So I put it out of my head. I kept it professional. I kept my hands to myself. I kept my eyes where they belonged—on her work, not her body.
And if it slipped back in every once in a while, so what? Thoughts aren’t actions. A moment of wanting doesn’t make me weak. It makes me human.
But this—this isn’t a thought slipping in. This is her standing half-naked in a room I had to buy my way into, wearing white and waiting for a stranger to come take what can’t be given back.
My jaw tightens.
I didn’t come here because I suddenly developed a taste for this.
I came because I got a message from someone who knew that having one of my employees in a place like this would get people’s lips moving.
And not just anyone.
Erica.
My assistant.
The girl who brings me coffee and schedules my meetings and looks at me like I’m made of granite, like she’s trying to figure out how to exist around a man who never softens.
The thought of her on an auction block should have been impossible.
It wasn’t.
Because people do desperate things. People do ugly things when the world backs them into a corner.
And Erica—she’s been carrying something. I’ve seen it in the way her smile never quite reaches her eyes. In the way she flinches at her phone when it lights up. In the way she’s been working harder than she needs to, like she’s trying to outrun something.
I should’ve dug deeper.
I should’ve asked questions.
But questions make noise, and noise draws attention, and attention is the one thing my family has learned to manage like an art form. We keep the business clean on the surface. We keep the suits pressed and the public faces respectable.
Because reputation matters.
In this state, reputation is currency.
Our hold on New Jersey has been tested in the recent past. Rivals push when they smell weakness. Cops lean harder when the public starts whispering. Politicians smile less when they think you’re a liability. You don’t give anyone a reason to believe you can’t control your own house.
Imagine what people would think if it got out that an employee of Nico Conti was selling herself for money.
They wouldn’t see “desperate young woman” or even “secret fantasy.” They’d see chaos. They’d see lack of control. They’d see a man whose organization can’t even keep his own staff from being dragged into something like this.
It’s a black mark.
And black marks spread.
So I acted.
I came to the auction. I sat in a dark room with a bunch of hungry animals. I saw men react to her like she was a prize, not a person. I listened to the host talk about her like she was meat.
Every line he said pushed something sharper into my chest.
They weren’t bidding on dinner. They weren’t bidding on conversation. They were bidding on being first. On taking something from her that she can’t get back. On putting their mark on her and walking away satisfied, while she lives with it forever.
I heard the hunger in the room.
I heard how much they wanted the idea of her innocence more than her body. I heard the way the numbers climbed, and I watched the host struggle to keep up at one point, like the bids were coming too fast, too high.
