Chapter 3 So Long, Freedom

• Giovanni
• Her throat works as she swallows, and I think I hear it even over the crowd.
• “I don't..this is..." her voice breaks. "What do you expect from me?" she asks. “I don't have that kind of money. I don't even know how to get it.”
• "I'm well aware of that. Watch," I say, turning to the stage just as the girl extends her arms to the two women on either side of her. She's turned and bent and displayed and when the man with the strap walks toward her, the room goes completely still in anticipation.
• That sound, Christ, that sound of leather on supple flesh and the red-head's sudden gasp as the delicate skin is tested, fuck, it never fails.
• The red-head's skin turns crimson, the thick stripe glorious against such pale skin. It sends a deep, satisfied murmur through the crowd.
• When I look back at Sienna, she's staring at me wide-eyed. I wonder if she realizes she's hugging her arms to herself.
• We remain like this, me watching her, her watching me, as numbers are called out, and the auctioneer asks for more, more, more and soon, the red-head is going once, going twice, sold to the dirty old fuck in the corner.
• "Lucky man," I say, swallowing my whiskey.
• “I'm going to be sick,” she says.
• I push my chair back and stand. She watches me walk around the table toward her, craning her neck, shrinking away.
• I hold out my hand.
• She looks at it like it's a hot poker I'm telling her to grab.
• “I can't do that," she says, shaking her head, a tear slipping down her cheek.
• “Bathroom, Sienna. So you can get over whatever you need to get over and do what you need to do to pay me back."
• "And if I won't? If I can't?"
• “Won't and can't are two very different things.”
• "What will happen to her? To Ciara?"
• “Let's not go there. Then you really will be sick."
• --------
• Sienna
• His hand is huge.
• Hell. He's huge.
• I reach out, place mine inside it and it feels warm and rough and when he closes his fingers over mine, his grip is firm, this gesture, it's as though I've already agreed.
• Because I know what I must do. I know why he brought me here. I have no doubt.
• I haven't seen or had any contact with Ciara in years. I didn't know she was in town.
• And she can't know that I am.
• I manage to get to my feet, and he's got to be a good foot taller than me.
• Even with my pumps, the top of my head barely reaches his chin.
• Heads turn as Giovanni, his presence at my back enough to guide me, leads me toward a door at the back of the room where a man stands sentry. He opens it at our approach.
• I hesitate.
• "Go on," Giovanni says from behind me. He's standing closer than I realize and a shudder runs through me at the feel of his breath on the back of my neck.
• I hear the faint hint of his accent.
• I heard it throughout our conversation, stronger sometimes than others. It's in the way he says his r's.
• I walk inside and the lights go on. I realize I'm in his office.
• I don't want to be impressed or amazed, but this is spectacular. The walls aren't walls at all but windows overlooking the Las Vegas strip.
• Tonight is clear, and the lights blink in a rainbow of colors. This view, it's something out of a magazine.
• His desk is huge and modern, set at the far corner facing the entrance. There's a sitting area in another corner with sleek leather couches. Everything is top quality. I can tell.
• "Come," he says, beckoning for me to come.
• He opens a door and I don't know what I expect, a bedroom maybe, but it's a bathroom. A large and luxurious bathroom and the walls here, too, are glass
• I glance back at him.
• "No one can see inside," he says and when he goes to close the door, I stop him.
• "Wait."
• He looks down at me and I think how strange his eyes are. Different colors. One is a mossy-green, the other half green and half crystal-blue. The green is warm, the blue ice-cold.
• But I know any warmth I think I see is in my head. This man, he's all sharp edges. It's like someone took a beast out of the wild and put him in a thousand-dollar suit thinking it would somehow tame the animal inside.
• Somehow contain it.
• “Sienna?” he says my name and I realize I'm staring.
• “You want me to do that? Like those women? Because Ciara can't?”
• "I'm merely giving you an option. It's your choice entirely."
• "You want to strip me, put me on that stage and sell me to pay a debt that's not my own?"
• He cocks his head to the side like he's a little annoyed.
• "Don't push me, Sienna. My kindness only goes so far."
• "Kindness?"
• My voice is quaking, it's as unsteady as I feel.
• He shrugs a shoulder like he couldn't care less and checks his watch. "Let me know your decision in the next five minutes."
• With that, he takes his phone out of his pocket and turns his back to me to walk toward his desk.
• I close and lock the bathroom door and lean my back against it.
• Five minutes.
• I have five minutes to decide this.
• Ciara's here and she knows I'm here. But why hasn't she approached me?
• I hold my hand out and realize it's trembling.
• I walk to the sink, turn on the cold water and splash handfuls of it onto my face, then dry it. The towel smells like him. I wonder when I noted what he smelled like.
• I hang the towel back on its rack and looking at my reflection, tuck the hair that's fallen out of the clip behind my ear.
• Those women that I saw up on that stage, they're in a league all their own. Me, the makeup I had on earlier today has disappeared, the only evidence of there having been any at all is the smudge of mascara on my temple. I wipe it away.
• I look down at my sweater, at my plain skirt and boots, everything second-hand but my bra and underwear. I look around the bathroom and I've never been in a world like this before. A world of money where a quarter of a million dollars is something you loan out.
• Where men like Giovanni rule and women are put on auction blocks to be sold to the highest bidder.
• Giovanni. Is that his first name or his last name? I don't even know.
• But I do know that I don't belong here. I don't belong in his world.
• And I am going to be sick.
• Because I know myself. Because Ciara was a kid when she told that lie and she was scared. As scared as me.
• But it's hard to remember that sometimes.
• Hell, I wish I could forget all of it, whole years of my life.
• We were supposed to leave together but after her betrayal, I ran. I didn't care that I left her behind. Not then.
• I didn't know much about now.