CELESTE'S POV
Three days undercover teaches you exactly one thing about yourself: how good you are at lying with your whole body. Mine had gotten very good. My shoulders knew how to curve inward like they'd forgotten what it was to stand straight. My hands knew how to shake on command. Only my eyes were still mine, and I kept them down, because the eyes were always the first thing that gave a person away.
I'd counted the exits on my first hour inside and the guards on my second. By day three I'd counted the people, too, which was worse. Fewer of us each morning. Fewer, and the ones still left in the room got quieter about it, like grief was something you had to conserve.
I hated Dario Voss for it in a way I tried not to let show. Hate was a distraction, and distractions got people killed — my people, this time, if I let mine show at the wrong second. So I sat in my corner and played frightened and thought instead about the version of myself that got to stop pretending: the one who'd walk in wearing her own knives instead of a dress two sizes too thin, the one Claire had promised was three days away.
"I can't believe I'm stuck here," I mumbled to myself, since no one around here knew me. It was a sort of warehouse. the only difference from usual ones was that instead of supplies, there were humans these people were storing.
Humans they'd gotten from the streets, unfortunate drunkards with no friends, girls who had no choice but to walk alone to their homes. Some famous people kidnapped and stored there so those traffickers could make some coin.
All those people surrounded me, their scared and tear-stained faces making me angry. Three days I had been there and seen a number of twenty-six people reduced to eighteen. I had seen short, pudgy men with creepy moustaches trot inside, their eyes roaming from one girl, forced to dress scantily, to one boy, because shame they had none. I had seen them point to a girl, eyes darkened by lust, dragging her outside, never to be seen again. I had seen married men I recognized come in and choose a pretty boy, not too young to know fear, but not too old to fight back.
It was boring work, I must admit, partly because I was stuck there at all. Undercover, planted among the stock so I could learn who came through those doors and where the money went after. My knives were strapped to my thighs beneath a dress two sizes too thin, and I hated every hour of playing frightened.
~
I heard her before I saw her, that particular rhythm of heels that meant she wanted to be heard, a sound built to announce money and impatience in the same breath. My sister had spent a week undercover as a buyer for this exact night, and she wore boredom like a designer coat, chin up, eyes half-lidded, already unimpressed with everything Dario Voss's floor manager was showing her. Finally, I thought, rubbing my hands together beneath my knees. Some fun.
"This is what you dragged me across town for?" Her voice carried, pitched to sound put-upon. "I was told there'd be something worth my time."
The floor manager, a narrow man named Rourke with a habit of touching his own collar when he lied, assured her there was, if she'd only be patient. Claire did not do patient well, even fake patient, and I bit down a smile at watching her make him sweat for it.
"I don't particularly see anyone here of any interest," Claire said, and I could picture her eyes rolling in annoyance even before I turned to look. I had been sitting in the corner, trying to act my part, submissive, terrified, small.
The conversation between her and the pimp, a tall man with dark blue eyes, was pitched too low for me to catch all of it. My sister had cut her hair short for the operation and wound a furry scarf around her neck; her dress barely reached her knees, and I watched the owner's gaze crawl down the length of her legs like he had any right to it.
I was trying my best not to laugh. Of all the acts my sister had ever put on, this had to be the most contradicting. Heels she could kill a man in, paired with a helpless little sway to her hips. Only the heels still gave her away to me. As if she'd heard my silent laughter, her face whipped toward me. Her mouth kept moving, still speaking to the owner, but her eyes had already found me and locked on.
Then her eyes found mine across the room, and everything performative in her face went still for exactly one heartbeat, long enough to say I see you, long enough to say almost there, before the boredom slid back into place like a mask clicking shut.
"Her," Claire said, pointing. "That one. She looks like she still has some fight left in her, which is more than I can say for the rest of your stock."
Rourke hesitated. "She's been difficult, madam. I'd recommend—"
"I didn't ask for a recommendation."
"You. Come here."
Caught, I scrambled to my feet. I knew exactly why she wanted me. Of the twenty-six sold off, I was about to become the nineteenth, at least on paper. I let my eyes drop to the ground, let my hands tremble, and went to her.
Her fingers found my chin and tipped it up, forcing my gaze to hers. She smiled and brushed the hair from my face like we were strangers.
"Not bad," she said. "She will do just fine."
My lips trembled, for the audience, not for her. "P-Please," I cried. "Don't make me do this. Don't take me. Take me back to my family. They're rich. They'll give you money, as much as you want."
I let myself turn hysterical, pathetic, drowning in a fear I didn't feel, because that was the job. Her smile curved into something cruel, scarlet lips stretched over something sick and delighted. Even I nearly believed her.
"Oh, darling," she said, shaking her head. "I don't need money from your family. I can make so much more. And you're going to help me."
"No," I whimpered, twisting against her grip. Her hand held mine so tightly it would leave a mark. She has always been gentle with me, so I sometimes forget she is also strong.
"Please, don't."
"Take her," she told the two men behind her, ignoring my pleas entirely. The warehouse owner stepped closer.
"Are you sure?" he asked, and she answered only by raising an eyebrow. He lifted his hands in surrender. "I do not mean to refute your judgment. I only meant that she has been, from the start, quite difficult. I only felt the need to warn you."
She waved a hand in annoyance. "I know well," she told him, attention already drifting from him to the others around us, "how to deal with such girls."
That was as good a cue as any. I let her men, mine… ours, walk me forward with my wrists loosely bound, head down, shaking exactly as much as a frightened girl should shake. Claire's fingers closed around my arm like she meant to bruise it, and under the cover of that grip she pressed something small and hard into my palm: the signal, on schedule, on time.
The factory went loud in the space of breath. Our people had been walking in for the last hour disguised as buyers, sellers, muscle-for-hire, and every one of them had been waiting on that same small object, changing hands. Dario Voss's men reached for weapons that weren't where they'd left them. Arden had seen to that personally, two days back, with patience I hadn't known he had in him. The factory floor turned into exactly the kind of controlled chaos my sister and I had built our reputation on.
The fight broke out on cue. Shouts ringing through the warehouse as our men, planted at the doors for the last hour, moved. Claire glanced once at the warehouse owner, apologetic in a way that fooled no one, then marched toward the noise. Her men grabbed my arms and dragged me along behind her, the owner following in tow, already understanding that his night had gone very wrong.
Rourke didn't get far. Claire caught him by the collar he was so fond of touching and said something low enough that I didn't catch the words, only the color draining out of his face in response. Whatever it was, it was enough. He stopped struggling and started praying instead, which told me everything about the kind of night he'd been planning for the girls in that room.
I stopped pretending to be afraid. It was, honestly, a relief.
I went looking for our people, for the captives, for anyone still bound who needed cutting loose, and that was when I saw them — two men being walked out from the back office where Dario Voss kept the ones he considered valuable enough to keep separate from the rest. Both blindfolded, wrists zip-tied, moving on legs that weren't fully steady.
The taller one held himself like the fall hadn't fully registered yet — spine straight even blind, even bound, chin up in a way that had nothing to do with obedience and everything to do with refusing to look beaten. Dark hair, unfairly good bone structure even streaked with dust and old blood at the temple. Whoever he was, Dario Voss's people had thought he was worth keeping intact, which in this line of work generally meant one of two things: ransom, or something worse.
The second was shorter, built solid through the shoulders in a way his sweater didn't hide, a small stud catching the light in one ear. He wasn't fighting his restraints so much as testing them, quiet and methodical, the way a man does when he's already decided panic won't get him anywhere and calculation might.
Claire reached them before I did. Of course she did
CLAIRE'S POV
I'd seen his face before that night, if only on paper. Three days earlier I'd gone looking for a lighter in Celeste's jacket and found a photograph instead, pinned inside the dossier she thought she'd hidden well enough, a dark-haired man with a jaw like an argument you'd lose, tagged with a name and a question mark and nothing else. She'd never mentioned him. I'd never asked. I filed it away the way I file most things my sister doesn't tell me, which is to say I didn't forget it for one single hour.
So when Dario Voss's men walked him out blind and bound and entirely too composed for a man who ought to have been terrified. I already knew exactly who I was looking at, and I felt something low and reckless uncoil in my chest at the unfairness of it. That my sister had him pinned to a corkboard for days and never once mentioned he looked like that.
His hair dark, disheveled, and longer than in the photograph, rose above the blindfold like it resented being bound at all. Even with half his face hidden, I could see the elegant line of his throat, the high set of his cheekbones.
"Him," I said, before I'd finished deciding to. "I'll take him."
Celeste's head turned. I felt her attention land on me even through the noise, sharp and questioning, and I answered it with nothing but a slow, deliberate smile, the kind she's hated since we were children because it always means I've already made up my mind.
"That's the one from your file," I told her, low enough that only she'd catch it over the chaos. "The one you never mentioned."
"Claire—"
"I'll wager he's in my bed by sunrise," I said, "and you'll owe me Dario Voss's western accounts free and clear when I win." I was already moving toward him as I said it, because some decisions are more fun once they're irreversible.
"Try not to sulk about it."
She chuckled, which from Celeste has always meant the bet was accepted whether she liked it or not. I moved toward my prey, for that was all he could be to me, that was all anyone was permitted to be to me. I reached him and took his bound hands in mine. He flinched at my touch, and I laughed softly at that.
I crossed to him and took his bound hands in mine, and he went very still beneath my fingers — not with fear, I realized after a second, but with attention, like he was cataloguing me the same unhurried way I was cataloguing him.
I reached up and pulled the blindfold free myself.
His eyes, when they finally found mine, were dark and startlingly steady for a man who'd spent the last hour drugged and dragged through a burning trafficking ring. They didn't go soft, or afraid, or hungry, the way most men's eyes did around me. They went careful. Assessing. Like he'd already decided I was a puzzle worth solving rather than a threat worth surviving, and intended to enjoy the working-out of it.
"Who are you," he said. Not quite a question. More like he was buying himself time to think. He tugged against me, testing my grip. I only tightened it.
"The better option," I told him, and smiled the smile that has never once failed me.
"Let's go discuss what that means, shall we." I pulled his hands and my men pushed him forward from behind until he was walking.
"Excuse me," my sister said behind me. "What about the other one?"
I halted, and so did he. I turned to look at the second captive. Shorter, sturdier through the shoulders, a small stud in one ear, a sweater that only made his stature more obvious. He was bound the same way, blind the same way. I tilted my head and decided he wasn't to my taste at all.
"I only asked for the pretty boy," I said, nodding at the one in my grip. "I don't particularly care what you do with the other one. Have him, if you want, though I'd advise against it."
Celeste scowled at me. She hates working alone. So, do I. But a deal was a deal, and this one was mine to keep.
I led him through the nearest door with a hand at his back and my sister's bet already spent in my head twelve different satisfying ways, and if some small, unbothered part of him refused to look properly afraid of me the entire walk there, I decided I liked that more than I probably should have.
CLAIRES POV
I led him to a guest room, unused, dust thin on the shelves. I flicked the lights on, brought him to the center near the sofa, and sat my hands on his shoulders. I had to reach up; he was tall, and his shoulders were broad and firm under my palms. I pressed him down gently until he sat.
I stood in front of him, bowed head level with my stomach, and reached down for the bindings of his blindfold. I tugged them loose and let them fall to the floor. He didn't lift his head. I bristled, then untied the gag as well and threw it down beside the rest. Still, he didn't look at me.
I scowled and took a light fistful of his hair, tilting his face up to mine. I schooled my expression before it could betray me, years of practice kept me from gasping, from stuttering, from losing my composure entirely. I only stared into his dark eyes and made myself stay still.
He was ethereal.
The photograph hadn't done him justice. His eyes were shaped like almonds, pinched delicately at the corners. There was a symmetry to his face I hadn't expected from a picture. The clean cut of his jaw, the sharp elegant nose, the firm chin. His cheekbones made him look older than his years. His lips, a perfect Cupid's bow, parted on a sharp inhale. Dry, chapped. He was thirsty.
His eyes met mine, then dropped away, his throat working around a swallow. I released his hair and sighed. "You must be thirsty," I said, and crossed to the small refrigerator against the wall.
I grabbed a bottle, cracked the seal, twisted the cap free, and came back to hold it in front of him. He didn't take it. I bristled again. Men. They'd rather die of thirst than accept help from the woman who'd taken them.
I took his chin in one hand and pressed the bottle's mouth to his lips instead. He fought me for a moment, but he had little strength left, drugged as he'd been for transport, and I made him drink most of it before I was satisfied. I capped it and tossed it onto the sofa beside him; the small sound startled him into looking up at me, a question forming visibly behind his eyes.
"What is it?" I asked.
His throat bobbed again. "My friend," he finally managed. "What are you doing to Alec?"
"Alec," I repeated, rolling the name in my mouth like I was tasting it. "Is that his name?" He gave the smallest nod, panic rising fast in his eyes, and I smiled at him.
"I'm not doing anything to him," I said. "Whatever I'm going to do, it's to you. Not your insignificant little friend."
"Tell me," He begged, and I nearly laughed. All boys begged, in the end. "Please."
"What my sister does," I told him, "Is none of my business. Frankly, you should be more worried about what's going to happen to you."
He swallowed hard, and I couldn't help myself; I bent and pressed my lips to his throat, just over the movement of it. He froze entirely.
"What do you want from me?" he asked, real fear in it now.
"I told you I wouldn't hurt you," I said, low, meant to soothe.
"What do you want from me?" he asked again, his mouth forming a sad, small pout, voice barely a whisper.
"A kiss," I told him, honestly, and took it before he could argue. He didn't respond — too shocked. "A kiss," I said again, breaking away. "That's all."
I kissed him a second time and pressed him gently back against the sofa. This time he answered, arching faintly into it even as I felt him fighting his own instinct too. I pulled back and studied him, gasping, something new and terrified and alive in his eyes.
"Your first kiss," I said. "Wasn't it."
He flushed and dropped his gaze, said nothing. He didn't need to.
"How can that be?" I asked, delighted, and tipped his chin back up.
He didn't answer that either. He only kissed me. I let him and stopped thinking about anything past the next five minutes at all. I'd already known the answer was no.
He hadn't said yes. He hadn't needed to. The hesitation had told me enough. I could have called him on it. Instead, I let him think I'd believed him. It was more fun that way.
A rare indulgence, one I intended to enjoy exactly once and then hand off without a second thought, the way I did with every pretty thing I ever claimed for an evening.
His name, which I learned later, was Jace. By the time the sun came up, my sister owed me an entire ledger of accounts, and I still hadn't decided which part of the night I'd enjoyed winning more.