Page 6 of Bought By the Masked BRATVA
“One million.”
The room exhales.
I keep my expression neutral, the perfect mask of calm calculation, but inside there’s nothing calm about it. I’m not bidding for information, not even for leverage. Every man here wants to own her story, her body, her power. I just want them to stop looking at her.
“Sold.” The gavel hits the block.
She flinches at the sound, and for a moment her eyes meet mine across the ballroom, pale and defiant. But under it all I can see she is terrified.
My pulse hammers slow and deep as the spotlight cuts out and the crowd begins to move again. Business as usual. Masks tilt toward me in wary acknowledgment. No one looks too long. They know better.
I hand my bidder’s card to the attendant who materializes at my side. “Where is she?”
“She headed towards the terrace, sir.”
I don’t wait for directions.
I’ve walked through war zones that felt less charged than this. Voices murmur behind closed doors. Laughter, negotiation, the click of heels on marble.
She’s standing there, her back to me as she braces against the stone balustrade. Her shoulders rise and fall, shallow, uneven. The illusion of composure she wore on stage has slipped, and for a moment I just watch her.
She doesn’t hear me at first.
“Grace Casey,” I say.
She freezes. Then, slowly, she turns. The mask hides half her face, but her eyes, God, those eyes are exactly as I remember them from earlier. Pale, searching, sharp even in fear.
“I suppose congratulations are in order,” she says quietly. “You just bought yourself a scandal.”
“I’ve bought worse.”
Her chin lifts. “You don’t know what you’ve bought.”
“I know enough.” I move closer, each step measured. “You’ve spent three days on every major network, being torn apart by people you once advised. You walked onto that stage tonight offering to sell what you know to the highest bidder.”
She swallows hard, the motion dragging my attention to the elegant line of her throat. “And you decided to save me out of… what? Pity?”
“Pity isn’t something I feel.”
“Then what?”
I don’t answer right away. Because the truth sounds too raw, too irrational. Because she’d see it for what it is. A fracture in a man who’s spent his whole life controlling every variable.
“I didn’t like the way they were looking at you,” I say finally.
Her laugh is low, brittle. “You paid a million dollars because you didn’t like theirgaze?”
“I paid a million because I could.” I let the pause stretch. “And because I wanted to make sure no one else could touch you ever again.”
Her breath catches. She masks it well, but I see the flicker in her expression, the battle between outrage and something that looks dangerously like relief.
“This isn’t how protection works,” she says.
“It is with me.”
I step close enough that I can smell the faint sweetness of her skin beneath the champagne and nerves. She doesn’t move away.
“You have information,” I murmur. “And I have the means to make it useful. You want safety and protection; I can give you that. But understand me, Grace, when I take something under my protection…I don’t let it go.”
