Useful.
Everything in this world is useful. People are useful. Children are useful. Mothers are useful.
I swallow hard.
Just survive this, I tell myself.It’s just a few more hours.Chapter 20 – Turo
I delay entering the auction room until avoidance becomes impractical. Not because I object to spectacle. This family survives on spectacle. But tonight, every room feels tuned to provoke reaction. And reaction is weakness.
From the gallery above, the noise reaches me in controlled waves. Applause on cue. Laughter arriving exactly when it’s expected. Charity dressed up as entertainment. Experiences paraded like virtue. Men bidding not because they want the thing, but because they want the moment where someone else backs down.
I rest my hand on the railing and let my gaze drift without seeming to. The first lot is a villa on the coast. Three nights. Private chef. “Generously donated.”
The bidding jumps fast. Fifty thousand. Seventy-five. One hundred. Two men lock eyes across the room, smiling thinly, daring each other to blink.
“Two hundred,” Marco calls out suddenly, too loud.
The room laughs. It’s unnecessary. The number is already climbing. He’s not trying to win. He’s reminding everyone he can enter any contest he wants.
Enzo leans in, murmurs something near his ear. Marco waves him off, still amused with himself.
The villa closes at three hundred fifty. Applause.
Next is art. Abstract. Aggressively meaningless. The kind of piece that exists to be purchased, not understood.
Marco heckles the auctioneer. “Looks like something my kid could’ve painted.”
More laughter. Uneasy this time. People checking which way the wind is blowing before joining in.
I feel the familiar irritation coil and settle. Marco performing dominance because he’s afraid of silence. Afraid of stillness.
Then I see her.
Standing beside him.
The room narrows. Not because she’s loud. Because she isn’t. She doesn’t cling to his arm. Doesn’t play the role. She stands half a step apart, spine straight, chin level, hands folded neatly in front of her like she’s holding herself together by force alone. Contained.
Her dress is wrong for this room. Too simple. Too careful. No glitter. No excess. It makes her visible in a way silk never could. Like a clean line through noise.
My chest tightens before I can stop it. A physical response. Immediate. Unwelcome.
I don’t blink.
Her shoulders are tight with restraint rather than fear. Her weight balanced evenly on both feet, like she’s prepared for sudden movement. Her fingers are interlaced too tightly, knuckles pale.
I know that posture.
The posture of someone bracing for impact they can’t prevent.
Three years. Three years I trained myself not to reconstruct her face from memory. Not to imagine how time would have sharpened it. Not to wonder whether she still carried herself like survival was a conscious act.
And here she is.
My gaze catches on the familiar details whether I want it to or not. The line of her jaw when she sets it. The way her eyes move. Quick, precise, never idle. Accounting for space even now.
I should look away.
I don’t.
