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Lindsay sealed the saliva sample in a bag, then took the needle from the tray and drew blood. When he finished, he put a label on the vial and put it in a bag as well. He jotted notes on a chart inside a manilla folder. Then he put everything he’d gathered into a larger plastic bag.
She startled when the door opened, but it was only Anton. He moved behind the video equipment like a shadow. He adjusted it to view the examining table. Then he set up the photography equipment.
“Mina,” Lindsay said. “I want you to undress, lie back on the table, and put your feet in the stirrups for me.”
She’d thought she could do this. She’d wanted to believe. She’d tried so hard to believe that everything inside her hadn’t been broken already, that the pieces could somehow be glued back together so that no one would ever even notice.
She wanted the fantasy to work. She wanted to trust one more time. She’d thought she’d felt those hints that her body still wanted this, and maybe it did. But her mind couldn’t take any more of it. If only she’d known this the day the driver came. She wouldn’t have chased him. She would have let him go. But seeing those tail lights had made her panic… like this was her last chance for… anything. She knew it.
And she was so lonely. How could she go on this way? If some kind man could take her and remake her and heal her… She just wanted to believe the fantasy. That was all. Just one more time.
“N-no, I-I can’t.”
The doctor’s eyes narrowed. Something in his expression snapped apart and the mask came off. His voice went dark and low as if a demon had taken possession of him. “What did you just say to me? Maybe I should send you down to Brian. A couple of hours in the dungeon with him, and you’ll be grateful to do anything I ask of you in here. A couple of hours with him and you’d let every man in this house do anything he wanted with you and feel honored for the privilege. Believe me, you would do anything to stay out of one of his cells. You think you’re scared of me? Anton? This? You think this is too much for you? I’ve fucking had it with you!”
Mina dropped to her knees. “Please… I’m sorry I c-can’t. Please don’t make me do those things. Please. I swear I won’t tell anyone if you just let me go.”
Lindsay laughed. “Let you go? No my dear, you are in deep now. There is no going except to a master or a pine box. Your choice. I could make you do this. I can just strip you and tie you down, but the buyers we might attract with such footage wouldn’t be the ones you’d want.”
“Lindsay. Stop! Stop this! Just go cool off,” Anton said, pulling the doctor back.
Lindsay wrenched out of his grasp and stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him. Mina flinched when Anton helped her up.
“I should have told him no when he asked about you. When you came toDome, I was going to do more, but I couldn’t. You had so much fear coming off you. Even with the excitement, it was too much fear. I thought he would kill you, so I said yes. He knows he’s made a big mistake and that you don’t deserve to die for it. Let me talk to him. I’ll try to calm him down.”
When Anton left, Mina curled up in the bed in the middle of the room. She hoped the sheets were clean, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to disappear. She cringed and clenched the blankets over her head as the shouting in the hallway grew louder. The walls were thick, so she couldn’t make out what they were saying, but she could imagine.
After a while the shouting became loud talking, and then a murmur of normal speech. And then silence. The door opened again. Lindsay walked back in, composed, Anton behind him. Anton stood in the corner while Lindsay pulled a chair up to sit beside the bed.
“Here is how it will be,” the doctor said. “I have to have photos of something. No one will buy you sight unseen. So we are going to do photos that aren’t nude. Just normal everyday pictures. I will speak to my contacts and explain the new development in this situation to see if I can find anyone who will be patient with you long term, who can accept that you might be far too broken to ever be anything more than their maid. Can you clean? Can you cook?”
Mina couldn’t meet his eyes. “Y-yes, Sir.”
“Good. Because it’s probably about all you’re good for.”
“W-why can’t I just stay here?”
“We are not going to feed and house you as a permanent guest. You have no use in this house. And you think Brian is going to resist the temptation to fuck you up beyond repair? You think Jason was bad? Jason is an amateur next to Brian. Brian is a full-on sociopath. If he wasn’t doing this, he’d probably be a serial killer. Can you tell me you want to stay in a house with a man like that and risk your paths crossing?”
“N-no, Sir.”
“I didn’t think so. I’ll do what I can. Just pray I can make a deal. If I can’t…”
If he couldn’t he’d have her killed.
* * *
Brian got back to the house well after dark. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Mina. In an unsettling turn of events, he’d come to see himself as her protector. The idea of protecting Mina fromLindsaywas so absurd, he almost laughed out loud in the entryway.
He was about to go downstairs when he heard voices coming from the conference room next to the shrink’s office. That was… odd. There wasn’t a meeting scheduled. Were they having meetings without him now? Things had been tense with the partners ever since Vivian. It was as if her presence—and his threat—had finally set them against each other in a more permanent way.
They were all on one team; Brian was alone on the other. Which was ridiculous. They couldn’t do this shit without him. And they knew it.
“What in the hell is going on?” he demanded when he crossed the threshold.
The partners were seated around the table with Lindsay at the head, clearly running this meeting, which was weird because usually Anton ran the meetings. Attached to empty seats around the table were computer monitors where several men had joined the video conference. Brian recognized them all as previous buyers.
Several modest photographs of Mina fully clothed were scattered across the large table. If Lindsay was running it like a normal sale, the potential buyers had been emailed their own copies as well. But it wasn’t a normal sale because the photos they normally shared were pornographic. Even their medical photos were sexualized and would be at home under the bed of any fetishist who got off on the darker implications of gynecology.
