Nausea rolls through me. I swallow it down, forcing my expression to remain neutral. I won't give him the satisfaction of seeing me crumble.
"And if I refuse to go?"
The man looks up, finally meeting my eyes. His are empty. "Then I drag you. Your choice."
I think about fighting. Think about screaming, clawing, making myself as difficult as possible. But I'm one woman against an organization that has clearly done this before. Fighting now will only exhaust me for whatever comes next.
Save your strength, the clinical part of my brain whispers. Observe. Gather information. Wait for an opportunity.
"I'll walk," I say.
He smiles. It doesn't reach his eyes.
The corridor stretches endlessly, each step bringing me closer to a fate I can't comprehend. The classical music grows louder—Vivaldi, I realize. The Four Seasons. Spring. How appropriate. Renewal. Rebirth. The start of something new.
I'm going to vomit.
The man stops at a curtain, heavy velvet in deep red. Beyond it, I can hear voices. Laughter. The clink of glasses. A party. They've made this into a party.
"When you go through," the man says, checking his clipboard one final time, "walk to the center of the stage. Stand on the mark. Don't speak unless spoken to."
"And then?"
"And then the bidding begins."
He pulls back the curtain.
Light blinds me—spotlights, I realize, positioned to illuminate the stage while keeping the audience in shadow. I can't see faces, only silhouettes. Dozens of them, arranged in tiered seating like a theater. The air smells of expensive cologne and cigar smoke and something else, something darker. Anticipation. Hunger.
I force myself to walk forward, to find the X taped to the stage floor, to stand on the mark like the obedient merchandise they expect me to be. My heart pounds against my ribs—one eighty now, maybe higher. Dangerous territory. The kind of heart rate that leads to collapse if sustained too long.
I breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The way I learned in anatomy lab, standing over cadavers, training myself not to faint.
"Lot one," a voice announces over a speaker system. "Bianca Benedetti. Twenty-one years old. Medical student. Virgin."
Chapter 2 - Misha
I've killed many men in my life.
Some deserved it. Some were simply in the way. I remember each of their faces, cataloged in a corner of my mind I don't visit often. The weight of a life extinguished—it never gets lighter. You just get stronger. Strong enough to carry it without stumbling.
Tonight, I'm prepared to add to that number.
The auction house smells of cigars and cologne and the particular desperation of men with too much money and too few boundaries. I've been here for an hour, nursing a whiskey I haven't touched, watching the crowd mill about like vultures circling carrion.
I know most of them by reputation. Dmitri keeps files on men like these—politicians, executives, crime lords from a dozen different organizations. Men who buy women the way other men buy cars. For status. For pleasure. For the simple, ugly thrill of ownership.
I've never attended one of these events before. Never had reason to. The Kashkin family deals in many things, but human trafficking isn't one of them. Dmitri drew that line years ago, after our mother—
I stop that thought before it can form. Not tonight. Tonight I need to be ice. Cold and clear and utterly without mercy.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. A message from Alexei:She's in the holding room. Lot one. They're starting in ten.
Lot one.
Carmine Benedetti is selling his daughter first. His prized asset. His virgin medical student. Opening the bidding with her like she's a prize racehorse, designed to set the tone for the evening and drive up prices for the lots that follow.
I'm going to kill him. Not tonight—tonight is about extraction—but soon. Slowly. I'm going to make him understand exactly what he's done before I let him die.
