Page 16 of Sold to My Ex's Brother
She stares up at me, her body tense, her shoulders drawn up to her ears as she gazes back at me. “You... What are you going to do to me?” she asks, her voice laced with a panicked discomfort.
“I’m not going to do a damn thing to you, Maya. Just stay here and you’ll be fine.”
“And if I want to leave?” she asks, lifting her chin slightly, challenging me as best she can.
“You don’t want to do that.”
“So youaregoing to do something to me,” she snaps back. “If I try to leave?—”
“I’m trying to keep you safe.”
That sad smile curls up the corners of her lips again. “Right,” she mutters. “Yeah. Of course you are.”
And, with that, she lays down on the bed, tucking her knees up into her chest and turning to face the wall. It’s clear that she wants me out of here, and I can’t blame her.
I study her for another moment, this woman I never thought I would lay eyes on again—even in her exhaustion and terror, she looks as beautiful to me as she did that night. I can only imagine what the other men in that room would have done if they hadgotten their hands on her, and right now, all that matters is showing her she does not have to fear the same thing from me.
As hard as it might be for her to believe that.
I head for the door and pull it shut behind me, gesturing along the corridor to Ken, one of the household guards who keeps watch over this place for me.
“Keep an eye on her door,” I order him, pointing back towards her room. “Make sure she doesn’t go anywhere, got it?”
He nods, knowing better than to question me right now. I stalk back along the corridor, heading for my office, where I know I need to take some time to clear my head. As hard as it might be to admit, I have to start figuring out what I’m going to do to take down my brother—my flesh and blood, the last living member of my family.
I have to turn against him.
7
MAYA
I haveno idea how long I’ve been there, no clue how many hours have passed since the moment I set foot in this house. The sky has darkened to an inky blackness outside, but it’s not enough to stop the rushing in my head, that feeling like something terrible is going to happen if I’m not careful.
Because, most likely, it is.
I still can’t believe that I’m here, can’t believe that I’m curled up on this bed in this room in this enormous house being held against my will by the very man who seems insistent that he is actually trying to help me. It doesn’t seem to matter how insane that sounds, he is entirely convinced that I’m where I should be.
Well, just as long as I keep playing by his rules, of course.
Which is the part that I’m struggling with. He wants me locked up in here, watched over, so that he can… So that he can what? Is he preparing me for something, holding back on taking what he has paid for to enjoy the squirming dread he’s putting me through in the process?
I have a million questions and not a damn clue who can answer a single one of them. I don’t know where that leaves me.
I hug my knees up closer to my chest, the corners of my mouth turning down as I manage my racing thoughts. I just don’t know what happens next. I should try to get out of here, really; he can’t hold me here forever, can he?
Now that he owns me, now that he’s paid up all that money to make me his, it’s hard to believe that he will ever let me go again, but at the same time...
Who do I have who would come looking for me? No family, that’s for sure. Some of the people I work with?
But if the bar is the very place that all of this has been happening, I don’t see how I can pull that off, either. No doubt Artem will just spin some story about how I got bored and moved on, replace me with some other girl who has no idea what is waiting for her on the other side of all of this.
It makes me sick to think about it, someone else unknowingly stepping into my shoes, but there’s not much I can do to protect against it from in here...
There will be no gap where my life once resided, nobody to notice that I’m gone.
The debts my father left behind will likely have been paid up by the million that this man handed over for me.
Anton?I think that’s what I heard one of the guards call him outside, though I’m not sure. I have no clue what he’s capable of, if he will subject me to the same brutality that his brother did, or if there is a chance for me to get away from all of this and survive it.
