Chapter 10
Caleb
Iwatch from my cabin's control room, leather chair angled toward the wall of monitors, Macallan Twenty-Five in a crystal tumbler resting against my thigh.
My helicopter dropped me here thirty minutes ago, then returned to the club for Scarletta. She'll be delivered to me like a package. Gift-wrapped in humiliation and fear.
Exactly as planned.
Six screens show Scarletta's auction from different angles. Close-ups of her face. Wide shots of the theater. Overhead view of the platform where she stands naked under that spotlight, trying not to shake.
She's shaking anyway.
The other nine screens cycle through the other auction rooms. Sixteen girls total tonight. All of them already owned. All of them thinking this is real.
It's theater. Expensive, elaborate, legally binding theater that was specifically designed for them.
Every girl signed contracts agreeing to specific acts. Every girl walked onto a stage believing strangers would bid on herbody. Every girl will leave with a man who's been watching her for months.
The auctions are pretense. The paperwork is deliciously confusing.
The result, always the same.
They understand.
Yet, they don't.
They understand what they agreed to, but it's set up.
A tiny lie of omission. Still legal,ifthings like this were legal, that is.
They're not. Not in the world Scarletta lives in, at least.
But in my world…in my world, they absolutely are.
I take another sip of whiskey. Smooth. Expensive. Celebratory.
On screen, the announcer begins reading Scarletta's details. Height, weight, measurements. Herunemployment statusdelivered with just enough emphasis to remind everyone watching that she's desperate.
I wrote that line myself.
Gave the announcer a script. Told him which stories to quote, which passages would cut deepest. Made sure he understood the goal wasn't just to sell her body—it was to strip away every defense she'd built between herself and her shame.
She checked the box for verbal degradation. For psychological dominance. For permission to weaponize her writing against her.
I'm simply honoring her contract.
The announcer's voice drops into a different register—intimate, almost reverent—as he begins to recite passages I selected myself. Lines from "Owned by the Slave Trader," that story she posted at three in the morning nine weeks ago. The one where her protagonist begs to be seen completely, darkness and all.
"'I want hands that know how to hurt me,'" he reads, letting each word land with deliberate weight. "'Not because I deserve pain, but because pain is the only thing that feels honest anymore.'"
Scarletta's breathing changes. I can see it on the monitor, the way her chest rises faster, shallower.
He continues. "'Choke me until the world goes quiet. Hold me down until I stop pretending I don't want this. Make me admit what I am.'"
Her own words. Her own need, stripped bare and broadcast to strangers.
The announcer pauses for effect—I told him to do that, let the silence build—before delivering the final passage. "'I don't want someone who loves me despite the darkness. I want someone who loves me because of it.'"
