Chapter 134 134

Chapter 134 134
“J-June… You mean, you don’t have her already?” Sara asks. “I… I thought you’d have gotten to her before you found us.”

“Sara,” I say, gripping her by the shoulders, “tell me what you know. Did you see where they took her?”

“He took her,” she stammers. “I was just coming to when Adrian brought us to this house. He pushed Geneva and me out with a handful of men, and then he drove off. With June.”

My spine goes ramrod straight. “You mean—she’s not here?”

Sara shakes her head. “No. They’re gone. Both of them.”

51

JUNE

“What is this?” I scream, pummeling my fists against the closed door. “Where am I? Adrian! Adrian!”

“There’s no point.”

I gasp and whirl around. I thought I was alone in this dark room. But I find myself standing across from a woman who looks like she belongs on television.

She’s tall and supermodel skinny with close-cropped blonde hair, in a black corset, crimson red skirt, and heels that are far too tall for her. She smells like honey and patchouli oil.

I inhale to let out a scream. But before I can, she says, “Don’t bother, sweetheart. This room is soundproofed. They all are, actually.”

The scream dies in my throat. “Who are you?”

The woman’s expression is an enigma. Like one of those holographic cards that changes whenever you look at it from a new angle. For one moment, she’s mournful. In the next, gleeful. It’s making my head spin.

She gives me a sympathetic smile. “It’s my job to make sure you look beautiful for tonight.”

I shake my head and back away from her. I get about three steps of distance before I bump into the far wall. “H-he’s selling me?” I stammer. And because it’s too horrible to imagine, I hear myself repeat it. “He’s selling me into the ring?”

“I’m afraid so, my darling,” she says, clasping her hands together in front of her chest. “Although I was told that you are quite special. If you change your mind, you’re free to leave this tomb.”

I don’t bother asking what I’m supposed to change my mind about. It’s obvious. Choosing Kolya will condemn me to a hell where men buy and sell my body. Choose Adrian, and everything will be right as rain.

That’s what he wants me to think. Those are the terms he’s offering.

I feel the sob rise to my throat, but when it bursts free, it comes out as a thick bark of laughter instead.

And once it’s out, I can’t stop laughing. I hold my belly and keel over. I laugh until there are tears streaming down my face. The woman stands there and watches me with a detached expression. She waits patiently until I’m done.

By the time the laughter subsides, I find myself sitting on the floor with my legs hitched up to my chest. I take a few deep breaths and glance at her.

“Sorry,” I say inexplicably.

“Don’t be sorry. I’ve been doing this for a long time. Believe it or not, you’re not the first one to laugh.”

The urge to laugh has abandoned me completely now, though. Gone like it never existed. My gaze falls down to my own stomach. “Did you know I’m pregnant?”

Her eyes twist with sympathy, but not a genuine or pure-hearted kind. It’s the kind of sympathy you feel for roadkill. Oh, poor thing, you say—and then you keep on driving.

“So I was told. You’re not the first one to have that, either. But unfortunately, it will not protect you.”

I clap a hand over my mouth as bile rises to my throat. The idea of being paraded in front of a group of men, to be auctioned off like cattle… It leaves me with a visceral reaction. My own body rejecting it, like I can simply puke the whole concept away.

“I-I can’t go back to him,” I say softly when the nausea eases its claws off me.

Adrian must know that. He has to know that I will not ever give him that satisfaction. That I would rather take a lifetime of humiliation and suffering over being with him again.

She nods. “Then I hope your next owner will be kinder.”

Owner. Just like that, the nausea comes ripping back to life.

“Come, my child,” she says, offering me a hand. Her nails are grotesquely long and perfectly painted. The pink talons of a monster who thinks it can fool me into believing she is something else. Each ring finger is daubed with a skull. “You can call me Mere.”

“Mere?” I repeat.

She smiles. “It means ‘mother’ in French. I’m here to help you be born into your new life.”

When I don’t take her offered hand up, she sighs, then reaches down and plucks me up to my feet like I weigh nothing.

“Good girl,” Mere says as she walks me over to a vanity in the corner and pushes me into the seat. “It’s time to make you beautiful.”

52

JUNE

“There,” Mere says, clapping her hands together. “You are perfect.”

I don’t look at my reflection. I’ve avoided it the whole time Mere has worked on me. Maybe because I’m afraid that I will see the fear in my eyes and then I’ll start to doubt. I’ll start to think that going back to Adrian is my only choice.

“Go on, my darling,” Mere says persistently. “You should see how gorgeous you look.”

I still don’t look. I’d spend the rest of my life not looking. But then Mere’s face does that thing where it shimmers with a new emotion, subtle and shifting. This time, anger bubbles up. She grabs my cheeks in one taloned claw and forces my eyes up to the mirror in front of me.

I barely recognize the woman staring back.

This June has eyes ringed with black eyeliner and smudged dark with mascara and smoky eyeshadow.

This June has lips that look seductively plump and glimmer with blood-red stain.

This June’s cheeks are softly pink in a permanent state of blush, hair falling in tumbled curls over her shoulders, and a dainty gold collar fastened around her neck.

This June is pretty. This June is beautiful.

But this June’s eyes are flat and dead.

Tap, tap, tap.

I flinch violently at the knocking sound. Mere floats towards the door. She opens it only an inch and sticks her head out, so I have no idea who’s outside.

She speaks quickly and quietly, too soft for me to hear either her or the other person. Then she nods and turns towards me. “It’s time, my dear.”

My legs feel like they’ve turned to concrete. Mere has to physically pull me up before I can walk towards the door. Every step takes a lifetime, it seems.

There are two massive men waiting for me outside the room. Their expressions are identical masks of stony silence. They take up positions on either side of me, holding my upper arms just tight enough to hurt, and walk me down the hall. I glance back over my shoulder at Mere, who’s remained rooted in place outside of the room.

She’s standing at the door with her hands clasped in front of her chest again. “Good luck, my dear,” she says, giving me a sorrowful wave.

As sick as it sounds, I honestly believe she means it.