Page 8 of Crushing Clover

“I’m aware.”

“And yet you’re still going to sacrifice your life for his?”

“I know this seems silly to you.” My voice was steadier than I expected. “This isn’t about what kind of person he is—it’s about what kind of person I am.”

“Altruistic little idiot.” She sighed, and gestured for me to follow her henchman out.

Chapter 3

They had hosed us off, but between one building and the next, we splashed barefoot through torrential rain and mud, undoing their attempt to get us mostly clean.

My curls were now snarled knots, but who cared? It didn’t matter to me what kind of price I brought them, after all. Wearing nothing but our grease paint numbers, like Scarlet Letters on our chests, some of the women walked shamefaced, head low. Others did their best to look attractive—maybe hoping to catch the eye of a rich man shopping for a pretty companion. As for me, I’d never been good at schooling my expression when I was angry, and this whole situation enraged me.

Disgusting pigs. Every man here.

Head high, my disdain plain to see, I made eye contact with slimeballs in the room, not caring if they were sellers or buyers. I had chosen this, even though the choice had felt like no choice at all, but that didn’t mean I approved of what they were doing.

Maybe someone would kill me. I was almost hoping they would. Living in fear and not knowing what would happen—having no control—was a brutal feeling.

With so many bodies, the room was overly warm, and it was satisfying to know the men were suffering in their layers of clothing.

The number emblazoned on my chest kept catching my attention. I was never going to look at the number 127 the same way again.

They put us in rows that were long strings of misery. The girl two down from me sobbed as yet another group of men moved through the line, ‘inspecting’ her the same way as the other men, by grabbing and slapping, poking and groping her flesh, as though assessing the quality of cattle. We were all tired of it, but I refused to be cowed.

There would be time for real fear later, when I ended up wherever I was going.

Three men stopped in front of the girl next to me, checking her over with more thoroughness than they had the few women before her. One marked her number on a scrap of paper before they moved on to me.

The shortest one picked up a lock of my hair, rubbing it between his fingers.

“Real red?” he asked, the word heavily accented.

Was he looking for verification or merely making a comment? All he needed to do was look at the patch of hair between my legs.

“Red is ugly.” One of the others grimaced.

“Many men like red,” the first man disagreed. He felt between my legs and prodded a rude finger into me that made me gasp in protest. I managed not to tell him off. I’d seen the beating one of the other girls had gotten when she was uncooperative.

He held his glistening finger up to his nose and nodded, before gesturing to his friend to write down my number, too.

127

He wiped his hand on his shirt. How many other women had that finger been inside of today? They’d done exams, blood work, and swabs on us, but I’d recently gone through the same type of processing before going to work at the resort, so I wasn’t scandalized.

“Arabella?” A man with dark hair, greying at the temples, was directly behind them in the steady stream of inspecting buyers.

I glanced at him then decided I should mind my business.

He said the name again, but this time he was in front of me, trying to catch my attention. When I met his gaze, his eyes were dark and full of what looked like malicious glee.

“Pardon?”

“Arabella?”

I raised my brows, wondering if this was some sort of game.

“No. My name is Clover.”

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