Page 133 of Into the Woods

Words caught in my throat, but I managed to get them out. “What’s back there?” I pointed at the curtain that partitioned off a separate area.

Eric turned and gave me his full attention, taking my hands. “That’s where we’ve put our special-request orders.”

Static buzzed in my brain. Special requests? Like, for food?

“Pet, you understand that some of the buyers have… particular tastes. It’s a business.”

I was a statue, incapable of processing thoughts or sounds or oxygen in my lungs.

“Bex?” Eric’s expression hardened as a man came up behind him puffing on a cigar. He blew a cloud of noxious fumes into the face of a scrawny teenager nearby.

“Eric,” he greeted, his warm tone rich and throaty. Dressed in a well-fitted charcoal gray suit, he looked like he’d just stepped out of a board meeting. His slicked-back hair glinted in the lights.

Eric shot me one last look, the meaning pretty damn obvious—behave.

“Ambassador Nielsen,” Eric returned, shaking his hand. “Have you been here long?”

“Long enough to know that you delivered exactly what I asked for,” he replied, tapping the ash from the end of the cigar onto the floor. His beady brown eyes gave me a quick once-over before I was dismissed. “She’s spectacular.”

Eric smiled, all teeth and smug satisfaction. “It took a bit of extra effort to secure her. Thank you for your patience. Will you be leaving now?”

“No,” the ambassador replied, waving off the idea. “I plan to stay. Who knows? I might find a gift for my brother. Bastard’s marrying an absolute bitch of a woman. A political match, you know. He’ll need someone else when his frigid ice queen can’t be bothered to spread her legs.”

“Let me know if I can assist you in any way,” Eric said.

“You know I will.” He wandered off, pausing to watch as a man pulled back a teenager’s gums to check her teeth like she was a fucking horse.

No, no, no. This was too much.

I wasn’t prepared for this. There was no way to fake my way through being okay with any single part of this. Maybe there was a fire alarm I could pull?

“It had to be this way,” Eric was saying, still pulling me past the row of prisoners. He hesitated at the black curtain, looking uncertain. “You trust me, right?”

My gaze snapped to his. “I… Of course.”

“You’re absolute perfection, love,” he breathed, pulling back the black curtain and revealing…

I frowned. Were those… dog cages?

Five of them, all wired metal and boxy shapes, but—oh, sweet holy mother of baby Yoda—there were women inside them. Three were asleep. The fourth was sobbing, curled into a ball. But the fifth… The fifth looked at me with big hazel eyes, a bruise forming around one of them. Her blonde hair was a wreck, and her red dress had been torn. Scratches crisscrossed her arms, and a chain with a padlock had been wrapped around her slender throat.

She whimpered, the sound ripping me apart as her thin fingers wrapped around the bars of her cage. “B-Bex.”

I gaped, stunned.

Horrified.

“Cami?”

CHAPTER 41

BEX

Without thinking it through, I lunged forward and fell to my knees in front of Cami. My hands touched hers for a brief second before grabbing frantically for the padlock. I yanked on it uselessly and turned to Eric. “Open the door.”

He was frowning, looking genuinely confused. “Bex, I told you, this is business.”

“No,” I snapped, “this is my cousin. Get her out of here.”

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