He faltered. His eyes darted past me into the grand hall, to the marble floors, the crystal chandelier, the sweeping staircase. And I saw something move across his face that made my stomach turn.
Calculation.
“I heard about the arrangement,” he said, lowering his voice. “That Baste is… different than we expected. Young. Healthy. Everyone in the city is talking. I always knew you’d land on your feet, sweetheart. I told people you were smart.”
“Did you?”
“Of course! And, well, since you’re family now with such an influential man…” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about a small venture. A hotel. Nothing risky, I promise. If you could just have a word with your husband about a loan…”
I stared at him.
For a year I had imagined this conversation. I had imagined screaming. I had imagined sobbing. I had imagined, in my darkest moments, slamming the door on him forever.
Instead, I felt only a vast and quiet sadness.
“Dad,” I said softly, “do you know what I did the night you sold me?”
He blinked.
“I didn’t sleep. I stood in my apartment and looked at every photo of us together. And I tried to understand how a man who once carried me home on his shoulders could trade me for his own safety.”
“Clara, I did it for us. For the family…”
“No,” I said. “You did it for you. You didn’t offer to go to prison. You didn’t try to find another way. You let your twenty-four-year-old daughter marry a man she thought was a monster, and you called it a sacrifice.”
