“Where is she safest? Think about it. Off with Matsumoto half a world away, or right here under your own nose where you can keep an eye on her and me? What if I’m right about him?”
“Then we can find another buyer.”
“It’ll be too late. If you’re wrong, she won’t recover from it. She might not even survive it. You’re not God, Lindsay. You can’t peer into the hearts and minds of men and know who is safe and who isn’t, no matter how much you’ve convinced yourself you have that power.”
“Why would you pay this kind of money?”
“It means nothing to me. I have everything I need. I want her more than I want the money. What the fuck am I going to do with money when I never get a goddamned day off?”
Gabe and Anton just stared at him.
“Please,” Brian said quietly.
“Did you just beg me to sell you Mina for five million dollars?”
“You might not trust my ability to keep my promises, but trust my ability to sense evil in someone else. I at least am good for that. Aren’t I in this house because I bring things to the table that others don’t? This is a part of what I bring.”
“What do you guys think?”
Gabe and Anton shrugged.
“Why are you asking them?” Brian said. “They don’t give a shit about her. You and I are the only ones invested.”
“Just tell me why you want her.”
Brian looked at the others then back to Lindsay. “Not in front of them.”
“We’ll go to my office.”
Brian followed the doctor to his office and slumped into the chair across from his desk. Lindsay shut the door and joined him.
“Okay. Convince me.”
In the privacy of the office everything felt too stark. Too honest. He looked up, unable to stop tears that were gathering. Fucking tears. He’d only cried in front of the shrink once during a particularly painful session. And he’d sworn he’d flat out murder the man if he ever breathed a word about seeing that weakness. Lindsay, to his credit, had believed the threat.
“I can’t convince you. Just please let me have her. I won’t hurt her. She’s different.” He couldn’t bring himself to lay out why she was different, how from the moment he’d seen the scars on her back, she’d been under the stairs with him, how he was afraid violence alone wouldn’t let him sleep anymore. The requirements for sleep had just escalated. Now he needed her, too. If Lindsay sent her to Japan, Brian might never sleep again.
“I’m going to need more than that,” the doctor said.
“If I can protect her… I can erase it.”
Lindsay’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you care to erase what’s been done to her?”
“No… me.”
The light suddenly came on as the doctor grasped what he was saying. “She’s a proxy for you. Interesting.”
Brian wanted to kill him. Lindsay never stopped head shrinking and putting together his pet theories of why people were the way they were. As if knowing why changed anything or could make it different.
“Never mind. Forget it. I’m not going to sit here and beg you for her. She is mine. Either you take my money and we stay here, or I just take her and run.”
The doctor stared hard at him as if looking for the bluff. He wouldn’t find one. And he knew when he’d been beaten. “When do you want her?”
“Give me a week. I want to have a collar made, and I want the normal ceremony the other buyers get.”
“You want it because you don’t want her to see who’s buying her and make a scene.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I don’t want that.”
21
Mina huddled in bed, watching as the clock moved ominously toward eleven—the time she’d be sold off to a man she didn’t know. She would have attempted escape if she’d thought such an action were possible, but the security was too tight.
After the scene with Lindsay in the medical room, she’d tried to avoid him and everyone else. He’d apologized for his behavior when he came to tell her she’d been sold. Sold. This nightmare would never end.
On top of everything else, she’d struggled for four days with tobacco withdrawal. It had been bad. It was hard to know if her current state of despair was because of her situation or the withdrawal. Probably both. No wonder people couldn’t ever seem to quit. Now she just wanted one. Kind of like she wanted oxygen and sleep, but intellectually she knew she’d gotten through the worst of the withdrawal already.
Lindsay had given her a CD collection of Chopin during the worst of it. The music had calmed her somewhat. Was he still apologizing? If he was doing that… why wasn’t he keeping her? Obviously he cared in a way that went beyond doctor/patient.
But she’d seen his temper now. Did she want to stay with him anymore? No. The gift was part of the abuse cycle she’d suffered through too many times already. And the next man would be just the same.
Though she stayed mainly in her room, Lindsay insisted she at least needed exercise while she waited for the big day. He’d told her to swim in the pool after the others went to bed, assuring her that Brian never ventured upstairs that late. But how would he know? She still couldn’t believe the doctor had threatened to send her to the dungeon.
Brian had been part of her motivation for staying in the tower and keeping the door locked. She couldn’t let herself have another moment alone with him. She was too afraid of what he might do to her, given the chance.
But what of her master? What if he scared her just as badly as Brian did? As much as Lindsay had? There would be nowhere else to go from there.
A knock startled her out of her thoughts.
“Who is it?” She always asked before unlocking the door, still convinced Brian might be on the other side. But then, he seemed to have lost interest in her. He’d likely just been fucking with her head to scare her because it was easy. People like that saw a weakness and preyed on it. There was no begging them because they liked it.
“It’s Annette, Anton’s slave. I don’t think we’ve formally met.”
Mina opened the door and in swept a woman who looked shockingly like the receptionist at Dome—except that she wore a black leather collar with a silver ring attached to it.
“Do you work with Anton in the city?”
“Oh, no. That’s my twin.”
Annette held a black velvet box. She was flushed and excited.
“What’s that?”
“It’s your collar! Your master had it custom-designed. It’s very nice—one of the nicest I’ve ever seen. You’re going to love it.”
Mina very much doubted she’d love her collar. There was nothing about this situation she loved. With every fiber of her being, she wished she had a time machine, that she could go back and refuse Lindsay’s offer before it was too late and hope he didn’t change his mind and decide she was a security threat.
Or better yet, she could take the time machine further and not visit the abusive doctor in the first place. And hell, if she were doing impossible magic time things, why not just go back to the very beginning and decide her fantasies were nice to masturbate to but there was no need to bring it into the real world and put herself at the mercy and hands of men who wouldn’t protect her when it counted.