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I gag. “No. I’ve just never been touched there…” It’s not true. Triston touched me just last night and I don’t have to ask to know that nothing that happens today will be anything like that.

She kneels down, turning her head this way and that as she studies me. “What brought you here?”

I don’t know why she cares. I’m not even sure I should tell her. “My brother needs surgery, and I don’t have the money to pay for it.”

I see her frown, the other women’s hands lessening, easing back. “Ah. I see.” She puts the device in the bag. “I’ll spare you this, but whatever man buys your virginity will spare you nothing, and if you’re lying, it will be both our necks.”

“Your neck is safe,” I whisper, but my eyes are filling with tears again. Hers might be, but mine is not.

She gives a nod.

“My phone? Can I see it?”

“No. No phone until tomorrow.”

“But,” I cry. “The doctor might call. If he does, my brother needs to go to the hospital right away.”

I didn’t tell Darius there might be a donor because I didn’t want to get his hopes up. But now, I’m seeing all the ways in which I’ve erred. This will all be for not if Darius doesn’t make it to the hospital in time.

“Irina,” the woman says. “Go find her phone.”

The one I’m assuming is Irina says something sharp back in Russian, but the woman I’m speaking to stands, hands on her hips and says, “Go.”

Irina huffs off and I hold my breath as one of the other women starts curling my hair again, while a second pulls out a makeup bag, applying some very natural looking and perfectly matched makeup to my skin.

Irina walks back in, handing me the phone. I tap the screen, the device lighting up, showing that I have seven missed calls.

I gasp in a breath, sure that Dr. Lawrence has been trying to reach me, but it’s not his name that appears.

It’s Triston’s.

My eyes grow huge as I realize he called all seven times. I start to shake. Why would he be so insistent?

I see his first voicemail and tap the message, bringing it to my ear. But before I can listen, the phone is snatched from my grasp. “You check for the doctor but now is not the time to talk to your boyfriend.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Who is he then?”

“My boss.”

She clicks her tongue. “Your boss calls you seven times on a Saturday? Maybe he wants to be your boyfriend.”

I don’t answer as my curls are finished and brushed out.

White gauzy lingerie is pulled out of the closet, the kind that I’ve never worn and embarrasses me to even look at. “Aren’t there going to be a room full of people?”

“Not people. Men. Who are deciding if they want to fuck you.”

And the ladies start pulling off my sundress and tucking me into a white lacy bra and panties that have a sheer overlay in the shape of a short nightgown.

At least a silky robe is placed over my top as too-big heels are put on my feet.

Then Irina holds out a gummy of some kind. “You want?”

“What is it?”

“Drug. It will make you sleepy, which will help.”