“Fuck your trust. Who do you think you are?” He lets go of her waist and starts to circle her, so that she’s forced to keep turning to watch what he’s doing. “Let me tell you again. I expect you to pay. Either you agree, and I won’t hurt you. Or you don’t agree, and posh boy wonders where all the bruises came from. I imagine he might not be too thrilled to know another man has fucked you. How are things between you both these days? He’s had you a long time now. Would he even believe you, I wonder, if you cried rape?”

Felix comes to a stop in front of her. Amara is dizzy from all his turning, though she knows exactly what is happening. Every conversation they have had, since she placed herself in his debt, has only delayed this moment, the payment she owes for saving Victoria and Britannica. Perhaps she has always known what Felix would do, and yet, she kept coming here, hoping it would be different. She wishes, more than anything, that Philos were not next door. It makes everything so much harder.

Amara tries to imagine Felix as he must have been as a child—the frightened boy who loved his mother, who suffered as she has suffered—and wills herself to believe she can reach him. It is the only throw of the dice that remains. He glances down in surprise as she takes his hand in hers. “I don’t believe you want to do this. You are not your father, Felix. I don’t believe this is who you really are.”

His expression, when he looks up, reminds her of the tigers in the arena: the savagery the condemned men must see before they die, the face of a creature incapable of compassion. He grips her fingers so hard it hurts. “Then say yes to me.”

When Felix takes hold of her, Amara is taken back to the days after he bought her, when she first understood the cruelty he was capable of inflicting. She thinks of Philos and tries not to panic, tries to stop herself from crying out when Felix pushes her against the desk, knowing what is about to happen. There is only one thing she could take from this that might be worth the pain.

She grips Felix’s face in her hands, making him look at her. “I want something from you first.”

“What?” He is startled enough to pause. “You want me to take something off the debt? Is that it?”