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He gripped her arm. Mina spun and slugged him in the jaw. She stared at her fist as she pulled it back. Her hand stung and would likely be bruised the next day.
He leaped back and held his jaw as a wounded puppy look came over his face.
Right. Because he was such a victim here. A moment later his mood changed, and his eyes flashed with rage. Why did they all fear Brian? Lindsay seemed to be the one with the hair trigger. At least with her. Maybe Jason was right. There was something inside her that made men want to hurt her.
“You think you can hit me?” He said. There it was. That entitled jackass dominant bullshit. Lindsay lunged for her and grabbed her wrist, forcing it behind her back as he pushed her face against the wall.
A group of girls gathered on the fringes to watch the drama unfold. The acoustics of the grand entryway made their whispers sound like loudly hissing serpents.
If she’d been operating only on instinct, she would have been afraid, but after Brian’s display outside the doctor’s room, she had no doubt that if he found out Lindsay laid a hand on her, she wouldn’t be the one who had to fear anything.
“Let go of me and pray I don’t tell him about this,” she said.
Lindsay released her and stepped back, rattled. “I was trying to help you. I wanted to ensure you were safe, and this is how you repay me?”
He had her exit blocked, using sheer force of intimidation against her now that he realized the folly of touching her. Part of her hoped Brian would wake and come upstairs to see this, though she worried when he was finished with Lindsay, she’d have to pay for having left. But did he mean for her to starve? She’d barely eaten all day.
“You just want to soothe your guilty conscience. Get out of my way. I have to eat something.”
“Fine, to hell with you then,” Lindsay said. “Don’t come crying to me later when he loses his shit on you.”
“I wouldn’t have to if you hadn’t sold me to him in the first place! How much? How much did it take for you to just not give a shit about your promise to me?”
“five million,” he whispered.
Mina heard a low whistle nearby. It made her want to punch someone.
“Dollars?” Because surely it couldn’t be that. Rupees maybe, but not that many dollars.
Lindsay nodded. “He was insistent. He said he had to protect you from Matsumoto. That was the bidder who would have taken you. He said there was something not right about him.”
She might have asked why Brian would have cared if not for seeing his back, the scars that so closely resembled her own. She knew why. She wasn’t sure how, but the marks across her flesh made him see her differently—as someone not on the hurt list. For that she was grateful, even as she still worried he might lose control.
She pushed past the doctor.
“Are you going to tell him about this?” he asked, his voice low.
“I haven’t decided.” Maybe it wasn’t just the scars that formed the kinship between Mina and Brian. With the smallest glimpse of power, she already saw how she might seek to abuse it. Had she been in Brian’s position, she couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t seek retribution in the way he had, and that thought scared her.
Mina managed to cover her distress and passed through the veil of whispers to get to the cafeteria line.
“Five minutes later, and you’d be going to bed without supper,” an older woman said from behind the food counter.
Mina wondered how she’d come to be here and was convinced she was must be just as much a prisoner as Mina. Surely she’d tell someone what went on here if she were ever allowed to leave the premises.
“Everything?” the woman asked.
“Yes, please.”
The woman behind the counter loaded roast, potatoes, and green beans onto the plate, and salad on another plate, then slid it to her. Mina took her tray to get some pie and a drink. Normally she wouldn’t eat all this, but this was her only real meal today. She’d better make it count. And with the counter closing in a few minutes, she wouldn’t be able to return for seconds.
A strange shift had happened. Before, she’d been taunted by the mean girls table, now they looked on curiously as if they were in the market for a new leader—or more likely, in the market to use somebody who might put in a good word of protection for them should Brian ever get them in his dungeon.
Annette sat across from her. “Is your hand okay?”
It still stung, but the skin wasn’t broken. She’d probably done more damage to her own hand than she had to the doctor’s jaw, but it felt liberating to fight back for the first time in perhaps ever.
Hitting the doctor, forcing him to back off—even if it had been the threat of who she belonged to and not any physical stopping power she had on her own—had accomplished what six months of therapy failed to. Maybe she should have taken up boxing instead.
