Chapter 2: The Payment

I back up until the wall stops me. There is nowhere else to go. He crosses the room without hurrying, water still running off him, a black towel slung low around his hips, and every step he takes steals more air out of the room. I'm going to die here, I think. I'm nineteen and I'm going to die here and nobody will even look for me. He stops close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his skin. Then his hand comes up and catches my chin, and his fingers are warm, and they don't ask permission. He tilts my face up. I squeeze my eyes shut so hard it hurts. "Open them." Low. Rough. Not loud — he never has to be loud. I open them. His eyes are amber-gold, almost inhuman in the candlelight, and they move over my face like he's cataloguing me. Cheekbones. Mouth. The tears sliding down. "So," he says. "You're the payment." My whole body starts shaking. "Please." It comes out in pieces. "Please don't hurt me. Please." His thumb strokes once across my jaw, and his mouth curves — not kindly. "Do you know what your father owed me?" "E-eight million." "Eight million, four hundred thousand." He tips his head. "And he sent me a hundred pounds of terrified girl. That's a bad trade, piccola." I can't answer. My throat's locked shut. He wipes a tear off my cheek with his thumb, almost gentle, and then his hand keeps moving — down my throat — and stops. I feel him go still. His fingers rest on the bruise Isolde left. Four perfect fingerprints, blooming purple across my jaw and neck. Something changes in his face. It's like watching a door open onto a furnace. "Who did this?" Rosie's face flashes behind my eyes. Twelve years old. Hall light on. I shut my mouth. "Who," he says again, softer, which is somehow worse. "I fell," I whisper. He looks at me for a long moment. Then he leans in, and instead of hitting me, instead of anything I've braced for, he lowers his head to the curve of my neck and breathes me in. I go rigid. My hands fist in my ruined dress. "You smell like snow," he murmurs against my skin. "And lies." He straightens. Takes my chin again. Makes me look at him. "I'm going to say something and you're going to hear me. In this house, nobody touches what's mine. Not my men. Not my enemies." His eyes drop to my mouth. "Not the people who sold you." "I'm not—" My voice shakes. "I'm not yours. I'm not a thing." The corner of his mouth lifts. "You were bought and delivered at nine o'clock tonight," he says. "Signed for. I have the receipt." Humiliation burns up my face, and I hate that I'm crying again, and I hate more that he watches every tear like it's interesting. "Are you going to kill me?" I ask. He considers it. He actually considers it, and I feel my knees start to give. "Twenty-six girls have been sent to me over the years," he says. "Debts. Peace offerings. Apologies with a pulse. Do you know what I did with all of them?" I shake my head, terrified of the answer. "I sent them home," he says. "Untouched. Because none of them made me feel anything at all." His hand slides into my hair, and he brings his mouth to my ear, and his voice drops so low it goes through my ribs. "You've been in my house eleven minutes, piccola, and I already want to keep you." Heat floods my face. My heart is beating so hard it hurts. "That's not—" I breathe. "That's not a kindness." "No," he agrees. "It isn't." And then he turns his head and presses his mouth to my throat — right over my pulse, right over the bruise — and I make a sound I will be ashamed of for the rest of my life. His grip tightens. Somewhere behind us, a door opens, and a voice like ice water says: "Sir. There's a problem. Ferraro's daughter just drove through the gate."