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OPHELIA

I ’m being watched.

Not by the three women who currently fret around me. They don’t watch me. They assess my naked body, whispering to each other things like wax and body lotion and that will do .

This isn’t them.

They’re just there. Just three people I’ve been ignoring ever since they stepped into my cell this morning.

After last night’s mind-fuck, retreating into myself is effortless.

The shame. The belittling. James’s soft touch at the end of it.

I wish I could disappear.

Instead, I disassociate.

I pretend this expansive space I’ve been escorted to is the restaurant where I work. Sure, it’s darker than Laurier’s . There are no windows down here. No natural light filters into the brightly lit room.

Why would it?

I’m still underground, right down the hall from my cell.

The reminder has my stomach roiling. There’s only so much pretending I can do under these circumstances. While I’m being discussed as if I’m not here. After James did a check-up on me, as if I were his cattle. After he forced me to come.

Not to mention that I’m still being watched by someone I can’t see.

Slowly, it’s becoming impossible to stay in that place in my head, where I’m the observer, the onlooker.

Maybe because I’m the one on the menu.

The three women in black maid outfits continue their chatter. I recognize them. Each one of them was present at least once during the meals I had here.

Maisie, the brunette and shortest of the three, hasn’t fixed her blue gaze on my face throughout the entire time we’ve been here.

Clara, also a brunette but taller, about my height, has had her sharp brown eyes assessing every inch of my skin. She’s in charge of fixing me up , it seems. She circles me, bending me over and huffing at my messy hair.

Then there’s Poppy. Her blonde hair is twisted into a low bun at the nape of her neck, just like the other two women. She’s the youngest of the three and doesn’t say a word, simply nods at whatever the other two comment on.

I could kick them. Swing a few punches. Pull their hair. They don’t look like trained assassins or anything. I’d take them down if I put everything into it. I want to. I would’ve too.

But then I’d have to deal with the locked door. Where two guards await. They’d knock me out if I even made it that far.

It hurts my bones, this waiting game.

I have no other option. I have to let them do their thing.

Their job .

While I stand there, feeling like a Foie Gras or Spaghetti Carbonara.

Before nausea has me doubling over, that intense sensation of being watched returns.

Goosebumps prickle my skin. Yesterday, I felt that while I sobbed in the cell. In the moments before sleep dragged me under.

Once James returned to the cell, the feeling stopped.

It’s back again now. More prominent, if possible. The longer I stand here, the chill goes deeper. Freezes my bones. Makes my teeth gnash.

“Don’t grind them.” Clara grabs my chin. Her gloved hand is soft, her voice scolding. “You’ll chip your teeth. They’ll be angry. You don’t want that.”

“Oh, really?” Though I’m talking to her, my eyes scan the room. Searching the walls. The ceiling. The air vents.

There has to be a camera somewhere here. There had to be one in my cell.

James is watching. Has to be him.

He can save you , a voice whispers in my head.

Maybe. As cruel and psychotic as he is, he’s my best chance. If I have to let him do things to me to get out of here, then so be it.

I’m attracted to him, meaning I could survive this. I could use my virgin pussy or whatever to save myself and get the hell away from all of them.

“Really, what?” Clara asks.

I fix my eyes back on her. Narrow them. “So now what I want matters?”

“You want to live, don’t you?” Her brown gaze is severe. The other two are behind her, heads bowed, hands folded in front of them.

“I’m too valuable for them to kill me.” I’m naked. Breasts, pussy, and ass on display. Doesn’t make me any less human. I deserve to be treated as one. “Fuck you. Fuck them. I’ll grind my teeth into dust.”

“Not them . They won’t hurt you.” The words them and they aren’t spoken as a threat. She says it reverently. She likes the Hawthornes. “The highest bidder. They won’t take kindly to damaged goods.”

In the cell last night, James talked about the auction.

“Sacrifices” is what he called us.

What he called me.

Good little sacrifice.

Clara’s words and the way she says them suggest she knows. She’s participated in these barbaric acts before.

I stare at her, assessing her age. Lines wrinkle her forehead and the space over her mouth. Beneath the layers of makeup, I find a couple of dark spots on her cheeks. Age spots.

No, this isn’t her first sick rodeo. I’m not sure if it’s even the second.

“They hurt the women? Here?”

“One buyer did,” she whispers, then raises a hand, snapping her fingers and barks, “Get to it.”

The other women’s heels clink on the floor as they scurry off.

“Over forty years ago.” During James and Oliver’s fathers’ initiations.

Bastards. “She bit her nail. Ruined the manicure we had worked on that morning. He ordered us to remove all of her nails so she’d learn never to bite them again.

Since she was his, our bosses allowed it.

But don’t you worry. Your nails won’t be painted, as per Mr. Hawthorne’s orders. ”

My eyes bulge. My body goes into shock, knees buckling.

The distress I’m in makes Clara’s job easier. She wastes no time dragging me to the tall bed in the center of the room. To the only furniture in here other than the metal table positioned next to it.

Clara grabs me gently by the shoulders, guiding my naked body on top of the table with paper sprawled on the bed.

I get lost inside my head almost instantly.

My survival instincts are a living thing inside my body. They rebel against my dissociation. They push against my ribs and tell me to run, run, run. I have to do something. Like punching Clara, who stands close to my face. Sprint toward the door, try the lock.

And run.

Just. Run.

What for?

I’m outnumbered. Outmatched.

This isn’t the time to fail.

James might have shown me his somewhat softer side yesterday. There wasn’t just violence and insanity in his expression, in his voice. In his touch. He was part human. Somewhere, down there.

He was also extremely determined to prove that he was going through with this, no matter what.

I can’t count on him. I can’t count on any of the guards not to shoot me on sight.

What’s left for me to do then?

Two things.

First is beg. Maisie is the weakest link. Not weak in the sense of powerlessness. Weak as in I can exploit her meekness. She hasn’t looked me in the eye since she walked inside my cell.

She still isn’t looking at me when she’s back, placing the hot wax and strips on the table next to me. She might even care about me. Might hate what they’re doing here.

I could convince her to help. She has to know of a secret passage.

That might fail, though. If it does, there’s the riskier option of the two—make a run for it on the way to my buyer’s home. But that could be too late. They might handcuff me to their car.

Let’s pray the first one works.

Clara passes Poppy a pair of tweezers. In her other hand, she’s holding on to the silver bowl and a cloth hanging from the rim.

Maisie’s eyes are glued to the floor.

This is it. The right moment. My chance to get out of here.

I swing my hand to the side.

Hot wax splashes on the table, just a small portion. The rest cascades down to the floor, the pouring container clinking and clanking as it hits the stone tiles.

“Oh, no!” Poppy is quick. In hurried small steps, she rushes to the accident site, no doubt about to clean it up.

“I’ll go get cleaning products.” Clara rushes out of the room. “And a new batch of wax,” she murmurs to herself.

It doesn’t escape me that she hasn’t reprimanded Maisie. I bet she thinks pointing fingers is a waste of time.

Or maybe she wants her colleague to stay alive.

“Crap.” Maisie is flushed and frozen for a split second. She’s about to sink to the floor and help Poppy the next.

The fuck she is. I reach out, fingernails digging into her bicep. With the last ounce of strength I have, I drag her to me.

Her hands fly to balance herself on the bed. Her pupils are huge, her mouth gaping.

Deer caught in the headlights.

I hear Poppy down there, scrubbing furiously. She must be cleaning the mess I made with the wet cloth that she brought for me.

Doesn’t matter. What’s important is she isn’t paying attention to us.

I yank Maisie closer, lifting my head so she can’t miss it when I mouth, Help me .

No , she mouths back. Can’t. Sorry.

This is the most desperate I’ve ever been. I feel the tears prickling. The quickening of my pulse. Please. Please.

Please , she mouths back, trying to rip herself away from my death grip. Let go. I’m sorry.

“Ophelia, Ophelia, Ophelia.” I’d recognize Topher’s voice anywhere. For the first couple of months we’d dated, I’d have given everything to hear it. It has bile creeping up my throat now. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Maisie is still my hostage as he approaches. I hope he’s alone. If that’s the case, she and I could gang up on him. I’d kick Poppy in the gut, and Maisie could help. She’d hold her coworker down while I punch Topher.

Maybe I could escape.

Maybe.

“Please, Maisie.” My voice breaks. “Please.”

“Can’t.” Tears well in her eyes right before a man rips her from my hold.

A man in a black tuxedo with a tattooed hand and icy-cold eyes.

“No!” I scream, scrambling out of the bed.

Topher grabs me by the hip and shoulder, slamming me back to where I was. He’s using so much force that all the air whooshes from my lungs. I cough, looking at his blue eyes, as if he’s the most loathsome man to walk the earth.

At least James had the decency to show me an ounce of compassion.

Bam.

His hand cracks across my cheek.

“That’s enough,” his dad thunders.