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She doesn’t slam the door shut behind her, but I wish she would have. The limp silence following her departure is almost worse.
I sit there on my bed in the lamplit dark. My head’s swimming with throbbing pain and terrible realizations. My heart is threatening to shrivel inside my chest and leave me with nothing but a ghostly reminder of what could have been.
As I lie back to try and get something remotely close to sleep, I tell myself that it’s the pain of my broken ribs that hurts more than anything.
And that it’s the pain of my broken ribs causing the tears to fall from my eyes.
35
CLARA
It’s another hour before I’m finally summoned to the stage.
I’m glad to be out of that room—if I had to watch that woman’s dead eyes in the mirror as she serviced Raizo’s man for a moment longer, I was going to be sick to my stomach.
Now, I’m out of that hellhole, although God only knows how deep and disgusting the next one will be. A silent man with a gun is escorting me down a long hallway. A very, very long hallway, like one in a nightmare, where it only gets longer the further you move down it.
I wish I could run. But the armed escort has made it very clear that that’s not an option. And even if I was willing to take the chance for myself, there’s a baby inside me I refuse to risk.
I feel the spark of life inside me the same way I felt Willow’s. I’ll suffer anything it takes to keep that spark safe.
I wonder idly if my pregnancy would have changed anything with Demyen. If maybe, crazy as it sounds, he might actuallywanta child of his own.
He’s been a monster to me. A nightmare. An avenging angel.
But he’s also been a light in the darkness. A father to my daughter. A protection against demons known and unknown.
So yes, I wonder about things. I have questions. But I’ll never find out the answers to all those would haves, could haves, should haves.
He made his choice.
I have to make mine.
As heartbreaking as that is, though, I don’t have time to cry. The guard opens a door and I’m ushered through, instantly thrust into a literal spotlight.
It takes me a moment for my eyes to adjust—it’s so much brighter here than anywhere else in the hotel. Dozens of men in tuxedos fill the room with laughter, leering, and liquor. And smoke.Somuch repulsive, cloying smoke. Tendrils of the stuff rise from the ends of expensive cigars poised in mouths that now turn upwards in hungry sneers as they get a good first look at me.
Wait—was that…?
Did I just see Demyen?
I blink. I swear I just saw him standing there in the crowd, but now, I can’t tell if he is or isn’t. Or if it’s just my eyes playing tricks in the chaos of the auction room.
Because that’s exactly what this is.An auction room.
This is where I’m about to be sold.
“Sold! To the gentleman from Belarus for fifty thousand dollars!”
A young woman in a pale pink gown whips her terrified gaze to me. Her fingers tremble as she lifts them to her face, partly covering her mouth in horror. But before she has a chance to burst into tears, a pair of men flank her and drag her off the stage.
Someone nudges me in the back.
My turn.
As I step forward into that burning spotlight, I realize that the full weight of the reality of my situation has not actually settled upon me once this whole night.
How do I know?
