Chapter 5
Damien
The Alabaster Room is modestly decorated in a way that screams too much money was spent making it look that way.
I’m seated in the third row on the aisle, right side, so that I can get a good view of potential bidders, and I also want to see who bids on Lidiya Kareva.
So far, all I can see are the usual suspects on the richer side of things, plus a few creeps who would probably try to get more out of the girls than they’re willing to give if they win.
Which is doubtful. There are some deep pockets in this room.
Mine included.
I sit back and wait for Madam Orlov to take the stage.
She appears from the wings, her silver hair catching the light, her posture so straight it could correct mine by proximity. The room quiets without being told to. That’s power. The kind you can’t buy, only cultivate over decades of making people uncomfortable in the most elegant way possible.
The lights dim. A single spotlight carves a white circle on the stage. The murmur of conversation dies to a hush, replaced by the clink of glasses and the rustle of expensive fabric as bodies shift in anticipation.
“Good evening,” Madame Orlov says, her voice carrying without effort.
“Thank you for your attendance and your discretion. Tonight, we have twelve exceptional women for your consideration. The rules are as they have always been. You bid with your paddles. You pay before you leave, and you conduct yourselves with the decorum this establishment demands.”
She lets that last word hang.
“Shall we begin?”
The first girl steps out. Alisha Something.
The girl who works with Lidiya. Perfect hair, confident stride, a dress that’s doing most of the heavy lifting.
She plants herself in the spotlight and smiles like she’s been doing this her whole life.
The bidding starts at a thousand and climbs steadily. Two. Three.
When they get to ten, they get cocky and start upping the bid in five-thousand increments. At thirty thousand, they increase that to ten.
She sells for fifty thousand to a man in the front row who looks like he irons his socks. Good for her. Bad for him. She’ll eat him alive over dinner and still order dessert.
The next girl steps out. Tall, dark, built like a weapon someone wrapped in silk. The bidding is faster this time, more aggressive. Two men in the second row go back and forth like they’re playing tennis with their wallets. She goes for sixty-five.
I don’t bid. I don’t move. I sit still with my paddle resting against my thigh. A few people glance my way, recognising me. A Voronov at an auction is either there to buy or to watch who is buying. Tonight, it’s both.
Girls three through seven blur together.
Beautiful, polished, interchangeable in the way that expensive things often are.
The bids range from twenty thousand to seventy thousand.
One classically beautiful girl gets a bidding war that pushes past a hundred, and the room buzzes with it, electric and obscene.
But what’s rare is something else entirely, and I haven’t seen it yet.
I check my watch. My pulse is steady, but there’s a low hum building beneath my ribs that I recognise. Anticipation. The good kind. The kind that comes before a hit lands.
I use the time to scan the room instead.
Three rows back, left side, a man sits alone in a charcoal suit that’s been tailored within an inch of its life.
He hasn’t bid either. His hands rest on his thighs, still and deliberate, and his eyes haven’t moved from the stage.
Not once. Not even when the girl in the red dress stumbled slightly on her heel, and every other head in the room dipped in second hand embarrassment. He just sat there. Waiting.
I don’t recognise him. That bothers me more than the phone call did.
The eleventh girl exits to polite applause and a winning bid of forty-two thousand. Madame Orlov returns to centre stage.
“Our last companion of the evening,” she says, “Lidiya.”
My pulse ticks up. Just once. Just enough to notice.
She steps out from the wings, and the first thing I notice is that she’s terrified. The kind masked by practised smiles and muscle memory from years of being ignored. Lidiya’s fear is raw, sitting right there on the surface like a bruise she hasn’t had time to hide.
I’m not the only one who notices it.
The room hesitates. I feel it—that collective inhale where the audience recalibrates. She’s not what they expected after eleven girls who looked like they’d been assembled from a catalogue. She’s something else, and every predator in this room just got a whiff of a scared rabbit.
My protective instinct kicks in at a basic level that predates the written word. I will fight off anyone who tries to hurt her.
She walks to the centre of the spotlight, and her chin lifts. Not confidently. Defiantly. Like she’s daring the room to confirm what she already believes about herself.
The dress is black. Simple. It’s been altered, if I had to guess, and not by a professional.
The hem isn’t quite even, and the stiff fabric isn’t by design.
A belt cinches her narrow waist, and her blonde hair falls past her shoulders in waves that catch the light.
She’s not wearing much makeup. She doesn’t need to be.
Her face does something the other eleven couldn’t manage: it tells the truth.
She’s beautiful. Not in the way this room understands beauty—not manufactured, not optimised. Beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful when you find it in a drawer you forgot about. Unexpected. Functional. Dangerous if you’re not careful.
It makes everyone sit up and pay attention. Including me. My mystery phone caller is in this room with his eye on her, but I’m not his only competition now. Every man in this room, Bratva bred or not, wants to break her.
Madam Orlov hasn’t spoken a word yet. Her eagle eye is on the crowd, overhauling her strategy. She has spent years observing people’s reactions to everything around them, and she has just realised this woman is worth more than she first thought.
With a half smile that chills my blood, Orlov starts the bidding.