The tears come again, burning. I stop them. I lift my chin. Not too high. Not defiant enough to trigger the man with the remote. Just enough. Enough for me.
The room doesn’t like it.
I feel that somehow. A tiny shift. A pause in the voices.
One of the men near the wall moves closer, remote visible in his hand. “Careful.”
I lower my gaze slightly. Survival. Not surrender. There is a difference.I think about every story I heard growing up. Warnings. News articles. Documentaries.
Things people whisper about because saying them too loudly makes the world feel unsafe. Trafficking. Auctions. Women disappearing. The kind of horror everyone knows exists but still somehow believes lives far away. In another country. Another city. Another life.
I believed that too, even though I didn’t think I did. I thought evil like this had edges I would recognize. I thought I’d see it coming. I thought it couldn’t touch a woman walking out of work, texting her mother, laughing with her friend, buying a birthday gift for the man she loves.
Naive.
The word hurts, but I let it. Because it’s true. This is real. Not fiction. Not distant. Not something that happens to nameless women in stories told after the fact. This is happening to me. Right now. Under bright lights. Under cameras. Under the eyes of people bidding from shadows.
My breathing tries to break apart. I pull it back. One breath. Then another.
Stay alive.
He’s coming.
The voice over the speaker continues, listing details I refuse to absorb. Age. Height. Weight. Condition. Compliance. Terms.
I detach from the words without leaving my body. That’s harder than floating away. Harder than going numb. But I do it because I need to remember. Voices. Angles. The man with the remote. The second man near the wall. The camera positions. The gold mark on the floor. The hallway behind me. The faint smell of disinfectant and old smoke. The woman with the collar who wouldn’t meet my eyes. Details matter.
If I survive, they matter.
When I survive.
The correction comes from somewhere deep. Not loud. Not hopeful. Steady.
When.
The room changes again. Not visible. I feel it anyway. The air tightens. Numbers start appearing on a screen at the far end of the room, reflected in the mirrors so I can see them no matter where I look. They climb. Fast. Too fast.
My stomach turns as the numbers rise, each one another reminder that someone out there is looking at me and deciding I’m worth more than the last man offered. I want to scream. I want to tell them I have a name. I want to tell them I am loved. I want to tell them the man coming for me will turn their polished little nightmare into ash.
But I stay silent.
Because the collar is real. Because survival is not weakness. Because Cobra needs me breathing when he finds me.
A voice says, “Strong interest.”
Another answers, “Expected after the difficulty.”
Difficulty.
That’s what they call what I survived. The van. The alley.Eli.
My chest cracks at his name.
Eli’s face flashes behind my eyes, blood on his skin, voice steady even when he was afraid.
I said no.
My throat burns. I hold the tears. For him too. They don’t get that.
