The first thing Eliza heard after her father lost her in a card game was the sound of someone laughing downstairs.
It was a deep, drunken laugh, followed by the crash of a glass and a chorus of voices rising through the floorboards of the Gilded Cage.
She sat perfectly still.
She was twenty-two years old, and according to the men downstairs, she now belonged to someone else.
The room smelled of stale whiskey, cheap perfume, dust, and fear.
Eliza’s hands were clenched in her lap.
The crimson dress they had forced her into scratched her skin. It was too thin, too low at the collar, and entirely wrong for the woman she had been yesterday.
Yesterday, she had been a daughter.
Today, she was a debt.
Her father had lost her with three cards.
That was what Maeve, the brothel’s owner, had told her.
Three cards.
A pair of queens against a full house.
Her father had been drunk, desperate, and smiling when he placed the final wager.
He had put Eliza’s name on the table as though it were no different from a horse, a rifle, or a sack of flour.
When the merchant named Blackwood won, he had apparently laughed.
Eliza had not.
She had screamed.
Her father had not even looked back when Blackwood’s men dragged her from the wagon.
Now she stared at the small window across the room.
Beyond it lay Redemption, a frontier town built from dust, timber, greed, and broken promises.
There was nowhere to run.
Maeve had guards downstairs.
Blackwood had men outside.
Her father had vanished.
And Eliza had no money.
No weapon.
No ally.
No hope.
She pressed her fingers against her lips to stop them trembling.
Then came footsteps on the staircase.
Not the stumbling footsteps of a drunk.
Not the hurried steps of Maeve.
These were slow.
Measured.
Heavy.
Someone was coming upstairs.
Eliza’s heart began hammering.
The footsteps stopped outside her door.
The handle turned.
The door opened.
And a stranger stepped inside.
He was tall and lean, wearing a weather-beaten black coat covered in trail dust.
A gun hung low against his right thigh.
His face looked as though the frontier had carved it from stone.
But it was his eyes that frightened her most.
They were pale blue.
Cold.
Steady.
They seemed to see everything.
The torn curtain.
The bottle on the table.
The crimson dress.
The fear in her face.
The stranger said nothing.
Maeve appeared behind him.
Her lips curled into a smile.
“A fine choice, stranger.”
The man didn’t look at her.
His eyes remained on Eliza.
“How much?”
Maeve’s smile widened.
“For the night?”
The stranger finally turned.
“No.”
His voice was low.
