Auctioned & Bred by the BRATVA (Bred By The BRATVA #17)

Chapter 1

Wren

The van shakes violently, causing my teeth to rattle as it hits a row of potholes.

I'm sitting on a metal bench that's bolted to the floor, my hands clutching the edges to keep me from falling off. Something tells me that showing fear right now would be like bleeding in shark-infested waters.

My father didn't even look at me when they came.

That's the part I keep circling back to, the thing my brain won't stop picking at like a scab. He opened the front door, stepped aside, and stared straight ahead while a man with a curling viper neck tattoo and dead eyes said, "She'll do."

She'll do like I'm a couch someone's hauling off to Goodwill.

Twenty-three years of being his daughter, and those were the last words I'll ever associate with him.

The van takes a sharp left and I slide on the bench, catching myself with one hand. The guy in the passenger seat glances back through the mesh divider. He's got a scar that runs from his earlobe to the corner of his mouth.

"Sit tight," he says in an accented voice that sounds all too much like gravel crunching.

I sit tight.

I've been doing that my whole life, honestly.

Sitting tight. Keeping small. Staying out of the way while my father drank and gambled and borrowed from people who charge interest in blood.

I worked two jobs to keep the lights on.

Picked up his prescriptions. Cleaned the vomit off the bathroom floor on Sunday mornings.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, I always knew there'd be a bill coming that I couldn't pay with overtime shifts and coupon clipping.

I just didn't think it would be me .

The van stops. I hear gravel under the tires and the low hum of a gate opening.

I brace myself for a warehouse. A basement.

Some concrete room with a drain in the floor.

Every crime show I've ever watched is playing a highlight reel behind my eyes, and I'm already planning how to scream, who to beg, what to offer that I haven't already lost.

The doors open, and instead of the gray concrete of a derelict warehouse I was expecting, I’m facing the clean white walls of a spa.

Not a strip mall nail salon. An actual, legitimate, high-end spa with a stucco facade and recessed lighting and a woman in a white coat standing at the entrance holding a clipboard.

There are topiaries flanking the door. Topiaries.

Perfectly sculpted little green spheres like this is a resort in the Hamptons, and I'm here for a weekend of hot stone massages and cucumber water.

"This way, please," the woman says. She's got a European accent I can't place and cheekbones that could cut glass. She smiles at me like I have an appointment.

I look back at the van. The guy with the scar is already lighting a cigarette, leaning against the bumper like his job is done. Delivery confirmed. Package intact.

"Miss," the woman says again. Patient. Professional. "We're on a schedule."

I follow her inside because what else am I going to do? Run? In what direction? I don't even know what city I'm in anymore. We drove for hours, and somewhere around hour two I lost track of the turns.

The interior is warm and smells like eucalyptus and something light and floral.

There's soft music playing, the kind with no lyrics that exists only in elevators and therapists' waiting rooms. A girl in scrubs appears and takes my jacket, and another one offers me tea on a silver tray, and it's all so aggressively nice that my skin starts to crawl.

Because nice doesn't make sense. Nice isn't part of the equation when your father uses you to cover a gambling debt.

"We'll start with a bath," the woman with the clipboard says, leading me down a hallway lined with frosted glass doors. "Then hair, skin, nails. You'll be fitted for clothing after measurements. Do you have any allergies?"

"Allergies," I repeat.

"To products? Fragrances, dyes, latex..."

I stare at her. "I don't... no. No allergies."

She makes a note on her clipboard. "Lovely. Any existing injuries I should know about? Bruising, scarring?"

My stomach drops. She's not asking because she cares. She's asking because she's checking the merchandise for damage.

"No," I whisper.

"Wonderful. Right through here."

The bathroom is enormous. White marble, a freestanding tub already filled with milky water, towels folded into perfect rectangles on a heated rack. Two women are waiting inside. They don't introduce themselves. One of them gestures to a robe hanging on the back of the door.

"Everything off, please. Undergarments included."

I don't move.

"Miss, we really are on a tight schedule."

I take my clothes off with numb fingers.

My t-shirt with the coffee stain on the hem.

My jeans from Target. My bra that's held together with a safety pin because I couldn't afford to replace it.

They take each item and put it in a plastic bag like they're collecting evidence, and when I'm standing there naked under the fluorescent light, I see one of them look me over with a small, satisfied nod.

Acceptable. Adequate. She'll do.

I get in the tub.

For the next three hours, I'm waxed and scrubbed and moisturized and plucked within an inch of my life.

They do my hair in soft waves. They paint my nails a shade of pink that probably has a name like Ballet Slipper or First Blush .

A woman I never see again spends forty minutes on my makeup, turning my face into something I barely recognize in the mirror.

My eyes look bigger. My lips look fuller.

My skin looks lit from within, like I swallowed a candle.

I look expensive.

That's the word that keeps surfacing. I don't look pretty, exactly. I look expensive . Like something in a glass case that you're not supposed to touch without asking the salesgirl first.

They bring the dress in on a hanger, wrapped in tissue paper. It's champagne-colored and floor-length and made of a fabric so thin I can see the shadow of my own hand through it. When I put it on, I can feel the air on my skin like I'm wearing nothing at all.

"Beautiful," the clipboard woman says.

I catch my reflection in the full-length mirror by the door, and for one disorienting second, I don't recognize the woman staring back at me. She looks like someone who belongs in this world of marble and eucalyptus and heated towel racks. Someone who chose to be here.

Then I see my eyes.

My eyes still look like me. Scared and too wide and searching for an exit that doesn't exist.

The clipboard woman checks her watch. "The car will be here in ten minutes. Can I get you anything while you wait? Water? Champagne?"

Champagne. She's offering me champagne. Like this is a celebration. Like I should be toasting whatever comes next.

"Where am I going?" I ask.

She smiles that professional smile again, the one that doesn't reach her eyes, and for the first time I see something flicker behind it. Not pity, exactly. Something closer to a warning.

"You're going where all the beautiful things go, Miss."

She clicks her pen.

"To market."