Chapter 274: Who wants to go first

They were soft and quick, and they were coming from behind. Light shoes, not boots. Someone who did not want to be heard but could not help the sound of the stone.

Viktor’s hand pushed Sienna sideways. They slid behind the nearest pillar, a thick white column that rose from the floor to the ceiling, and pressed their backs against it. He put a hand on her arm. His other hand dropped to his belt.

The steps came closer. Sienna held her breath. They stopped, a few paces away. "It’s me."

The voice was low and shaky, and Sienna knew it at once. She turned her head.

Aliya stood at the edge of the shadows, with a gray apron around her waist. Her hair had come loose from its pins. A dark smudge marked her cheek, and a thin red line ran across her thumb. She was standing very still, with her eyes on the pillar where they hid.

She had already seen them. She had seen them leave the hall, one after the other, from across the room. She had been watching all night.

"Aliya," Sienna said. Her voice was quiet. It was not angry. She did not know what it was.

Viktor stepped out beside her. His hand was still near his belt. He looked at Aliya, and Aliya looked at him, and for a long moment nobody spoke.

He should have felt rage. He should have felt hatred. But what he saw was a thin figure in a servant’s dress, with a cut thumb and a stained cheek. And in her eyes there was something he had never seen.

Pity moved in him. He did not want it, and it came anyway. He saw it move across Sienna’s face too.

Aliya took a step closer. She looked at Sienna for a long time. She looked at the white dress, plain and straight. She looked at the loose curly hair. And she looked at the crown.

It sat on Sienna’s head like a statement. Silver and diamonds, heavy and bright. It had been placed there by the Don himself, to show the whole world what she was. It did not look like an ornament. It looked like a judgment.

And it was an insult too, to the girl in the gray apron. It was the thing she had wanted so badly and had been so close to wearing. She had sat in that chair. She had worn that name. She had pushed and lied and schemed to keep it, and now it sat on another woman’s head, as natural as breathing.

I did this, Aliya thought. It was not a kind thought. It was not comfortable. But it was true. She had done it all herself, one cruel decision after another, until the road ended here, in a dark hall, with a tray in her hands.

She looked away from the crown. "What are you doing here?" Viktor asked. His voice was low and rough. He had meant it to sound hard. It came out tired. "I’ll help you," Aliya said.

They both stared at her.

"With whatever you are planning." She kept her voice very quiet. "I saw you leave the hall. I saw how you walked. You are going somewhere, and it is not to bed." She drew a shaky breath. "I do not care what it is. I do not want to know. I will help you do it."

"Why?" said Sienna. "Because I want something in return."

"What?" Aliya hesitated. Her fingers tightened around the edge of the tray. Her knuckles were white. "Take me with you," she said.

The silence that followed was very long. "My father is already dead," Aliya said.

She said it flatly, without tears. She said it as if she were reading a line from a paper, because she had said it so many times in her head that the words had worn smooth.

Viktor and Sienna said nothing. They had seen it happen. They had stood in a stone hallway and watched a gun go off, and then they had walked away. Neither of them would say so now. It was not the time. And it was not kindness, exactly. It was only that there was nothing to say that would not make things worse.

"I don’t want to die here," Aliya whispered. Her voice cracked.

"He is going to put me in his bed. And when he tires of me, he will put me somewhere worse." She lifted her chin. It trembled. "I would rather be shot in a garden than go back there."

She took a breath. "Help me get out. That is all I ask." Sienna looked at her.

She had been this girl’s enemy for months. She had spent long nights wishing her ruin. She had imagined her in a cell, in a gutter, in a grave. But the girl in front of her now did not look like an enemy. She looked like what she was: someone who had been used and thrown away.

But Sienna was not a fool. "What can you do?" she asked slowly. "Even if we agreed." Her eyes went to the bend in the corridor, where the lamps burned and the guards walked. "Seven men with guns. What do you have?"

She did not say it cruelly. She only said what was true. No offense, she thought, but we do not actually need you. Aliya heard it. It was written clearly on Sienna’s face. She flinched, just a little, and then something in her own face closed and hardened.

She lifted her chin higher. "Watch me, then," she said. She turned away.

She did not hurry. She straightened her apron with both hands, smoothed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She rolled her shoulders once. Something happened to her back. It went straight, easy, and light.

The scared girl in the gray dress was gone. The two guards at the bend raised their guns before Aliya had taken three more steps.

"Stop there," said the taller one. "This is a restricted area. Leave, or I can kill you right now."

The barrel pointed at her chest, steady and black. A second gun came up beside it. Down the line, the other men turned their heads, and a third and fourth hand slid under a jacket.

Aliya did not flinch. She stood in the white light and let them look. Her smile did not move. Behind the pillar, Sienna’s fingers dug into Viktor’s sleeve.

"Oh," Aliya said, and she let her eyes go wide. "Oops. It seems I got lost."

"I don’t care. Leave."

"I was sneaking away from security," she went on, as if he had not spoken, "to warm the Don’s bed. That is where I am supposed to be." She tilted her head and gave a small, rueful sigh. "But the party is still going. I doubt he will be free to meet me for hours. So I thought I would take a tour of the house instead."

"Leave. Now."

"Don’t you boys want to play?" Nobody spoke.

The guards looked at one another. The tall one’s gun dipped half an inch. Down the hall, a heavy man with a thick neck leaned forward and squinted at her face.

"Wait," he said slowly. "I know her."

"You don’t know anyone," the tall one muttered.

"No. I do." The heavy man’s voice dropped. "That’s the Capri girl. From the showroom. She was the diamond of the season." A ripple went down the line.

"I saved money for days," another guard said. His voice had gone odd and hoarse. "Days. I put it all in an envelope. And when I got there, they told me she had stopped working. Just like that." He stared at her. "Gone."

She did not answer. She let the silence work. Seven pairs of eyes moved over her slowly, from her loose hair to her bare throat to her hands, and every one of them had changed. The guns had stopped being the point.

"You have twenty minutes," Aliya said softly. She turned her head and let her gaze travel along the whole line of them, one face at a time.

"Who wants to go first? Though I think it would be more fun if all of you came along. A lifetime of treatment, all in one night." She smiled. "You will not get this chance again."

For a moment, no one moved. Then the heavy man laughed, short and rough, and took a step forward. "I’ll go first."

"Of course you will." Aliya turned and walked, not toward the steel door, but toward a narrow archway on the right, and the men followed her. Two of them stayed behind at the steel door, stiff and unhappy. Five went after her like dogs after a bone.