"Everything off, please. Undergarments included."
I don't move.
"Miss, we really are on a tight schedule."
I take my clothes off with numb fingers. My t-shirt with the coffee stain on the hem. My jeans from Target. My bra that's held together with a safety pin because I couldn't afford to replace it. They take each item and put it in a plastic bag like they're collecting evidence, and when I'm standing there naked under the fluorescent light, I see one of them look me over with a small, satisfied nod.
Acceptable. Adequate.She'll do.
I get in the tub.
For the next three hours, I'm waxed and scrubbed and moisturized and plucked within an inch of my life. They do my hair in soft waves. They paint my nails a shade of pink that probably has a name likeBallet SlipperorFirst Blush. A woman I never see again spends forty minutes on my makeup, turning my face into something I barely recognize in the mirror. My eyes look bigger. My lips look fuller. My skin looks lit from within, like I swallowed a candle.
I look expensive.
That's the word that keeps surfacing. I don't look pretty, exactly. I lookexpensive. Like something in a glass case that you're not supposed to touch without asking the salesgirl first.
They bring the dress in on a hanger, wrapped in tissue paper. It's champagne-colored and floor-length and made of a fabric so thin I can see the shadow of my own hand through it. When I put it on, I can feel the air on my skin like I'm wearing nothing at all.
"Beautiful," the clipboard woman says.
I catch my reflection in the full-length mirror by the door, and for one disorienting second, I don't recognize the woman staring back at me. She looks like someone who belongs in this world of marble and eucalyptus and heated towel racks. Someone who chose to be here.
Then I see my eyes.
My eyes still look like me. Scared and too wide and searching for an exit that doesn't exist.
The clipboard woman checks her watch. "The car will be here in ten minutes. Can I get you anything while you wait? Water? Champagne?"
Champagne. She's offering me champagne. Like this is a celebration. Like I should be toasting whatever comes next.
"Where am I going?" I ask.
She smiles that professional smile again, the one that doesn't reach her eyes, and for the first time I see something flicker behind it. Not pity, exactly. Something closer to a warning.
"You're going where all the beautiful things go, Miss."
She clicks her pen.
"To market."
Dominik
The Morozov auction is held in the basement of a hotel that no longer exists on any map.
It used to be a Radisson. Then the franchisee defaulted on a loan to the wrong people, and now it's a hollowed-out shell with blacked-out windows and a freight elevator that goes three stories below street level. The lobby still has the old carpet, burgundy with gold fleur-de-lis, and the check-in desk is still bolted to the floor, but the only guests who check in here leave in body bags or debt they'll never climb out of.
I know because I've put a few of them there myself.
"Kir is in the northwest corner," Ilya says beside me, adjusting his cufflinks like we're walking into a charity gala. "Two guards. Both carrying."
"Just two?"
"He's comfortable. He thinks this is neutral territory."
I almost smile. Neutral territory. As if such a thing exists in this city. Every inch of concrete belongs to someone, and Kir Belov has been standing on mine for six months, skimming product off my shipments and selling it through his own channels like I wouldn't notice. Like I'm the kind of man who doesn't count every gram, every dollar, every drop of blood that flows through his operation.
He's about to learn otherwise.