Chapter One

Massimo

Her.

I sit straight in my seat, adjusting my suit jacket as she shrinks from the too-bright spotlight on her.

I am beginning to feel bored out of my fucking mind, and two-finger taps away from bolting out of this glassed framed, semi-banquette-styled cubicle until they shove her toward and into the limelight.

I have been digging my fingers into the leather of the cushion and pushing the teak table in front of me with an untouched crystal glass of Negroni on it every single time they bring out a new girl.

I can’t do anything. It’s a fool’s errand. Besides, I am in no position to do anything to the men surrounding me when I am here for exactly the same reason as them. It doesn’t matter what my intentions are. I am here to buy, which makes all of us in our respective cubicles the same shade of twisted. The men selling, they’re on a different level of fucked up in the head. Caruso is the leader of that deranged bandwagon.

A thick bodyguard with a villain mask pushes her forward and manhandles her to stand still as her feeble legs give in, unable to hold her weight. Bruised and discolored knees knock together.

The condescending way they treat the women makes my blood boil, and my fingers ache to reach for the holster beneath my suit and open fire on them. And it is the propellant pushing me like a robot on a mission, so I just keep painfully digging my nails into the leather cushion of my seat.

I keep my eyes on her. The bonus sample, is what they call her. Item twenty-six, even though she is the eighth paraded for the exhibition today.

Alessandra.

Alessandra was announced as if she was walking in like this is some evening reality show, and we’re a family sitting at a fucking round table to watch. She is treated like a buy-one-gets-one-cheaper packages. No, more like the, we’ve sold our best products and decided to put out an expired one for a ridiculously discounted price to sweeten the pot for our loyal customers. A fucking clearance sale.

I reach for the glass of Negroni, about to take a sip, then I remember the shark den I’m in. Alcohol on a night like this will not do me any good, especially with the irritation simmering in the pit of my stomach. Also, there’s the fact that this drink might have been poisoned. I’m on the Camorra’s side of New York City, and though we pretend to be on good terms when we talk with them, we never see eye to eye on anything, and I wouldn’t put it past them to seize the opportunity of a night like this to kill me.

I retrieve my hand. Shame. I love anything with Campari in it. I live for the bitter herb taste that lingers almost immediately after the sweet fruity taste hits. I turn my attention back to what is most important at this moment.

She will do the trick.

I place the index finger of my free hand, the one that some seconds ago had been trying to dig into the dark leather covering of the cushion, on the red button of the buzzer on the armrest of chair I’m sitting on.

The cubicle is soundproof, so you can and sample your products while waiting for the rest of the exhibition show. It is also dimly lit with violet light bulbs to aid your sexual need, with a display section for sex toys and torture weapons at your disposal but no provision for aftercare. The focus is not on taking care of the woman but rather on taking from her to care for your own needs. It can fit more than two people, even though the gold ticket admits one person per cubicle to this section of the exhibition.

The place is as sophisticated as a Royal ball party hall. The first area is the main entrance, where the partying takes place. A masquerade with adult shows, a distraction from what this night is really about. The second section is for auctioning precious stones and relics.

The last is only for the gold-ticketed people, and this is where I am. You walk in here with your mask on and get escorted to a shimmering gold cubicle with a glass front, that is dark when you look from the outside but clear as a crystal when you step inside. There’s a secret exit that leads to a car park and hangar. Anybody here for the auction leaves through the private door to their cars and private jets. Hefty-armed men in expensive suits wait strategically in place.

This section is for purchasing human goods. Women like her. Caught, groomed, and carted off to the highest bidder.

She will do the trick.

“One hundred thousand dollars,” the auctioneer in a gray two-piece suit and thick-looking goggles resting on his too-large nose hollers, like he has been doing all night, into the gold microphone wrapped in his sturdy palm.

There’s something about her. I can’t place it. Something that makes me want to leave this place with her.

I was beginning to think my listening to Claudio, my cousin and confidante, when he had suggested that this was the best way to fix my self-imposed problem, was futile. None of the girls interested me. They all looked the same to me, with hopeful eyes that they could somehow find freedom. But not her, she lacks life and the fight I’ve seen in others, although her every trait contradicts that hopelessness.

Her espresso hair mocks all the brutality she has experienced with its luster of lengthy richness and wavy strands styled upward in a pony tail draping down to her lower back. Those bottle-green eyes remind me of my first beer as an underage. The deliciousness of being lawless as I walked into bars and found no one bold enough to stop me from ordering Peroni. Then, the color of the leash she has around her neck, a color I like to see when I deal with an enemy. A color that makes the perfect bow for any present. Red. Her bare feet on cold black tiles ignite a kindred spirit in me, because sometimes it has been my only antidote for cooling off my roiling blood when triggered.

My eyes travel up to her face and down her naked, malnourished, and bruised body. The way her scar-masked skin covers her body looks like a balloon stretched over rocks. You can see every contour and feel every ridge. I scan with my eyes down below her knees, to her wobbly feet. Her bruised bluish-toes curl. She is trembling, not necessarily from fear but weakness.

Nothing my surgeon cannot fix.

My finger lingers on the red button with a paper light touch. Just a little more pressure and the buzzer will go off, allowing them to hear me when I speak and perhaps indicate where the voice is coming from. It is important to know when to make a move.

I wait.

No other buzzer goes off, nobody is rushing to buy this one like they did with the others. They were defiant and regal, regardless of the fear in their eyes, because they were yet to have masters as slaves. They feared their fate but had no idea what awaited them. The buzzers kept going off, it was like rush hour. The pricks around me wanted something whole so they could break it. The twisted psychos, who probably maimed their toys as children for no reason other than that they were theirs to toil with, kept bidding. Now they’re grown men with the same sick need to tame, break, and dispose of when bored.

But she is different. She is broken goods. She’s like a toy that has been hammered repeatedly by a temperamental kid and been disposed of.

Her trembling, propelled by her bitter past experiences from another owner, is glaring. She knows her fate. She knows what awaits her. The patches of bluish-gray on her skin are her badge of survival. That’s how I see it.

The auctioneer sighs heavily into the microphone, then sucks his teeth in a fit of irritation.

I keep my eyes on her.

The way she dips her head, the way her chin drops, and her eyes stay on the ground even though she can’t see any of us through the thick clouded frame of the cubicle. The way her fingers dig into her palms. I can feel her holding her breath from my cubicle. I can feel it because of the visible way in which her clavicle protrudes like it will break out of her skin.

Broken, that’s what she is. I am sure that when I will trace her skin, I’ll find ridges from poorly patched shards, like a broken mug glued carelessly and hastily together by a kid trying to outsmart his parent.

She is trying hard to look defiant, seeing no one is taking the bidding price for her. I’m guessing it will start dropping from one hundred thousand dollars to a number so worthless someone might take pity and take her home like she was a lost dog.

“One hundred thousand dollars for this one,” the auctioneer reminds us, just in case we might have forgotten or didn’t hear him the first time.

Now it will go down if someone doesn’t do something.

Or so I imagine. I have never been to these functions. I’m simply applying the rules of the business world. It isn’t that she is not worth more than that. If we’re being honest, no one exhibited tonight can compare to her. There is something striking about her. Like that good feeling you get about a property, even when it is nothing but debris. Even if the owner of the property sees it as having no value.

We want the gain, we have guessed the market value by just looking at it, but we will play the seller’s game till we get what we want.

I fiddle with my signet ring on my index finger with my thumb and glare at Claudio sitting across from me, in a black dress shirt and pants, with a brown leather holster strapped around his upper body. He glares back with black hooded eyes.

I should not be here. We should not be here.

If not for the godforsaken Mancusos, with their marriage proposal. Fucking crazy family, if they think I will come on board as a son-in-law. As if I would give my loyalty the same way I would to my family.

Their desperate need for heirs is about to cost me.

I didn’t think that was what the meeting would be about. I thought it would involve some underground business considering the urgency my father had attached to it, even though I knew it wasn’t anything that needed cleaning up with bullets. While I am the apex weapon for that, I will never do business the Mancusos way. They’re not to be trusted. Power drunk, recklessly disrespectful of human lives. They do not just go after their enemies but everything and everyone around them. They took innocent lives on their last operation because a partner decided it was time to end business with them. To get him through his grandchild, they’d blown up a school bus full of schoolchildren.

Assholes.

That is not the kind of family I want to marry into. We can do business, but no way in hell I’m joining our empires in marriage. A marriage between Mancuso’s only child and heiress, Vittoria Mancuso, and me, the heir to the Gaeta empire.

I can afford to get myself out of this situation because my family is heavy enough to tilt the scales . But the Mancuso family is still trouble.

The Mancuso family is undoubtedly king in the underworld, but there are people higher up than him the kingmakers. We, my family, are the Kingmakers. We have infiltrated the political system, and we twist and tweak politics to our liking. We say who gets power and how much of it. We decide who stays at the top of the food chain and for how long.

And as the underboss to the Gaeta empire, I can afford to twist and bend. But as with everything, wisdom is profitable to direct.

Everyone had already agreed that the marriage to Vittoria wasn’t a bad idea, giving their blessings before asking for my opinion. Fuck it. They invited me to tell me, Massimo Gaeta, about my wedding.

What my father wasn’t expecting, what none of them was expecting, was for me to say I had fallen in love with someone else, and that’s the person I want to be married to. That I had already given my word. In the underworld, for men of substance like us, for a man like me, our word is everything. I never take it back. I could say I have eight balls and they’d believe me immediately, no need for proof. But saying I had fallen in love was the most impossible thing they’d ever heard.

Knowing the Mancusos, I knew they’d bite. They don’t take no for an answer, but no one tells me what to do.

The silence that ensued in my father’s study when I refused was total. Eyebrows raised to question my reason for giving up such a merger, but no one dared pressure me They’ve seen how I get when I’m in love with something, anything.

It is the first lie I have ever told. I don’t talk if I can’t speak the truth. I have always felt lying is for the weak. No one intimidates me enough, and also, I don’t give a sparrow’s fuck about anyone, so I do not worry about hurting their feelings with the truth.

So I lied. Not just that, I went even further and told a second lie. That the nonexistent woman I’m so in love with, who made me turn down a business merger like the one presented to me, is engaged to me. And that lie is one-half of the reason I’m in this exhibition, surrounded by men like Louis Mancuso.

I’m no saint, but this is not my kinda place.

The other half of the reason I’m here is that I had said I would bring my fiancé to the family dinner a few weeks from now.

And as soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I was fucked. That I had to make it happen. My words hold a weight, so if I say I will do something, I will, and I never take it back. If I say I have a fiancé I’m in love with and that I will bring her to the family dinner, then I sure as hell have a fiancé that I will be bringing to the family dinner. The love part is something to worry about, but I’ll think of that after I find my fiancé.

While this might not be the most conventional way to make a marriage proposal, this appears to be the best solution right now. I will own her for as long as I want. She will do what I command her to do without questions, not to mention without drama. For my peace of mind, this is the best way out and she fits the profile. I want Vittoria as far away from me as possible. I can barely stand being around people, period, but she is a different breed of nasty.

When Claudio suggested this idea, I almost threw my whiskey glass at him. But, after sleeping on it, I find that it’s a one-size-fits-all kind of deal.

“A hundred thousand dollars,” Mr. Auctioneer groans into the microphone.

Almost time.

She’s shaking harder now, no longer hiding it or trying to. Maybe she is just too tired from standing that long on weak legs.

“A hundred and five,” I make my bid, starting slow.

“A hundred and ten thousand,” a different male voice booms, and she lets out a weak gasp, not of relief but of fright.

The voice sounds Hispanic, but everyone here knows that no voice sounds anything like the real voices. The mics are programmed to alter voices and accents, but from inside your cubicle, you can see what cubicle the voices are coming from.

I lift my eyes to look at the micro screen at the top of my cubicle showing the number twelve. That’s Camorra. The fucker is always on my trail. Now he wants what I want?

“Going for a hundred and ten thousand dollars,” Botched Nose shrieks into his mic. He looks around like he can see us.

I press my index finger on the red button.

“A hundred and fifty,” I sit back, relaxing. I don’t have the time to play around with the Camorra.

Her lips part slightly, and she gasps again, her bony ribs showing her drawing in the air.

Claudio has a smirk on his face. He reaches into the pocket of his dress pants… let him not pull out a coin. Damn it! He pulls out a coin. That shit is distracting but calms him. He starts to toss it in the air, and I fight the urge to toss him and his coin out.

“A hundred and fifty,” Botched nose lifts his hammer to slam.

“Two hundred,” from the same damn cubicle.

“Three hundred,” I ball my fist.

“Three hundred and fifty.” Caruso is having fun.

Fuck me. He told me the number of his cubicle for a reason and waited until I walked into mine. He knows it is me. He has been waiting for me to make a bid on any of the products. This long dragged-out stupid game of who is superior is getting under my skin.

I fell right into his trap when I continued with the bid. I can let her go and just wait for another one to come out. I can let him have her, let him win just this time. But I like a good challenge. She is the first product he’s making a bid on, so it will be good to beat him to it in his domain. Sick, but I like it. There’s a part of me that likes to think that what is mine came with a little bit of challenge. That I earned it, just like everything else in my life.

I want her. It’s a matter of honor now, and I’m not one to lose. There’s only one thing to do to make him stop, set the bid so high he’ll think I’m insane. That is probably what he wants. Giving him that is not as bad as losing her to him.

“One million,” I offer. Let’s end this tussle. My tolerance is low.

I do not miss how, for the first time since the spotlight came on, she lifts her eyes to look at my cubicle.

Claudio is staring at me like I’ve lost my mind. At least he is no longer tossing.

Why spend more on a property than the seller is asking for?

Because a few weeks from now, this property will carry a name that is one of the most powerful names in the whole of New York State.

This property will be my woman.

My wife.

Mine.

And that doesn’t come cheap.

I hope to hell she is worth every penny because otherwise Claudio will face my anger for this stupid stunt.

For his sake and hers, she better be.

Chapter Two

Alejandra

Please, not again.

My quaking legs knock and I almost stumble forward but find my balance by pressing my bruised toes onto the cold black tile floor beneath my feet. They still hurt from the last time Signor E had trampled on them repeatedly with his pointed shoes.

My eyes ignore the beeping green light at the top of booth number six directly in front of me and stay on the clouded glass masking the person I want so badly to see.

They have no right. No right to do this to anyone. No right to keep taking from me.

That person sitting in there just robbed me of my chance for freedom for an insanely high price. Not the type of freedom one is expected to hope for after living as I have for three years, but the kind that utterly sets free with no care or worry for healing and the future.

The future they robbed me of. I had worked and studied so hard to get a chance at the future I had dreamt of constantly as a child. I felt the universe was beginning to hear me when I got a scholarship to Naples. I felt I could finally be an architect. I could build something that would not only capture the eyes but enthrall the heart as well, like the Alhambra with its stucco walls, intricate plasters, and honeycomb patterns.

But that was long gone now.

Three years gone.

“One million for Alessandra,” the auctioneer announces like anyone would dare to bid higher than that.

I hate them all, but there is one thing we can all agree on tonight. And that is the simple fact that there is a madman in booth six.

One million for Alessandra. Not Alejandra. Not the dreamer who wanted to become an architect.

One million for the naked whore on this stage, passed down to master after master, to be used and reduced to nothing.

Not Alejandra, who enjoys sketching in the evening sun, who loves to run her fingers across the walls of grand buildings to teleport herself to another era and daydream of being there when it was being built.

That person is kept safe, locked away until there may ever be freedom for her.

I stopped trying to correct them on the first day when they asked my name and the man named Caruso, who was sampling us, said Alessandra instead of Alejandra. I had corrected him and got a fist bumped into my face. I felt the ring for days after.

He took my name away to strip me of my power and identity. But he didn’t realize he was giving me the strength to face the brutality. Knowing Alejandra is safe and away from all of this gives me something to hold on to. Something to look forward to.

One million dollars.

Why would he pay that much when he could have gotten me for way less? Why would anyone pay that much for me? What does he hope to do with me? What will he expect me to do to give him his money’s worth?

I bite down on my chattering teeth, fighting back every tear that’s prickling my eyes as I keep them on the glittering booth, breaking the rules.

How dare he? How could any of them? When does this end? Will I ever find freedom?

I was pounded, bruised, my bones broken, to stop me from meeting the eyes of Signor E when he newly got me. I started to realize that what I had been told back when I had a life I took for granted was true.

Back when I had friends I didn’t want to hang out with but pretended to like so I wouldn’t appear vulnerable. Back when I would deliberately skip meals and spend my time scrolling on social media. When I would rather stay in my bedroom reading or writing than hang out with family and friends on special holidays. I had been told then, by friends, families, and even strangers that my eyes sold me out. That they give away every secret I try to hide.

My eyes gave him everything he needed to know. They gave away my fear even when I pretended to be strong. They told him how hungry I was when I fought to stay on my feet after going days without food. My eyes gave him satisfaction and I had to remove that power from him.

I started to keep them on the ground as a form of self-preservation. I would look anywhere but in his eyes, all their eyes. Men that could reduce a human to an object. Men who overstepped boundaries and violated. Men who brought doom to women like me. Men that are predators and prey on women like me for pleasure.

I bow, dipping my head and lowering my upper body, taking back my power. I cannot see him but I know he can see me. And what I do not want is for him to see all the things I don’t want anyone to see. Those are mine. My thoughts are mine to keep and protect.

My body belongs to Alessandra and is for them to toil with. My thoughts are Alejandra’s and are hers to keep, hers to protect.

The point where my stomach meets my chest burns as my anxiety creeps through my veins, provoking another shaking fit that almost sends me falling on my face. I plant my feet on the floor with more firmness, straightening my back.

This will never end. No one is coming to save me.

When I was newly abducted, I fall asleep imagining a hero showing up to save me. I would imagine the police bursting through the place and saving me before they did any irreparable damage. But the days turned to weeks, the weeks turned to months, and the months to years. No police. No help. No hero.

Once again, I am being auctioned.

I know the fate that awaits me if no one takes me home. I have long since given up hope of being found and freed. I have forgotten what the wind feels like on my skin, what the banter of people from the neighborhood sounds like as the sun plays hide and seek behind the clouds.

I have forgotten what it feels like to be a daughter, a friend, and a sister.

I have forgotten what it feels like to be a woman with desire or a crush. What it feels like to demand respect, to not be violated or disrespected. I have forgotten what it feels like to be a human with rights and basic needs, dreams, and plans. I have forgotten what the taste of a freshly made meal feels like. I have forgotten the taste of my favorite chocolate ice cream and how I always allowed myself a sweet treat on weekends.

I have forgotten how to live or why to live.

After years of what I have been subjected to in the hands of Signor E, I want death more than water, even though I am extremely dehydrated. I have been refusing to eat or drink these past days before the auction. I needed to attract the grim reaper, for him to follow me in my wake. I need to call him with my starvation so he smells the scent of death on me and comes to take me with him.

I want death. I was so close to having it. So close. Now… I grind my teeth, stiffening my spine and holding my breath as a panic attack starts to brew, making my sight blurry. Maybe if I can avoid breathing just a bit longer, I will be able to escape this. I’ve been practicing this technique for a month now.

I chose this way to find freedom again, to give my worn soul some rest. I have come to accept my reality. No one is coming for me. No one will find me. No one will set me free but me. And if there’s a chance for Alejandra to survive, Alessandra must die. Maybe if I make that happen, she will have a chance in another lifetime.

I begin to feel dizzy and lightheaded. My lungs swell, and my stomach heats up.

When Signor E had told me he was bored of me and brought in a new girl, I thought he would do it himself. I was relieved. I went to bed on the cold floor like every other day, only this time I felt something I hadn’t in the three years. I felt warm inside, akin to happy.

I wanted nothing more from than to put me to rest. But he had other plans. He sent me to them and asked that they help him dispose of me. I had hoped they would set me free but instead, they have other plans for me. They will keep using me until I live.

Even when I don’t get bidden for, as has been my plight for the past four auctions, they still refuse to set me free. Every now and then they come with the threat of cutting me up in pieces and selling my parts to organ harvesters if I don’t get sold for at least three hundred thousand dollars. I wish for death, but not that way.

My eyes burn, my nose waters as my body shudders from the lack of oxygen. I’m close. If I keep this up, my heart might give up. It has to. Whatever fate awaits me, it might be worse than being dismembered and sold. If anyone can offer that much money, I might as well get ready to be used as the target in some horrifically perverted game.

A ragged palm grips my bare forearm and jerks me, forcing me to gasp warm air and deactivate my self-destruct mission. I keep my eyes down, my fists balled as I suck up air, panting.

“What were you about to do?” His voice comes out distorted, like sounds from a robber behind a mask in a heist.

I don’t look, but I feel him lift his other hand, about to strike me. I know now when a strike is coming without having to look.

“Touch her,” that voice, the same one that had offered one million dollars for a worthless object, booms through the speaker and halts the man his train. The voice sounds like Skipper from The Penguin of Madagascar. Signor E had sounded like a buzzing bee on the first day. I now hate bees.

“I dare you,” he continues.

The grip around my forearm loosens. The man takes a step back, creating space between us.

After feeling like trash for as long as I can remember, I instantly feel like I have some sort of value. The feeling of worth tries to swim through the swamp of worthlessness I’ve been buried in for all this time. I feel a strange sense of safety, even though I know it’s fleeting. No one will touch me now, not in a demeaning way, not here at least. I was going to be kicked or dragged across the floor for being an obsolete object, for not making a sale for them, again.

Three years ago, I had the men calling out and the bids soaring from the moment the bid price was announced. I am sure that if my current master gets tired of me, they will jump on me and claim me again with hopes that I will keep on being a money well.

From my peripheral vision, I see the auctioneer clear his throat and adjust his goggles, loving his role of slamming hammers and reducing humans to objects all too much.

“Sold for one million dollars,” he announces the price and hits his hammer very quickly, as if he fears the bidder will revoke his bid. That clinking sound evokes a tremor in me, sealing my fate.

I have been sold, again.

My panic attack kicks in, and the red leash around my neck begins to choke me. My heartbeat starts a drumming exhibition, as my heart goes crazed looking for a way out. The inside of my stomach gurgles like hot lava and as if the universe finally listens, my breathing hiccups, and gives up.

With closed eyes, a limped body, and shallow breathing, I drop to the floor.

Finally.

Freedom.

Oblivion.

Death.
Thank you.

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