Page 10 of The Seller

I was lying down, trying to rest, taking refuge in dreams when the door woke me. By the time I open my eyes, two long legs are in front of me.

From this position, he is a towering man with more power and presence than anyone has the right to have. In another life, he might have lead armies. In this one, he uses women.

“Get up.”

His clipped tones issue an order I don’t mind following. I don’t want to be lying down when this man is around. I want to be on my feet.

I rise, finding myself a good foot shorter than him. He’s tall. He’s handsome. He has all the genetic advantages life can provide, and look what he’s done with them.

“Don’t look at me like that, girl.”

My disdain can’t be hidden. He’s disgusting, no matter how attractive he might be superficially. He is motivated by two things, money, and ego.

I bite back a sarcastic response and wait to see what he wants. There’s a new intensity to the way his dark brows draw down over his eyes, harsh lines jutting down toward his nose. His jaw is clenched and his cheeks are hard slabs of muscle. Someone has pissed him off. It can’t have been me. I’ve been sitting in the dark for days.

“It’s time to tell me the truth.”

“What truth?”

“Tell me why you wanted to be here.”

“I didn’t want to be here. Nobody wants to be here.”

“Liar,” he growls. “My delivery guy was found a day ago. Dead.”

“Oh no. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

I feel his anger. Not because he gives a fuck about the asshole who drugged girls and dragged them off to whorehouses across the continent, but because I’m defying him again. He knows that I’m up to something, and it’s driving him absolutely crazy not knowing what that is.

He reaches out, his fingers curling around my throat. His touch is pure danger. He’s not squeezing, yet, but the threat is there. I meet his eyes, not knowing if he is threatening my life, or making a point. It doesn’t really make any difference. He was suspicious about me from the beginning, and I know very well that the coincidences are just going to keep mounting.

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.”

“You know better than to ask me questions I’m never going to answer.”

“He was poisoned. That’s a woman’s way of killing someone.”

“Sexist.”

His grip tightens, fingers constricting around my neck. “Tell me what is going on,” he repeats.

He can say it as many times as he wants, I’m not telling him a goddamn thing.

“Did you poison him?”

I give a little shrug. We both know I had no way of doing that.

He lets out a growl, and this time it rumbles through me, traveling through the grip he has on my neck.

“I can hurt you. Make you tell me.”

“Sure you can, and no, you can’t.”

His eyes narrow until they are two dark slivers. In the low light of the basement, he seems almost demonic. I am sure he’s used to intimidating young women into doing what he wants them to do, telling him what he wants to know. Though he’s probably not as used to interrogations. Most of the girls he takes have nothing to tell him that matters.

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