Page 99 of The Glass Empire
"Monika—"
"Don't." I held up my hand. "Don't pretend to be something you're not. You're not a good man, Nathan. You're not a gentle man. You're the man who runs the empire that puts women in cages."
His face went pale. I saw something flicker in his eyes—guilt, maybe, or shame.
"That was before."
"No." I shook my head. "That was now. That's always now. Those women are still in those cages. They're still being sold. And you're still making money from it."
"Monika—"
"I'm not going to leave. Not yet." I walked toward the door, my hand on the handle. "But don't pretend you're something you're not. And don't pretend you love me. You don't love me. You just want to own me."
I walked out of his room and closed the door behind me.
I didn't look back.
25
The Trap
The garden was quiet.
I'd been walking there for hours, my feet carrying me through the frozen hedges, past the iced-over pond, beneath the bare branches of the trees. The cold was sharp against my skin, but I didn't feel it. I didn't feel anything anymore.
Gabriel was gone. Nathan had shown me his true face. Aleksander was using me as bait.
I was alone.
The thought should have terrified me. Instead, it felt like relief. Like I'd finally stopped pretending and accepted the truth: I was a pawn in a game I didn't understand, played by men who didn't care if I lived or died.
I stopped at the edge of the garden, where the hedges gave way to the treeline. The forest was dark, the trees bare, their branches reaching toward the sky like skeleton fingers. Somewhere beyond them was the city. The diner. The life I'd left behind.
I turned to go back to the house.
And then I felt the hand over my mouth.
I woke up in a basement.
The floor was cold concrete beneath my cheek. My wrists were tied behind my back, the rope rough and biting. My head throbbed, a dull ache that pulsed with every heartbeat. The air smelled like mold and rust and something else—something metallic that I recognized from the warehouse.
Blood.
I opened my eyes. The room was dim, lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. There were no windows. No doors that I could see. Just the concrete walls and the damp floor and the shadows that moved in the corners.
And there were men.
They stood in a semicircle around me, their faces half-hidden in the dark. I counted five of them, maybe six. They were large, broad-shouldered, the kind of men who'd spent their lives doing violence. One of them was holding a knife. Another had a gun holstered at his hip.
The man in the center stepped forward. He was older than the others, his hair silver, his face lined with the kind of cruelty that comes from years of getting what you want. He was wearing a suit—dark, expensive, the kind Aleksander wore.
"Monika Mire," he said. His voice was soft, almost gentle. "We've been waiting for you."
I didn't speak. I couldn't. My throat was raw, my mouth dry, my tongue too thick for words.
"Don't worry," he said. "We're not going to hurt you. Not yet. You're too valuable for that."
He knelt in front of me, his eyes meeting mine. They were grey—the same grey as Aleksander's—but colder. Dead.
