58. Jude
58
JUDE
The place was fucking weird. It looked normal at the front of the house, but the deeper into it we got, the more obvious it became that this wasn’t just a house. The place was huge, but we already knew that from the drone footage we’d been studying. Now I could see that like most old houses in Europe, there were a lot of rooms, mostly separated from each other.
No open-concept floor plan here.
We wandered through a library and a hunting room, animal heads staring at us from the walls. There was more than one room with sofas and chairs, living rooms or what would have once been called parlors, men in tuxedos, a variety of masks covering their faces, all of them with different women in evening attire, their faces masked like Lilah’s.
I fisted my hands at my side when I saw that some of the women were collared or cuffed with chained leashes, the men holding on to the chains like the women were pets. Some of the women looked angry and defiant. Others, especially the ones without collars or cuffs, looked so docile I thought they might be drugged.
Every room was barely lit, the lights low, fires flickering from the fireplaces in almost every room. The decor was gaudy and carnal: red velvet and dark wood and giant paintings in heavy gilded frames.
And Ghost had been right about the paintings — they were weird as fuck too.
At first glance they looked like classical art, the paint heavily and masterfully applied, the frames thick and ornate. But a closer look made it clear these paintings had been made for this house.
For this purpose.
People were fucking in most of the pictures, their faces masks of pleasure and pain, but they weren’t just fucking. Men held bloody knives over the slashed bodies of the women they fucked. Some of them were painted biting the women, eating them like cannibals while they were still inside them.
I felt like ice water was dripping down my back, my body shivering in revulsion while my mind raged. There were rich people and there were rich fucks and the people in these rooms were rich fucks.
Sick fucks.
People who used their money to hurt those who were vulnerable.
Like Lilah.
No. I rejected the thought as soon as I thought it, as soon as I turned my head to look at her, magnificent in the green dress that looked like it had been poured over her body, the mask only making her green eyes more vibrant, her lush mouth more sensual.
She was trying to act docile like Rafe had said, but I knew her, knew her body, and I could tell from the straight set of her spine and the way her eyes flashed that she was ready to fight.
She’d been vulnerable once. Rafe, Nolan, and I hadn’t been rich fucks then, just fucking assholes, but we’d taken advantage of her and we’d have to live with that for the rest of our lives.
And Lilah wasn’t vulnerable anymore. Not like she had been.
We snagged champagne glasses off the tray of a passing server and I looked around, trying to get the lay of the land. We needed to find an office, somewhere there might be hard evidence of what was going on here, of what these men were doing.
I couldn’t read Rafe’s and Nolan’s expressions behind their masks, which was probably just as well.
A man with a silver mask stepped close to Lilah, reaching for the tag dangling from her wrist, and I had to suppress the urge to break his fucking arm.
“Careful,” Rafe said, his voice low and threatening. “This one’s our pet.”
The man smirked. “Then you can bid for her like everyone else.”
He removed a small golden notebook like the one the doorman had handed to the Bastards on the way in and wrote down Lilah’s number with the attached pencil.
He leered at her. “Until we meet again.”
I was glad he beat a hasty exit. Rafe’s jaw was tense, Nolan’s shoulders coiled tight. I knew they were fighting the same urge I had to tear the man limb from limb for daring to touch Lilah.
The urge to get the fuck out of this place — to get Lilah out of this place — was so strong I wanted to crawl out of my fucking skin.
From the looks of things, the first floor was one giant playroom. I was guessing the computer and security rooms were upstairs. Same for an office — if there was one — where we might find paper evidence.
The grand staircase at the front of the house was too exposed for any of us to make our way to the second floor without being noticed, but I knew houses, and old ones like this usually had more than one staircase.
I looked casually around, trying to get a feel for the layout and where the kitchen might be, knowing secondary staircases often led to and from the kitchen in old houses, all the better for the servants to go unseen because god for-fucking-bid the help should be seen.
I needed to break away, get to the kitchen without being noticed.
I’d no sooner had the thought when a bell rang through the house. The murmur of conversation paused, and the crowd started moving toward the back of the house.
What the fuck?
Rafe met my eyes and took Lilah’s wrist to lead her in the same direction. It was something he never would have done in another situation, but here we had to treat Lilah like property or risk standing out.
Her eyes flashed, but she let him lead her to the back of the house with the rest of the party attendees.
I kept my eyes peeled for a chance to slip away but never found it. The movement of the crowd was almost hypnotic now, an undercurrent of tension and sex permeating the air.
Over the heads of the crowd, I saw that we were approaching a massive set of carved black double doors. Our movement slowed as we approached the bottleneck, and a few minutes later we were inside another room.
And this was no parlor.
It was a ballroom, but not just any ballroom. It was more like a theater, with a balcony section surrounding the main floor, wide open except for a red velvet platform in the center. Thick gold chains were bolted to the corner of the platform, a gold cuff at the end of each chain.
Candles flickered from ornate Gothic candelabras along the walls, the only light in the room.
We were carried toward the platform at the center of the ballroom like a sea of ants, moved along with the crowd like we were hypnotized. I shook myself inwardly, told myself to wake up, stay focused.
Above us in the balcony section, some of the crowd was filing in, their masks dark and forbidding in the candlelight as they congregated near the edge to get the best views of the ballroom floor.
A man wearing a gold mask and a hooded cloak peeled off from the crowd. He was obviously old, his back stooped under the cloak and jacket of his tuxedo, his footsteps slow.
A hush descended over the expansive room as he stepped onto the platform.
“My dear friends, welcome to another Mascarade de Minuit.” His English was accented with French. “Please follow the guidelines presented in your encrypted email.”
Fuck. There had been no encrypted email for us.
“As always, the Showcase is designed to give you a sample of the inventory. In this way, you may measure a suitable match for your purposes. As always, the high bid at climax wins, and the original owner always has the opportunity to outbid on their own inventory after the Showcase.”
He stepped off the platform and the men in the crowd clapped politely, like they were at a fucking golf match.
Another man stepped forward, this one the doorman who had checked our credentials and tagged Lilah. “The first product up for bid is product SB59130br.”
I held my breath and watched as a man in a black mask emerged from the crowd, leading a willowy brown-haired woman in a red lace thong, a matching bustier, and black garters and stockings. The top half of her face was covered with a sequined feathered mask in red, black, and gold.
He stepped onto the platform, then tugged on the chain when she stared defiantly up at him.
She stumbled over the edge, then righted herself and stepped onto the platform.
I practically held my breath as he started kissing her, his hands slipping inside the bustier to fondle her nipples. She stood stoic and stiff as he thrust his tongue in her mouth and he grabbed her face, squeezing her cheeks together and shoving his tongue deep inside.
Someone in the crowd lifted their paddle. The doorman took note and typed on his tablet.
The man turned the woman around and pulled her back against him, then bit her shoulder hard.
The woman let out a strangled cry of pain and another paddle went into the air.
I understood now. The Showcase let bidders gauge the temperament of the women up for sale. It let the men determine if the women were docile or feisty, if they’d fight or submit.
The anger that had been simmering in my veins started to boil.
The man on the platform tugged at the woman’s underwear and the sound of the fabric ripping tore through the silent crowd.
He tossed the underwear aside and put his hand on the woman’s back, shoved her upper body down so that she was bent over at the waist, tits and hair hanging.
The man stepped away from the woman to give the crowd a better view of the woman’s spread legs, then slapped her ass.
She said something angry in a language I didn’t recognize and four more paddles went up.
The doorman was busy now, clocking the raised paddles, noting their numbers.
I looked at Lilah, saw that she was frozen and staring at the platform, wished I could sweep her into my arms and take her away from this place.
Wished she’d want me to.
But I knew she didn’t. We were here to get intel on Imperium Fratrum’s operation, and that was what we were going to do.
The man on the platform stepped behind the woman and unzipped his pants, then freed his cock. He positioned it between the woman’s thighs and thrust into her hard and fast.
She cried out in pain and let loose a string of curse words that sounded like Czech.
Several paddles went up in the crowd.
He fucked her hard and without emotion, and the woman gradually quieted until he finished, grunting as he came, his face expressionless.
Several paddles were still rising in the crowd, the doorman tapping furiously on his tablet.
The man put his dick back in his pants and tugged the woman to an upright position. She was crying now, her earlier fight gone, and she let him lead her off the platform and back into the crowd.
An expectant hush settled over the cavernous room.
“The next product up for bid is 2654135BL.”
I looked around, but for a long moment, no one moved.
Then Lilah stepped forward.