Page 119 of Sapphire Tears

“Where’s June?” I ask as soon as I’ve removed her gag.

“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?”

“Hetook 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.

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