Chapter 21
Damien
Iclose the door with more care than I deserve credit for, then stand there with my hand still on the handle, listening.
No footsteps. No sobs. No frantic pacing. No screaming at me for being an overbearing idiot.
She is in shock. She has no idea what it means to own a building.
She will learn.
The quiet hum of the house settles around her, like it’s already decided she belongs here.
The thought hits wrong. It’s too possessive, too satisfied, so I crush it immediately, the way I’ve learned to crush softer instincts before they become liabilities.
Conditions, she’d said.
As if she’s negotiating with a man who doesn’t negotiate.
But my throat still burns where her no landed, clean and absolute. Not fear. Not pleading. A refusal like a blade.
I’m not angry or hurt. I’m proud.
I walk down the hall and take the stairs two at a time. The ground floor opens into my sitting room, low-lit, with a new window, the city beyond like a jewellery case full of knives. Kirill is seated in the armchair that faces the door, typing something into his phone.
He looks up as I enter, expression flat, eyes sharp.
I pour myself a drink I don’t want and don’t touch it. The bottle clinks on crystal. Small noises in a house that’s seen bigger ones.
“I offered her my name,” I say. “She called it a collar.”
Kirill makes a sound that might be approval if he were built differently. “She’s not wrong.”
I glance at him. “Careful.”
“I am,” he says. “That’s why I’m still breathing.”
I sit heavily on the sofa. My mind is already running routes: cameras, entry points, access codes, employee lists. The mechanics of keeping someone alive are easier than the ethics of wanting to.
“Where are we?”
Kirill picks up the tablet next to him. He doesn’t hand it to me. He sets it down where I can choose to come to it, like I’m not the one who owns him.
“CCTV is compromised,” Kirill says. “Three cameras on the auction floor looped for nine minutes. Long enough to cover the final bids and the exit corridor.”
“Inside job,” I murmur.
“Or an external team with access,” he replies. “The auction’s security contractor is clean on paper. Not clean in practice.”
He swipes to another file. A photo. A man. Blurred, possibly intentionally.
Something about the posture irritates me. Too relaxed. Too confident. Like the room belonged to him.
“Any faces?” I ask.
“No clear face,” he says. “But we have an exit vehicle. A black V-Class. Plates cloned. The route takes it into Canary Wharf, then it disappears into underground parking with no coverage.”
“Which car park?”
Kirill gives me a look that says I’m insulting his intelligence.
“Barlow Tower,” he answers. “Private.”
“Tell me you found a name,” I say.
Kirill’s eyes narrow. “Not a name. A pattern.”
He flips to another page: a grid of dates, locations, luxury events, and three other “lots” purchased in the last six months—different cities, different auction houses, same payment signatures.
I stare.
“People,” I say, quietly. Not objects. Not art. People.
“Yes,” Kirill confirms. “All women. All blonde. Not all from the same background. But all—” He pauses, searching for the word he hates. “—unattached. No family that would make noise. No partner who would dig.”
My jaw tightens until it aches.
“Trafficking,” I say.
Kirill shrugs like we’re discussing the weather. “In a suit.”
I glance at the drink again and finally lift it, but I don’t sip.
“You said we’d get ahead of this,” I tell him.
“You did,” he says. “She is here. That is ahead.”
I give him a look that would wither a lesser man. “It’s not ahead enough.”
He tilts his head. “You’re making it personal.”
“I’m making it contained.”
“Contained is what you do with explosives,” Kirill replies. “Not with women.”
I take a slow breath, the kind that keeps me from breaking something expensive.
“She set conditions,” I say finally.
Kirill’s eyebrows lift a fraction. That’s his version of shock. “And you agreed.”
“I did.”
“And what did you demand?”
The question is surgical. He’s not curious. He’s measuring risk.
“I demanded she stay somewhere I can defend,” I say. “Here.”
Kirill nods once. “Reasonable.”
“I also told her she can keep her phone,” I add.
Kirill’s mouth tightens. “Less reasonable.”
“It’s necessary,” I say. “She needs oxygen. She needs to tell someone she’s alive.”
“She has no one,” Kirill counters.
“I know. That’s not the point.”
I set the glass down before it cracks. “Why did he bid?” I ask, more to myself than to Kirill, because the question has been chewing the inside of my skull since the moment I saw Lidiya on that stage. “Why an auction? Why a room full of witnesses? Why paperwork?”
Kirill doesn’t answer immediately.
When he does, his voice is careful. “Because taking someone off the street is messy. It creates police reports. CCTV. Missing person alerts. Noise.”
“And this doesn’t,” I snap.
“This creates permission,” he says. “Or the illusion of it. A contract. A receipt. A chain of custody that says she was acquired, not kidnapped.”
“Eighty million when he could’ve done it for free. It makes no sense, even when you list logistics.”
“It’s public,” he says.
I hear my own words from upstairs—fastest, cleanest, most public. The same reasons I used. The same logic.
Kirill watches me without interrupting. He never does.
“So he uses the auction to—what?” I say, voice low. “To make it harder for anyone to claim she was taken.”
“Yes,” Kirill answers. “And to signal you.”
“To me,” I repeat.
Kirill nods. “It’s a challenge.”
My jaw clenches. “This isn’t about her at all.” He wanted to step on my neck in public and see if I would flinch.
I didn’t.
I raised my paddle and outspent him.
And now Lidiya is upstairs, in my shirt, in my house, refusing to be a story that makes sense.
“It’s not random,” I say.
“No,” Kirill replies. “It’s targeted, just not her. You. Or maybe both, based on the other auctions… It’s not concrete enough; they could be random. Or not.”
I glare at him with a noise of frustration. This is a massive Venn diagram with both of us at the centre.
I feel something ugly and sharp twist in my chest.
Did I mark her?
“I want names.”
Kirill studies me, then nods once. “Then you’ll need to let me do what you don’t like.”
“Which is?”
“Break rules you still pretend apply to you,” he says, almost bored.
I don’t hesitate. “Do it.”
Kirill stands. He’s smaller than me by a few inches, but he fills rooms the way knives do, without taking up space.
At the door, he pauses.
“One more thing,” he says, not turning.
“What?”
“You asked why he bid instead of taking her from the street,” Kirill says. “There is another reason.”
I wait.
“He wanted you to see her priced,” Kirill continues. “To see men raise paddles for her like she’s a painting. To watch you buy her. And then—”
“And then what?” I ask, voice tight.
Kirill finally looks back at me. His eyes are colourless in the low light.
“And then to see what you do with something you’ve purchased,” he says.
He leaves the room.
Are the other women involved in this, or is it simply a coincidence?
I swipe through the files that Kirill has neatly laid out in folders on the tablet. Getting to the auctions folder, I see a name that instantly stands out.
Madam Orlov.
“That bitch,” I hiss. Whatever this is about, she is up to her neck in it.
I fling the tablet down and gulp back the vodka. My rage now has focus. It has a name.