I don't answer. I'm watching her walk the runway, and something is happening to me that I don't have a name for. It's not desire, not exactly. Desire I understand. Desire is simple. Biological. A transaction between the body and the brain that I can manage like any other business equation.
This is something else. Something that feels like the tumblers of a lock clicking into place, one by one, in a door I didn't know existed inside me. I watch her reach the end of the runway and stop, and she looks out at the room full of men who are staring at her like she's meat, and for one second her eyes sweep across the back row and land on mine.
She doesn't see me. I know that. It's dark back here, and the spotlight will be blinding her. She's looking without seeing, the way a drowning person looks at the surface of the water.
But I see her.
I see her, and the click happens. Something inside me rearranges itself around this girl the way a city rearranges itself around a river. Silently. Inevitably. Without asking permission.
"Start the bidding at one hundred thousand," Morozov says.
A paddle goes up. Then another. The numbers climb. One-fifty. Two hundred. Two-fifty.
Kir raises his paddle.
Three hundred thousand.
I watch him lean forward in his seat, eyes locked on the girl, tongue running along his lower lip like he's tasting something, and every cell in my body goes cold. in the way that stops your heart.
"Three-fifty," someone calls.
"Four hundred," Kir says, loud enough for the room to hear. Staking his claim. Letting everyone know this one is his.
Ilya steps closer. "Dominik. The plan. We move during intermission."
The plan. Kill Kir. Reclaim my territory. Send a message written in blood that no one in this city will misread.
It's a good plan. I've spent three weeks building it. I've positioned men at every exit, bribed Morozov's security, arranged the alibi and the cleanup and the quiet disappearance of the body. Everything is in place. Everything is ready.
And I'm about to burn it all to the ground because a girl I've never met looked in my direction without seeing me and inside me caught fire.
"Four-fifty," another bidder says.
"Five hundred," Kir counters. He's grinning now.
I think about what happens if Kir wins her. What his hands will do. Where he'll put them. The sounds she'll make, not the ones he wants but the ones he'll force out of her, and my vision narrows to a single red point.
"Boss," Ilya says. "We need to move. Intermission is coming."
I straighten my jacket. Adjust my cuffs. And then I do the most irrational thing I've done in fifteen years of running the Voronov operation, the thing that violates every rule my father ever taught me about separating emotion from business.
I walk toward the stage.
The crowd notices. I don't blend into crowds. I've been told I move through rooms the way a shark moves through shallow water, and whether that's true or not, people tend to get out of my way without being asked. A path opens for me. Chairs scrape. Conversations stop.
Kir sees me. His grin falters.
I stop at the edge of the bidding floor and look up at the girl on the stage. She's staring down at the chaos of paddles and shouting men, and her chest is heaving under that ridiculous dress, and I can see her pulse in her throat, beating fast, fast, fast.
"One million," I say.
I don't raise my voice. I don't need to. The room went silent at some point between me standing and me reaching the stage.
Morozov blinks behind his microphone. "I, ah... one million dollars. We have one million dollars from..."
He looks at me. He knows who I am. Everyone in this room knows who I am.
"From Mr. Voronov," he finishes.