Sold to the Bratva King novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Sweetener
Twelve years the maid in her own family's house, Halle is slapped before the Bratva King's dinner, sold to him as a sweetener on the deal, names her own terms and walks out with her coffee can, then sees her forged signature on the sale.
Kent hit me before he asked me anything.
My head snapped sideways, and the bucket in my hand slopped gray water across the marble.
I didn't make a sound.
Twelve years of cleaning the Atwater house teaches you that.
Tonight the Bratva King was coming to dinner.
By midnight, my brother had sold me to him.
"The study," Kent said. "Did you do the study?"
"At five this morning."
"Matvei Zorin walks through that gate in twenty minutes." He dug his thumb into my shoulder, right into the bone. "Do it again."
I nodded at the floor.
"You know what this deal means?" he said. "Zorin owns half the port. He owns judges. Your brother needs him."
I didn't answer. Answering gives him a reason.
There's a picture I keep folded up small in my head.
I swing the bucket, it catches Kent above the ear, and he drops on the marble like a sack of wet laundry.
I didn't swing it.
The last time I talked back, Lindsey locked me in the cellar for nine days with a jug of tap water.
Kent shoved me down the east hall and I went, counting the black tiles.
Fifty-two.
I've counted them since I was six, the week Parker came home from the funeral with Dad's keys.
The study was spotless. It always is.
I shut the door, put my back against it, and let my knees go.
I'm twenty-two.
I was supposed to be free at eighteen. Parker promised.
Instead I'm still in a gray uniform, in a house with my own last name on the iron gates.
I wash Parker's sheets, and Lindsey's, and the sheets in the pool house where Kent sleeps.
Kent was supposed to marry me once. Then he broke two of my ribs, and Parker called the engagement postponed.
Somebody cleared his throat.
I'm deaf on my left side. That was Lindsey and a silver hairbrush, when I was nine.
So I hadn't heard him at all.
He was sitting in Dad's leather chair by the window, one ankle on his knee.
He held a glass of my brother's whiskey like he'd poured it himself and wanted someone to complain.
He was enormous.
Dark hair cut almost to the scalp. A scar through his left eyebrow. Eyes so pale they looked lit from behind.
Every man with a Russian name who'd ever walked into this house had ink on his knuckles.
This one didn't have a mark on him.
That scared me more.
I scrambled up so fast the door rattled in its frame.
"Do you greet all your guests from the floor?" His voice was low and in no hurry. The accent was worn smooth.
"I'm sorry. I thought the room was empty."
"Come here."
Parker was going to kill me.
I went. I stopped six feet away and looked at his shoes. They cost more than my whole life.
"Look at me."
I looked up for one second.
"Why do you flinch before anyone moves?" he asked.
Nobody in this house had ever asked me a question that wasn't about a stain.
"I don't."
"Twice, since I sat down." He set the glass on the side table very carefully. "And you didn't hear me breathing in a silent room. Why?"
"My left ear," I said. "It doesn't work."
A muscle jumped in his jaw.
The door banged open behind me.
"Halle!" Parker's voice cracked across the room. "What are you doing in my study?"
Then, smooth as a waiter: "Mr. Zorin. I apologize. My sister forgets herself."
His hand came up.
I closed my eyes.
Nothing landed.
When I opened them, Matvei Zorin was on his feet, a head taller than my brother.
Parker's wrist was folded inside his fist.
"Halle showed me to your study," Zorin said pleasantly, "since nobody met me at your own front door. Someone in this house understands what tonight is worth."
He let go.
Parker smiled.
Dinner was lobster, because Lindsey wanted the Russian to know we had money.
We didn't. I do the grocery receipts.
I poured the champagne. Lindsey in her pearls. Kent rubbing his knuckles. Parker's lawyer with a fat folder by his plate.
Zorin didn't touch his glass. He watched me walk around the table.
"Your sister," he said to Parker. "You keep her in a uniform."
"She earns it."
"How?"
Lindsey laughed into her napkin. "She's a little simple, Mr. Zorin. She's happiest with a mop."
Parker leaned back and spread his hands, the way he does when he's being generous with something that isn't his.
"You like her? Take her. Call it a sweetener on the deal. She comes with the house."
Kent's fork stopped halfway to his mouth.
Zorin looked at me, not at Parker.
"Done," he said.
I set the champagne bottle down on the white tablecloth.
I'd never put anything on that tablecloth in my life.
"No," I said.
Every head turned. I'd never spoken at that table either.
"If I'm being sold, I'm getting paid." My voice shook. I kept going anyway. "Wages. A room with a lock on my side of the door. And my ID out of Parker's desk drawer."
"Halle," Lindsey said. "Kitchen. Now."
Zorin didn't even glance at her. "How much?"
I had no idea what anybody got paid for anything.
"Whatever the man who cleans your floors gets."
"Nine hundred a week."
"Then a thousand. I'm better."
The corner of his mouth moved. "Done."
"Who's going to do the dishes?" Lindsey said.
I untied my apron and laid it over Parker's lobster.
Then I walked out of the dining room and down the cellar stairs.
Lindsey caught my sleeve on the bottom step.
"You walk out that door, you don't come back."
"Let go, or I scream loud enough for your guest to hear it."
She let go.
Behind the furnace there's a gap where the bricks don't meet. I reached into it up to my elbow.
The red coffee can was where I'd left it, dented and heavy.
"What is that?" Lindsey said.
"Mine."
I carried it up through the foyer, past Kent, across Parker's marble in my wet shoes, and out the front door.
A black car was idling inside the gates. The driver opened the back door without a word.
Zorin climbed in after me. The gates with my name on them swung shut behind us.
The dashboard clock turned to midnight.
He opened the lawyer's folder on his knee. Parker's lawyer must have handed it to him on the way out.
"Atwater Marine," he said. "Your family's terminal. I'm buying it tonight."
He turned to page three and held it under the light.
At the bottom, in neat blue loops, was a signature.
Halle Atwater.
Dated thirteen months ago, the week I turned twenty-one.
I have never signed anything in my life.
"That's not mine," I said.
"I know." Matvei Zorin closed the folder. "Which means your brother just sold me something that's half yours."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend