Instead I said, “Or... let me stay. Put me to work. In the kitchen. Cleaning. Laundry. I don’t care.” I leaned forward,hands twisting together. “I’ll earn my keep. Just don’t send me back to those monsters.”
He shifted in his seat, leaning forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees. His fingers steepled together with deliberate calm.
“You’ll do anything not to go back?” he asked.
“Yes.” The answer came without hesitation. “Anything.”
He hummed—a low, thoughtful sound that made my skin crawl.
“I could use a sex slave,” he said casually. “You’re attractive enough.”
The words slammed into me like ice water.
For a second, the room tilted. The fire blurred.
My breath caught painfully in my chest.
“Sex... slave?” I echoed, my voice thin, almost unrecognizable.
He tilted his head, studying me as if I were a problem to be solved. “Isn’t that what you were to the Albanians? Why the surprise?”
Something inside me recoiled violently. Old fear clawed up my spine, dragging memories with it—hands, laughter, commands barked in languages I didn’t speak.
“With all due respect,” I said carefully, forcing steel into my voice, “I am not a slut.”
A smirk curved his mouth—sharp, humorless, devoid of warmth. “You are whatever I say you are... Penelope.”
He lingered on the name this time, letting it sink into the space between us. I felt it like a bruise.
“Don’t mistake my hospitality for freedom,” he continued coolly. “Keeping you here is already a liability. A significant one. So I’ll ask one last time—before I pick up the phone and tell the Albanians to come collect their property—will you be my sex slave?”
The fire popped loudly, a burst of sparks snapping into the air.
I stared at him.
At the man who had once held my face like it was something precious.
The man who had shattered me so completely I’d rebuilt myself piece by piece in exile.
The man who now looked at me like I was an inconvenience he could either use or discard.
My hands trembled in my lap, but I forced myself not to hide them. Not to look away.
“I’ll do what I have to,” I said quietly. “But not because I want to. Because I don’t have a choice.”
The smirk faded.
Something flickered behind his eyes—Curiosity. Recognition. Or perhaps irritation at my refusal to beg prettily.
“Then we understand each other,” he said.
He reached for the Negroni at last, lifting the glass with unhurried grace.
He took a slow sip, watching me over the rim, as though gauging how much of myself I had left to break.
He stopped.
Slowly, his gaze lifted to mine—cold, assessing, stripping away the last illusion of mercy.