Niklas smiles slimly, unaffected by her taunts, her accusations. “Paranoia, Madam Moretti,” Niklas says, offering her the same formalities, “it really is a blemish you could do without. But you’re right in a sense: I do want to save her, but not necessarily from your blade; I’d like to save her for mine.” Niklas’s gaze falls on Sian. Then he steps around Francesca and begins to pace slowly around Sian on the floor; his hands clasped on his backside.
“You said yourself that she was a whore,” Niklas points out. “A true whore—were those not your words?” He stops pacing for a second, long enough to look back at Francesca with a perceptive smile alight in his face. “I think anyone who has been spreading her legs for someone like your brother for ten years, has probably been doing the same for any man who works in this place. She’s a survivor, Miz Moretti”—Sian lowers her forehead to the floor—“I knew a girl like her once, forced into a life of bondage, raped by men who she knew would kill her if she ever told her master; forced to feel certain…feelings for a man who showed her affection because it was the only way she knew how to stay alive.” I swallow. Hard. And I hate him for those words I know were about me. And yet, I care for him in ways I don’t understand. He stops pacing in front of the girl’s head; her long black hair lies disheveled against the bright white floor; the toes of his shiny dress shoes touch the tips of her fingers. He looks down at her as he speaks. “And now, after giving birth to a baby she’ll never hold, or feed, or touch, or name, or sing lullabies to because I have absolutely no interest in buying a goddamned child, she’ll fight more than ever when I take her away. And she’ll hate me immensely for it.” His head turns to Francesca. There’s a dark smile playing discreetly in his features. “This one, Miz Moretti, is precisely the kind of flawed whore I’m looking for.”
Sian draws her hands toward her face and she sobs into her palms; her back, covered by a white gown, bounces as she trembles; she curls into a fetal position and wails, stirring the attention of her newborn child suckling the breast of another woman just feet from her. Again, I notice the women in the hall crossing their chests and mouthing prayers. And again, I witness more of the real Emilio as he stands feet away with a knife in his hand and a gaping hole in his heart, unable to make use of either. He knows that if he speaks out against any of this, if he refuses to let Niklas take Sian, that his wicked sister will kill her. And maybe he knows too that if he kills Francesca, that Sian will die anyway because neither of them will get out of the mansion alive.
Letting Niklas buy her, probably nowhere on Emilio’s list of options, is the only option he has.
But he doesn’t like it—rage lies beneath the surface of his face, seething, growing, harder and harder to contain, but like me, he continues to play his role.
Francesca appears to contemplate Niklas’s offer. She looks to her sister. Valentina shrugs lightly, patting the baby carefully against its exposed back. Then Francesca turns to Niklas again, glances briefly at the briefcase in his hand.
“I will sell the girl to you,” she says, “for everything you have left in that case of yours.”
Everything? But then what will we use to buy or bargain with for Olivia Bram? Victor’s money? He will be pissed.
Niklas holds the briefcase out to Francesca and she takes it. Sian scrambles to her knees; she reaches up with both hands and grasps the legs of Niklas’s dress pants, pulling and fingering the fabric into her fists. “Please, if you buy me, buy my baby! I’m begging you, Master, please!” Her voice is hoarse from crying and screaming so much. “PLEASE!” she roars up at Niklas and her voice cracks.
Niklas crouches down in front of her, slowly, with such ease and power. He cocks his head to one side, studying her; then to the other side. He reaches out and brushes her cheek with the back of his fingers. Then the other cheek. Then he moves away a few strands of hair that lay across her forehead, tucking them behind her ear, taking his time. Her dark blue eyes are rimmed with red; the whites of her eyes streaked and mapped by little inflamed veins; tears track down her cheeks, drip from her chin. Niklas touches the bruised skin under her left eye with the pad of his thumb, gently and with as much disingenuous comfort as Francesca had meant to give the baby when trying to calm it.