it so nobody else in that room would get the chance to. "
I stare at him, this enormous, dangerous, easy-laughing stranger who just committed an obscene amount of money to a woman he'd known for less than two hours, currently offering to undo all of it because he'd rather I sleep in my own bed than feel cornered in his.
Something in my chest, already painfully tender by my brother's texts, breaks a little further, except this time it doesn't feel like devastation. It feels like relief, sharp and unfamiliar, the way pressure feels when it finally lets go.
"I don't want to go home," I say, and I'm surprised to find I mean it. "I don't think I can sit in that house tonight, waiting for him to ask how it went, like I'm reporting back from a business trip. I'd rather be anywhere that isn't there."
"Then come with me." He says it carefully, like he's checking the words are still safe to offer even after everything. "Not because Pietty said so or because it’s what’s expected. Because I'm asking, and you're allowed to say no to me just as easily as you're allowed to say no to him."
"I know."
"Say it anyway. I want to hear that you know it."
I lift my eyes to his and take a steadying breath. "I know I can say no to you."
"Good." He holds out his hand, the same way he did before the bid, patient, unhurried, like he's got nowhere else in the world he needs to be except exactly here, waiting for me to decide. "Then let's go somewhere that isn't here. I think we've both had enough for one night."
I look down at his hand, then up at his face, and I think about Cole's text still sitting in his pocket like a wound I haven't finished bleeding from.
Volody hasn't decided anything for me tonight. Not really. He's just kept asking, over and over, in different ways, what I want, and waited for the answer.
I put my hand in his.
"Okay," I say again, and this time the word doesn't feel like surrender. It feels like the first choice I've made all night that's entirely, completely mine.