I steel my face to hide my fear. “You’re just trying to scare me.”

“I’m trying to prepare you,” he tuts. “That’s what you’re looking at if you go out on that stage.”

“What’s my alternative?” I demand. “Leaving with you?”

“You loved me once,” he says with a shrug. “You can learn to love me again. We can raise our baby together, like we always planned to.”

“While you sell women to beasts for money?” I demand. “Is that how you’ll provide for us?”

“It’s best not to think about that part, dear.”

A burst of hard laughter slips through my lips. “Yes, of course. ‘Look the other way. Pretend it’s not happening.’ I can see why you’d think that was easy for me to do.”

“Suit yourself. The auction will start in…” He checks his watch. “Three minutes. You have until then to change your mind.”

“You realize that I’m carrying your baby, right?” I ask. “If one of those men buy me, they’re buying your baby, too.”

He laughs and reaches out to stroke my cheek, though I lunge out of his range before he can make contact. “Do you take me for a fool? I’ve already had contracts drawn up. Once you’ve carried the baby to term and delivered her, the baby will be removed from you and given to me.”

My eyes go wide. “W-what?”

A smile dances across his lips. He’s fucking enjoying this. “You didn’t think I would just abandon my child, did you? I intend to be a father, Junepenny. With or without you.”

I want to say something—to scream, if nothing else, for fuck’s sake—but my voice just won’t work. The air is frozen in my lungs.

“Now,” he says with finality, “which way will you go?”

I’m on the verge of giving him exactly what he wants. And then—I take one look at the smug smile on his face and I realize something.

It doesn’t matter who I go home with at the end of the night. Layard, Slava, Radomir, or him. They’re all the same. The same monster, just with different faces.

So fuck it. The devil wears his many disguises, right? But in the end, he’s still the same horned bastard.

And I still won’t give him what he wants.

53

KOLYA

Some buildings are lifeless. Just boxes of stone and glass and wood without a soul.

Others have memories soaked into the foundation. This is the latter.

We stopped coming to this place right around the time my mother “moved” to France. My father said he put it on the market and I never questioned him.

It was a foolish oversight. I should have been more thorough.

But it makes sense now. This is where it all happened, where Adrian did things out of my sight for far too long. How many women came in here and never left? How many tears were shed beneath its roof? How many screams let loose that no one heard?

Too many.