Page 59 of Sold to My Ex's Brother
“Not much,” she admits. “Just trying to get my life back on track. I don’t have anywhere to live, at least, not yet, and there aren’t many places that are willing to rent to someone who doesn’t have a job.”
I frown. I hadn’t given much thought to what came after this, for the women who had been freed, but hearing her talk on it like that, I suppose it makes sense. To have ended up in that situation in the first place, they must have been bundled around, hardly keeping a job or at least anything they could put on a resume.
And then, she takes a deep breath, obviously taking a run-up at something that has been on her mind since she set foot in here.
“Which is why I want to work for you.”
For a second, I just stare at her. What the fuck is she talking about? She has just walked away from Artem, and now she is sitting here in front of me, telling me she wants to work for me instead?
“I understand that you must take serious measures to vet the people who work for your organization,” she assures me, taking my silence as dismissal. “But I can bring a lot to the table. I know this world well, and everything Artem did, at least what I was exposed to, I remember. If you’re going to try to make a mission of freeing the women he left behind, then I’m the one you want for the job.”
“How so?” I let her speak. No harm in hearing her out, no matter how ridiculous this proposal might seem to me.
“These girls, the ones who have been taken like this,” she explains, shifting slightly in her seat as though trying to forget that she was, up until recently, amongst their number. “It’s hard to understand what they’ve been through. What it does to them, to be treated that way. But I know. I experienced it first-hand. And I can help get them out, get them back on their feet. It’s the least I can do, after you freed me.”
Her voice is laced with a sudden, shocking emotion, one that she has obviously been trying to disguise since the moment she walked in here.
I lean forward. “It’s not easy work,” I warn her. “You saw from the inside out how all of that worked. And if we’re going to dismantle it, we’re going to come up against plenty of people who want to stop us. Artem might be gone, but that doesn’tmean that the buyers will back off so easily. And the girls who have already been sold…”
“I know it isn’t,” she replies, her voice dropping back into that stoic tone she had when she first arrived. “And I’m ready for that. I think. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I just… I know I couldn’t go back into the world and just pretend like things are all back to normal when I know what’s happening out there, you know?”
I pause for a long moment as I consider her offer. She’s right when she says that she would have a unique insight into all of this, and it would be useful to have someone like her on the ground, there in the midst of it, to make sure that we could provide the appropriate support to these women when they stepped back out into the real world once more.
And besides, my numbers have taken a major hit since the attack on the mansion, and I need to rebuild them any way I can. This woman, I can already tell, would be loyal to me to the ends of the earth, for freeing her from the horrors she had been faced with before.
“I’ll organize a meeting with some of my men,” I tell her, with a nod. “They’ll go over some of the major details with you, and we can take it from there.”
Her face lights up. Of course, I don’t add the fact that the reason I’d have my men talk to her would be to make sure that she didn’t reveal some untrustworthiness down the line, though I find it hard to believe she would ever make that kind of trouble for me down the line.
“Thank you,” she gushes, as she rises to her feet. “I–I can’t even begin to tell you how much this means to me. I...” She trails offand catches herself before she can go any further. “Thank you,” she repeats again, a little softer now.
“I’ll have Ilya see you out,” I tell her, and I call him back in, shaking hands with Luna before she leaves. I watch as she goes; she must have some nerve, turning up like this out of nowhere, asking for a damn job from a man who most would avoid as though their lives depended on it...
As I step back into my office, my mind drifts to the hurt in Maya’s eyes yesterday. She told me she was trapped here, just like she had been with Artem.
That comparison has been rotting in my brain ever since.
The thought of letting her walk out that door sets my teeth on edge. In here, I can protect her. Out in the real world, my enemies could tear her apart. I’ve told myself keeping her locked down is just about protecting our unborn child, but the dark truth is I just want her where I can see her.
I down a burn of vodka, letting the bitter taste ground me.
I have to loosen my grip. Artem tried to break her, and he failed. She has a fire in her that refuses to go out, and if I keep suffocating her, she’ll only hate me for it. I refuse to raise my child with a woman who looks at me and sees my brother’s darkness.
As much as it kills my instincts, I have to let her taste freedom.
I have to prove I’m nothing like Artem.
29
MAYA
“Excuse me, Maya?”
I turn over in bed with a sigh, tiredness still clinging to my drooping eyes as I look up at the doorway. Standing there is Maria, the housekeeper, who has been fussing over me since the second I set foot back in this place. She is kind enough, but sometimes, I feel like she would prefer it if I was a little quicker to eat her home remedies for morning sickness and pregnancy cravings; some of them looked so questionable on the plate though, I doubt anyone would have blamed me.
“Yes?”
“The Pakhan would like to take dinner with you tonight.”
