Chapter 6 Caligula
CALIGULA
Jesse leads me through back hallways again, this time to a white room so bright it burns my eyes. The prep room, as he calls it, is a horror movie set dressed as a spa: white walls, chrome surfaces, lights bright enough to perform surgery.
Jesse installs himself in a nearby chair, accepts champagne, and tells the team of handlers—two women, three men, all white-clad and Russian-accented—“This one’s special. Grisha has dibs.”
That must be his owner’s friend. “Tell me about this Grisha?” I ask.
“You’ll like him,” Jesse says breezily, sipping his champagne. “He’s sweet. Well, usually. And just between you and me, honey, Grisha loves to watch. So you’ll have lots of fun with him.”
I knew this place was run by the Russian mob. It just never quite clicked that I might be bought by one of them. I’d prepared my psyche for billionaires, not Bratva. “He might not win the auction.”
Jesse smiles. “Oh, he’ll win.”
I see then what I should have seen before: this “auction” is fixed. The winner is predetermined, and no doubt the price has been agreed upon also. I try to conjure up an image of this Grisha, but instead I find myself thinking about the dark-eyed Giuliano again, his hands on my arms.
I shiver and smother the memory. The only thing I should feel when I think about that man is a healthy sense of self-preservation.
“Take off your clothes,” a handler says, clipboard in hand.
“Here?” I look around at Jesse watching with amusement, at the team of strangers.
“Merchandise doesn’t ask questions.”
They’ll see the bruises the Giuliano left on me. Not much I can do about that, though, so I unbutton my shirt. Each piece I strip off feels like a further surrender, a betrayal of everything my Family ever built.
Instinctively, I try to cover myself. One of the men pushes my hands aside without expression. “Full visibility is required for assessment.”
So I stand there, exposed under the lights, as hands run over me without comment or care. They note the bruises on my arms, but whatever they say about them, they say it in Russian. Jesse gives me a speculative look as my clothes are folded and bagged, along with my backpack.
“Where are you taking those?” I demand. I can’t afford to lose the few possessions I have.
“Merchandise doesn’t ask questions,” the same woman as before tells me.
“Answer me.”
There must be something dark in my voice, some echo of my grandfather, because her eyes widen slightly and she does as commanded. “To be returned or disposed of, depending on the buyer’s preference.”
They lay me out on a padded trolley and begin. Waxing first. I’m not particularly hairy, but they want me smooth all over, and at times the pain that comes when they rip away the strips makes my eyes water. I clench my teeth tight, refuse to cry out.
Nonno Lou once made me watch as he tortured to death a man who had stolen from us. The man screamed, begged. “See how pathetic weakness is?” my grandfather scoffed.
I was seven. The lesson stuck. I learned to endure, and now I fix my gaze to a spot on the ceiling and try to dissociate as they work on me. Jesse pours himself a second glass of champagne, watching everything avidly.
A hand lands between my legs, and I jerk away with a hiss of warning.
“Measurements,” the man tells me. “Just keep still.”
It’s detached. Impersonal. But my body still responds, because apparently my dick didn’t get the memo about dignity. A handler makes a note about it. I stare at the ceiling and fantasize about arson.
One of the men approaches with a nozzle attached to a bag full of water.
“No,” I say firmly.
“Non-negotiable,” he says. “Merchandise must be thoroughly prepared.”
Jesse smiles. “Relax. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Not here,” I say flatly. If I’m doing this, I’m not going to do it in front of Jesse, who pouts as the handler relents and leads me into a private bathroom. I’m very careful not to catch my reflection in the mirror. Because if I see myself, this will be real.
After that low point, there’s a full-body wash-down that I’m apparently not trusted to do myself, followed by a manicure, pedicure, hair trim—though they leave it longer than I used to wear it—and a makeup job focused on making my eyes look enormous and my cheekbones like razors.
Jesse directs from his chair like an auteur.
“More mascara. Accentuate the eyebrows. Bronzer.”
I hate him. I hate myself more. But beneath the hatred, something else is keeping me afloat: the promise of revenge. The more these people humiliate me, the more they will regret it.
One day, I will pay them all back.
At last, they declare me finished. And then three black velvet cases are brought out, opened with reverence, and the head stylist taps his lips thoughtfully as he contemplates them.
I stare at them in horror as understanding dawns.
“Only premium merchandise earns the gold,” he says, selecting the third box.
The cock cage gleams under the lights, deceptively pretty, a filigree sheath. And next to it, a flared plug of the same smooth gold.
Jesse watches from his chair, champagne flute dangling between his fingers. “I got stuck with silver,” he says sourly. “You’re lucky.”
Lucky. I almost laugh.
The fitting doesn’t hurt. The handler works carefully, ensuring nothing pinches as he slides the cage onto me and locks the gold trinket around the most intimate part of my body. A tiny key is placed in a sleek black box with the Obelisk insignia.
“That goes to your buyer when we hand you over,” Jesse tells me. “Grisha will receive the merchandise and the key simultaneously. Symbolic, you know?”
It symbolizes that even my pleasure now belongs to someone else.
And I think—can’t stop thinking—about the Giuliano. What if he ever saw me like this?
The plug comes next. “For your owner’s ease of use,” someone says. “And visual enhancement during the auction.”
I make them take me back into the bathroom for that too. And despite the amount of lube involved, I feel every inch as it enters me. The stretch, the fullness, the strangeness of it. The pressure inside me that somehow makes the cage bite tighter.
They dress me—if it can be called that—in a sheer white toga, a filmy haze that conceals nothing at all.
Daniel King enters and examines me as though I’m a racehorse. I half expect him to lift my top lip to check my teeth. “Use the gold dust,” he says after inspection. “This one deserves the full treatment.”
Gold dust?
They remove the toga and oil my skin, every inch from my chin down covered in a fragrant, shimmering oil. Then comes the gold dust itself, applied with soft puffs of air. It clings to the oil, covering me from my feet right up to my neck, where they blend it carefully into the makeup.
For the first time tonight, I sneak a look at my reflection in one of the full-length mirrors. I see a golden god. A statue. A thing.
Beautiful and soulless and utterly dehumanized.
Jesse stares along with me, awed despite himself. “They’ve never used the gold dust before. You’ll bring in a fortune.”
I straighten my spine. If I’m doing this, I will not do it as a cowering victim. I’ll do it like a Clemenza.
A handler notices the shift and smirks. “Look at that. It knows its value.”
It.
I smile back, cold and imperial. I’ll remember his face. I’ll remember all of them.
“It’s time,” King says. “Not a hand on him, any of you. I want that gold dust completely undisturbed. Jesse, bring him.”
Jesse hands me a gold half-mask shaped like a Roman god—Apollo, or maybe Mercury—and walks me to the stage.
Each step shifts the plug inside me; each breath tightens the cage.
I’m caged, plugged, painted, and walking on bare feet through a corridor toward the sound of clinking glasses and men’s laughter.
But I walk like royalty. Because I am.
Jesse points me to the center of the stage. There’s only a red velvet curtain between me and whatever waits beyond. “Remember,” he whispers, “the more submissive you look, the higher the price. Keep your eyes down.”
He scurries off to the wings.
It’s almost kind advice. But I don’t take it. I can’t—won’t—be a shivering flower. I’ve been stripped of everything except the one thing no one can take: the absolute certainty that I am better than every single person in that room.
I channel my grandfather. His arrogance. His disdain. His iron conviction that the world existed for his benefit.
I will not let these motherfuckers beat me.
The music changes, a trumpet fanfare…
And the curtain rises.