My father is waiting in the study downstairs, exactly where I know he’ll be.
The room smells of cigar smoke, leather, and whiskey. Heavy curtains shut out the city beyond the windows. A crystal decanter sits on the sideboard untouched because my father never drinks when business still breathes in the room.
He stands near the fireplace with one hand braced on the mantel and doesn’t turn immediately when I enter. Another performance. Another lesson. Make men come to your silence, and they’ll fill it with fear on their own.
I close the door behind me and walk farther in. “It’s done.”
His gaze moves over me once, not searching for evidence of sentiment but checking for flaws in the performance. Did I show too much? Did I leave anything on the table? Did I give them more than he intended?
“And?”
“She thinks it matters,” I say. “She thinks there’s interest.”
Viktor’s mouth moves like he almost smiles and then thinks better of it.
My father doesn’t. “Good. Her father will be informed in the morning that continued hesitation on the Petrova account would be unfortunate, considering his daughter’s tendency toward indiscretion.”
There it is. I should be used to it by now. I am, mostly. That’s the part I hate most. Not that I can do this, but that I can do it and stand here afterward with a straight face while men discuss the exact conversion rate of a woman’s humiliation.
“And if he refuses?” Viktor asks.
“He won’t,” my father says. “But if he does, then we remind him how small his world is compared to ours.”
Meaning photographs. Witnesses. Rumors. Maybe a marriage pushed harder and faster than anyone wants. Maybe the opposite. Ruin comes in options when men like Mikhail Dragovich are holding the pen.
Families like theirs need reminding that daughters, sons, beds, promises, and futures are all the same currency once enough power sits at the table. The girl upstairs is a coin with a heartbeat. I’m the hand used to spend her.
“You understand what this means.”
“Yes,” I say.
His gaze sharpens. “Say it.”
I meet his eyes and give him exactly what he wants. “The alliance isn’t about marriage, it’s about exposure. If they think their daughter can still be sold elsewhere as untouched or strategically neutral, they hold back on the value. If they know we can ruin her reputation and their bargaining position with a whisper, they pay full.”
My father nods once. “Exactly.”
The approval on his face should mean something, but it doesn’t. Or maybe it does, and I hate that too. Boys don’t everstop wanting their father to look at them and see value, even after they’re old enough to know what that value costs.
“You did well,” he says.
I nearly laugh.
Did well.
I nod instead because I know the choreography. Take the praise. Keep the bitterness under the tongue. Don’t let anyone see the rot. “I had a good teacher.”
Viktor straightens from the shelf. “Orlov will crack fast. He loves that girl too much to let this spread.”
Mikhail’s mouth hardens slightly. “Then he should’ve taught her better.”
Something mean and hot flashes through me then, quick as a match strike. Not because I give a shit about the girl, not really. Because of the hypocrisy of it. Fathers like ours ruin their children in the name of legacy and then speak as if any failure in the outcome belongs to the child alone.
But I swallow it because I’m not stupid.
My father steps closer, and the room narrows, as it always does when he focuses on one of us directly. “There will be more of this.”
I look at him.
