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She lays her head on my chest and then pulls back, grabbing my lapel. “Did you change?”
I stare down at her, saying as much as I can with one look as possible, and Eve gets it. She knows that something bad is going on and I can’t talk about it. She lays her head on my chest, and we sway to the soft music playing in the background.
Compared to a few other couples in the room, we are hardly noteworthy.
Fox-Face has Number Thirteen’s hand down the front of his pants, though he is trying to disguise this fact with a strategically positioned pillow in front of his crotch. And a few of the other couples are damn near having sex in the lounge.
Rian seems distracted enough watching them that she isn’t paying much attention to me or Eve, but Edgar is my real concern.
I see him counting heads, his head bobbing as he counts each slave and then each bidder. When he stops, he frowns. He does it again and has the same reaction.
He realizes that one of the bidders is missing.
Edgar turns and walks into the entryway, and I go rigid. This is it.
Fuck. Fuck.Fuck.
“Luka, what is it?” Eve whispers, her voice trembling. “What is going on?”
I shake my head and hug her even tighter against my chest. I hug her like it might be the last time.
Because it might be.
The thought feels like a torpedo in my brain, slicing through everything else until I’m useless, desperately clinging to my wife because I don’t know what else to do.
Then, Edgar returns.
There are two large guards on either side of him, and when he lifts his hands above his head to clap for everyone’s attention, I know what he is going to say before he says a word.
Eve looks up at me with nervous eyes before turning to Edgar.
It is good I didn’t tell her. Because when Edgar announces that Joel Foli is dead, she looks genuinely shocked.
“Someone broke the rules,” Edgar says. “And for it, they will be executed.”
18
Luka
“Someone has been killed?” Fox-Face asks, gripping the waist of Number Thirteen even tighter. “Who? One of us?”
Us. As opposed tothem.
No one cared much when a woman was shot in the head in front of them the day before, but suddenly they are terrified.
“Joel Foli,” Edgar says, his eyes moving slowly across the room. “He was the man in the dark red mask. And a rather loyal patron of the Cartel, which only increases our desire to catch whoever did this to him.”
“He was the one making bids for Number Seven,” Peter Struthers says.
He has kept a rather low profile all weekend, sticking to the women lower on the bidding board and not making a scene, but apparently he is ready to change that.
He turns to where I am standing next to Eve. “He was giving you a fair amount of competition.”
I want to punch the man in his ruddy face and pile him on top of Joel in the entryway along with anyone else who dares stand in the way of Eve and I making it out of here alive.
That isn’t possible, though. So instead, I shrug.
“Yes, he was, but that is hardly reason to kill the man,” I say. “How did he die? No one here has any weapons, so surely that could narrow down the search. Perhaps Mr. Foli angered one of your guards and found himself in over his head.”
