Chapter Three #3
He wore a black suit tonight, not gray. A dark red tie cut down the front of his shirt like a wound. His rings flashed when he lifted his glass. The same too-white smile spread across his face.
He had found me.
Gennady raised his hand.
“Twenty,” the auctioneer said.
My knees softened. I locked them.
A man at the rear lifted a card.
“Twenty-five.”
Gennady’s eyes stayed on my face. He lifted two fingers.
“Thirty.”
The auctioneer moved too fast. He barely checked the other side of the room before calling the number. The bids slid by like doors closing.
“Thirty-five at the rear. Forty to Mr. Kask.”
Mr. Kask.
The name reached every table.
My attention snapped to the auctioneer. He knew him. Of course he knew him. He sat too comfortably for a man who had come to a room like this unsure.
A sound rose in my ears. It wasn’t the piano or the voices. Blood rushed hard enough to blur the room while my body tried to warn me after my choices had already run out.
The man at the rear paused.
Gennady set his glass down and lifted his hand again.
“Fifty,” the auctioneer said.
The room murmured.
Gennady smiled wider.
He wanted me to see him. He wanted me to know he’d let me walk all the way here, undress, sign, stand under the lights, and hope. He’d let me choose the sale because it made the ending sweeter for him.
The auctioneer looked over the room. “Fifty. Do I hear fifty-five?”
The man at the rear looked down at his table.
“Fifty going once.”
My hands curled at my sides.
Someone else. Anyone else.
“Fifty going twice.”
I stared past the amber table lamps and the raised glasses, past the men with money and no reason to spend it saving me from the one monster I knew by name.
Gennady rested one elbow on his chair and gave me a small, pleased shake of his head.
My stomach pitched.
“Sold,” the auctioneer said. “To Mr. Kask.”
Men shifted in their chairs. One lifted his drink. Another checked his phone. The room had watched me lose and then moved on before I left the stage.
My feet stayed on the brass circle where the attendant had told me to stand.
The auctioneer was already turning a page on the podium. “Settlement will proceed immediately. Lot Fourteen will be held for transfer.”
Gennady rose.
The stage tilted.
I didn’t fall. Pride or terror kept my spine straight. I had walked into the room on my own feet. I would not collapse at his first step toward me.
Gennady buttoned his jacket and came to the edge of the stage. “Nadia.”
My skin crawled at the sound of my name.
I stared over his shoulder, not at his face.
He laughed softly. “Still pretending I’m not the man who owns the room?”
“You don’t own me.”
His smile sharpened. “You signed papers saying someone would.”
The auctioneer cleared his throat. “Mr. Kask, transfer will occur through the side—”
The doors at the back of the room slammed inward.
The crash cut through the piano, the murmurs, the breath trapped in my chest. Men turned. Chairs scraped. A glass hit the floor and shattered.
A massive man in a black suit came through the doors with two men behind him.
Something in me recognized the shape of him without giving me a name.
Maybe The Samovar Room. Maybe one of those nights when Petya had come in bruised and angry and I had been too busy trying to get him out safely to remember every man in the room. Maybe fear was making every dangerous face feel familiar.
I couldn’t place him.
I kept watching him anyway.
He crossed the auction room without hurry, which made every step worse.
Dark hair. Broad shoulders. Cold eyes fixed on Gennady. A charcoal overcoat hung open over his suit, and one black leather glove was clenched in his left hand like he’d taken it off on the way in and forgotten he held it.
Chairs stopped scraping. The men nearest the aisle looked down at their drinks. Security shifted, then stopped. The auctioneer went pale.
Gennady turned from the stage. “This has nothing to do with you.”
The man stopped in front of him. “Move away from her.”
His voice was calm. That was the frightening part. He didn’t shout. He didn’t rush. He spoke like the room had already obeyed and simply needed to catch up.
Gennady’s smile came back in pieces. “The sale is finished.”
“Not for you.”
“You can’t walk in after the hammer and take what I bought.”
“She isn’t leaving with you.”
The auctioneer stepped from behind the podium, hands raised slightly. “Gentlemen, there are procedures—”
One of the men who had entered behind the stranger moved fast.
The auctioneer hit the podium hard enough to rattle the microphone.
“Stay quiet,” the man said.
The auctioneer stayed quiet.
Gennady took one step toward the stage.
The stranger caught him by the front of his jacket and drove him back against the stage edge.
Gennady’s expensive shoes slipped on the polished floor. His hands grabbed at the man’s wrist, and his face went red with shock.
A sound tore out of me before I could stop it.
The stranger looked up.
His eyes found mine.
The room dropped away for one breath.
He was terrifying. He was beautiful in the way a locked door was beautiful when something worse was behind you. His face was hard, cut in sharp lines, with cold gray eyes and a mouth that looked like it had never begged anyone for anything.
He saw my bare feet. He saw Gennady’s hand on the stage edge below me. His jaw tightened, and his grip on Gennady’s jacket went white at the knuckles.
I stepped back.
Then Gennady laughed, ugly and sharp. “Look at her. She knows. Same sale, different man.”
I understood enough.
Gennady wanted me to think this man had come to collect me too.
The stranger’s fist hit Gennady’s mouth.
The crack of it snapped through the room. Gennady staggered against the stage, blood bright on his lower lip.
The stranger leaned close enough that only the first row should have heard him, but the room had gone so silent that every word carried.
“If you speak to her again, I’ll make sure it’s the last sound you make with all your teeth.”
Air rushed into my chest.
My hand pressed hard against the coat over my ribs.
He released Gennady and came up the stage steps.
The attendant beside me moved into his path.
The stranger kept coming.
One of his men caught the attendant by the collar and dragged him sideways. The attendant hit the curtain, knocking the black fabric loose from one hook.
The stranger reached me.
Up close, he was larger than he’d looked from the doorway. Heat came off him through the cold smoke of the room. His right hand was red across the knuckles. Gennady’s blood marked the skin.
I backed up until my heel hit the edge of the brass circle.
He took in my bare feet, the pale silk, my hands twisted at my sides. His jaw tightened again.
“Don’t touch me,” I said.
“I’m getting you out of here.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” he said. “But it happens before he reaches you.”
Gennady snarled behind him, “She’s mine by contract.”
The stranger’s eyes stayed on mine. “Hold on to me, or don’t. I won’t leave you on this stage.”
I hesitated too long.
Maybe I couldn’t move. Maybe my body had spent the last of itself standing under the lights while Gennady smiled at me from his chair. My knees loosened. The gold room smeared at the edges. The chandelier split into two, then four.
The stranger’s coat came around my shoulders first, heavy and dark and warm from his body.
Then his arms came under me.
I gasped as he lifted me from the stage.
One arm locked behind my back. The other slid under my knees. The silk chemise rode high against my thighs before the coat fell over me, hiding what the room had already seen.
Men moved.
His men moved faster.
A chair went over. Someone shouted. The auctioneer disappeared behind the podium. Gennady lunged, and one of the stranger’s men hit him hard enough to send him into the front table. Glass shattered. A lamp toppled. Amber light swung wild across the walls.
The stranger carried me through all of it.
He didn’t carry me gently.
He held me hard against his chest, steady enough that I couldn’t slip.
His shoulder blocked my view of Gennady. His arm held my knees so I couldn’t fall. His coat smelled like cold wool, leather, and smoke. My cheek brushed his lapel, and beneath it his heartbeat stayed slow.
“Put me down,” I said, but it came out weak.
“No.”
“Petya—”
“Not here.”
“I have to—”
“Breathe first. Fight me after.”
I would have hated him for that if I’d had the strength.
Behind us, Gennady shouted my name.
The stranger’s arms tightened once.
I felt the shift in him, the violent answer he wanted to give but didn’t stop to spend.
He kept moving.
A side door opened ahead of us. One of his men shoved it wide, and cold service light spilled over white walls and gray flooring. The music from the room cut off as the door slammed behind us. Men’s voices turned muffled and furious on the other side.
The hallway moved too fast.
White walls. Security camera. Exit sign. The black sleeve across my knees. My own bare toes pale below the hem of the coat. A smear of blood on the stranger’s hand where he held me.
My stomach rolled.
I swallowed hard.
The stranger looked down. “Are you going to be sick?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me if you are.”
“Why? So you can schedule it?”
His mouth almost changed. It vanished before it became a smile.
Good. I could still be angry. Angry meant awake.
Then the floor tilted even though he was the one carrying me.
I hadn’t eaten. I’d barely slept. I’d stood in silk under lights while Gennady turned my sacrifice into a trap. I’d watched a room full of men put a price on my body and another man break the room open before that price could be collected.
The hallway narrowed.
The stranger’s face blurred above me.
I blinked hard and saw the cut near his jaw, the dark hair, the cold gray eyes no longer on Gennady but on me.
“Stay with me,” he said.
“I don’t take orders from strange men.”
“Then consider it a request.”
My fingers tightened in his shirt before I could stop them.
The elevator doors opened. This wasn’t the mirrored one from before. It was a service elevator, metal-walled and harshly lit. One of his men stepped in first. Another held the door.
The stranger carried me inside.
The doors closed.
The elevator dropped.
My stomach dropped with it. Sweat cooled at the back of my neck. My hands had curled into his shirt without permission. I tried to let go, but my fingers wouldn’t obey.
“Almost out,” he said.
“I don’t know if that’s better.”
“It is.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough for tonight.”
The elevator stopped.
A private garage waited below, lit in white strips that shone over black cars lined along the concrete. The air smelled like exhaust, wet tires, and winter trapped underground. A black SUV idled near the elevator, rear door open, windows dark.
Every story I’d ever heard about women who got into cars with dangerous men pressed against the back of my throat.
The stranger felt me stiffen.
“You’re not going back to that room,” he said.
“I know.”
“You’re not going with Kask.”
“I know that too.”
“Then breathe.”
I dragged air into my lungs. It tasted like exhaust and his coat.
He ducked into the SUV with me still in his arms and set me on the leather seat. The seat was warm. That small mercy nearly undid me.
I tried to sit upright.
The garage lights stretched.
He caught my shoulder before I tipped forward.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“No, you’re not.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“You’re lying badly.”
A sound came out of me. It might have been a laugh if anything about tonight had been funny.
One of his men shut the door, and the outside world dulled at once. The stranger stayed beside me, close enough to catch me, not close enough to pin me. His coat covered my lap and chest. Under it, the pale silk clung to skin that wouldn’t stop shaking.
The SUV moved.
City light slid across the window. Black glass, white headlights, gold windows high above the street. Manhattan kept going as if women weren’t bought and carried out of rooms above restaurants where people laughed over candlelight.
The stranger opened a bottle of water and held it where I could see the seal break.
“Small sip,” he said.
I stared at it.
“If you tell me what to do one more time, I may throw it at your head.”
“After you drink.”
I took the bottle because my mouth was too dry to keep winning that argument. The water hit my stomach cold and sudden. I swallowed once, then twice.
My hands shook so hard the bottle crackled.
He took it before I spilled it on myself.
“What happens to the money?” I asked.
“It will be handled.”
“For Petya?”
“Yes.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
He looked at me in the dark back seat. Blood marked his knuckles. My lipstick had probably smeared. His coat covered me, but I could still feel the silk underneath, the room underneath, Gennady’s eyes underneath everything.
“You don’t,” he said.
My fingers curled against the leather seat.
“Not yet,” he added.
I heard him, but his voice had started to pull away from me.
My vision blurred at the edges again.
Not now. Not in front of him. Not when I still didn’t know where I was going or what he wanted or whether Petya was awake in our apartment with the crooked chain on the door.
The stranger’s voice came from far away. “Nadia.”
I forced my eyes to his. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Say my name like you get to keep it.”
His face sharpened with something I couldn’t hold long enough to understand.
“I won’t take your name from you,” he said.
I should have been relieved by that.
I was too tired.
The window lights stretched into long bright lines. My body dipped sideways before I felt myself falling.
He caught me.
One arm came around my shoulders, solid and warm. My cheek hit his chest, not hard. His coat smelled like cold wool and smoke. Beneath it, his heart beat steady, slow, impossible.
“I’m not going to be sick,” I mumbled, because that seemed important.
“No,” he said. “You’re going to pass out.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know.”
“My brother—”
“I hear you. Breathe now.”
“I have to—”
“You have to stay with me first.”
His voice followed me down, calm enough to hate, strong enough to hold on to when everything else slipped.
His hand closed around mine on the seat. He didn’t force my fingers open. He just held on.
The SUV kept moving.
The city lights smeared across the window.
Then everything went dark.