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Peter had vanished into the bathing chamber with a few other male jewels, leaving me with five or so girls all in various stages of undress.
“It would’ve been euros,” another girl said. “Sir V looks down on American bills, remember? It’s pounds or euros only.”
“Remember what happened to the other girl who went for that sort of money?” An Indonesian woman shivered dramatically. “I thought at the time being valued that highly would mean she’d be safer than most. Boy, was I wrong.”
Sudden sickness splashed on my tongue. “Wh-What happened to her?”
Nancy, the redhead with giant breasts, finished painting her lips a sultry peach. “She died, that’s what happened.” Spinning on a black satin stool, her reflection echoed in the numerous mirrors from the many dressing tables lining the wall. “The man who bought part-ownership of her killed her.”
My pulse pounded in my ears. “Is that why he bought her? To kill her?”
“Nah.” Another naked girl drifted past, heading toward the wardrobe. “If he’d wanted to do that, he would’ve just given her a—”
“She doesn’t need to know.” The Indonesian girl cut in. “Not yet anyway. Let’s not give the poor thing nightmares.”
“Pretty sure it’s too late for that,” I said softly. “I’ll have them for life.”
“The longer you live here, the more you’ll have. But…don’t worry.” Nancy gave me a soft smile. “I’m sure Master H will keep you alive. After all, two million euros is a shit ton of money to waste.”
Money he doesn’t have.
Money he can’t have paid.
What the hell would I be walking into downstairs?
Perhaps Henri was in a gibbet cage of his own, his blood dripping from the bullet holes Victor riddled him with for infiltrating his castle under false pretences.
Oh God.
“Wasn’t the other girl a princess or something?” the ice-blonde asked the room. “A Chinese guy paid like one and a half million, or was it one point seven? I can’t remember. All I know was she kept saying she was royalty from an obscure family in Europe and needed to be freed. Did she mention she was from Lithuania? Or was it Estonia?”
“Just ’cause she claimed to be royal didn’t mean she was,” the Indonesian girl said. “If I wanted, I could call myself a Sultan’s daughter, but you’d have to trace my family tree back hundreds of generations to find any truth to that.”
A lull fell in the conversation. I rubbed my arms. “Did anyone come looking for her? The princess, I mean. Surely if she was royalty, people would’ve been hunting high and low for her?”
The girls all shot looks at one another. They burst into laughter. “No one is coming for any of us.” Nancy fluffed up her hair, her breasts spilling over the top of a red corset she’d laced herself into. “We’re forgotten. Lost. We’re already dead, and someday soon…if mercy decides to remember us, we’ll die for real and be free.”
“Enough with the morbid talk,” a dark-haired, blue-eyed girl muttered. “Get ready. All of you. I’m not going to suffer another beating just because one of us is late. We all arrive on time, or we all get the belt.”
Belt?
I gulped and sat deeper on my bed, wishing it could swallow me whole and teleport me out of there. Hugging my sheer dressing gown, I did my best not to give in to the percolating panic attack that still hadn’t quite vanished from the library.
A flurry of activity as everyone continued getting ready.
My empty stomach rumbled again. Light-headedness made me slightly dazed. I didn’t have the strength to hear about murders and money paid for a woman’s life.
I didn’t even think I could eat with conversation like that flying around.
Tomorrow, they’ll come.
Tomorrow, Henri’s team will arrive, and all of this will be over—
“I heard he fucked you on the witch’s stake in the garden.”
My head snapped to another girl. A curvy, large-breasted black beauty with eyelashes as long as my fingers.
“The stake?” I asked.
