Chapter One #2
My focus narrows until the rest of the office disappears. The monitors, the buyer list, Nico’s quiet curse, Alessandro’s fingers pausing above the keyboard, all of it fades beneath the force of her.
The auctioneer’s voice slips into the background. “Next, gentlemen, we have something with a little spirit.”
Something.
The word lands wrong.
My jaw tightens.
The girl, the woman, stares straight ahead as if she can see every man watching through every hidden screen. There is no way she can. She is looking at a camera, nothing more. Still, something about her gaze feels direct. Accusing. Defiant.
As if she can see me too.
The auctioneer steps into the frame beside her, keeping enough distance to make me wonder whether she already tried to bite him. “A rare beauty. Healthy, untouched by any buyer, difficult at first but trainable with the right hand.”
A sound leaves my chest before I can stop it. Low. Dangerous.
Nico’s attention cuts to me.
I ignore him.
The auctioneer reaches for her chin.
She turns her head away.
He laughs softly, but there is irritation beneath it. “As I said, spirited.” He grips her face harder.
Before anyone can stop her, she jerks forward and spits directly into his face.
For one perfect second, the feed goes silent.
Alessandro whispers, “Porca miseria.”
Holy shit.
The office stills.
On screen, the auctioneer freezes, spit sliding down his cheek. The chat box erupts with reactions. Some amused. Some disgusted. Some eager.
My fingers curl slowly against the arm of my chair.
The woman does not flinch.
Not even when one of the guards steps into frame and grabs her by the arm hard enough to bruise. Not when the auctioneer wipes his face with a white cloth, his smile gone sharp with humiliation. Not when another guard comes close enough that any sane person would understand the threat.
She simply lifts her chin higher. Something ancient and possessive opens inside me.
It’s not soft.
It’s not kind.
It’s not sane.
Mine.
The word is immediate. Absolute. A command from somewhere deeper than reason.
I have wanted things before. Power. Revenge. Silence. Control. I have wanted my father dead, his empire cleaned, my name feared enough that men think twice before crossing it.
But this is different. This is not want. This is recognition.
As if some dark part of me has been waiting for her fury to appear on a screen in the middle of the night and ruin every plan I had.
The auctioneer regains his composure, but barely. “We will begin the bidding at one million.”
The first bid appears before he finishes.
One-twenty.
One-fifty.
Two million.
The buyer IDs flash rapidly.
I see none of them as men anymore. Only threats.
My voice is calm when I speak. “Alessandro.”
He looks at me once. Whatever he sees on my face makes the last trace of humor disappear from his. “How high?”
“As high as it takes.”
Nico uncrosses his arms. “Matteo.”
I do not look at him. “Careful.”
One word. Quiet.
Enough.
Nico is the only man in this room who would push me because he is the only one who has earned the right. He has stood beside me since before my father’s blood dried. He has killed for me, lied for me, dragged me out of rooms I should have died in. But even he knows there are lines.
Right now, every line is wrapped around the woman on that screen.
The bidding climbs.
Two million.
Two point five.
Three.
Alessandro enters our first bid.
Four million.
The chat slows.
A few buyers drop away instantly.
The auctioneer’s eyes brighten with greed, though he tries to hide it. The woman’s face remains hard, but I catch the slightest shift in her expression. Not fear exactly. Awareness. She knows something changed. She knows the room reacted.
She has no idea it is because of me. Not yet.
Another bid appears.
Four point five.
Nico curses under his breath. “That’s R12.”
I know.
R12 belongs to Dorian Vale, a British financier who collects suffering the way other men collect cars. My father entertained him twice. I was sixteen the first time I watched Vale look at a terrified girl and smile.
I should have killed him then.
“Win it,” I say.
Alessandro’s hands pause.
Nico goes still.
I finally turn my head. “Did I stutter?”
“No,” Alessandro says.
The bid hits the screen.
Six million.
The chat dies.
No jokes. No eager comments. No taunts.
Just silence.
The auctioneer’s lips part slightly before he recovers. “We have six million. Do we have six point five?”
I stare at R12’s buyer line.
It flickers. Then goes quiet.
Coward.
“Final call,” the auctioneer says, his voice tighter now.
The woman looks toward the camera again. Her eyes are dark and furious, and for one breathless second, I imagine what they will look like when she sees me in person.
Will she hate me?
Of course she will. She should. I am not foolish enough to think buying her makes me her savior. Men have used money as chains around her life tonight, and I have just placed the highest one.
But there are worse hands than mine.
There are crueler houses. There are men who would enjoy breaking what she has fought so hard to keep intact.
I am not my father.
I will never be my father.
Still, the truth sits between my ribs like a blade.
I bought her.
No matter what reason I give, no matter what I intend to do after, that will be the first thing she knows about me.
The digital gavel falls.
Sold.
The word appears beneath her image.
Her buyer ID is mine.
My chest expands slowly on an inhale that does not feel like relief. It feels like claiming territory in a war I did not know I had entered.
The feed cuts away from her, but I keep staring at the empty place where her face was.
“What’s her name?” I ask.
Alessandro is already searching. “Lot file says Nina. No last name attached.”
“Nina,” I repeat quietly.
The name settles in my mouth. Too soft for the way she looked ready to tear a man’s throat out with her teeth.
Nico studies me. “What are you doing?”
“I just bought her.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
No, it isn’t.
I rise from my chair and cross to the bar, finally setting down the untouched glass.
My reflection stares back at me from the dark window beyond.
Black suit. White shirt. No tie. My father’s office behind me.
My father’s city beneath me. My father’s sins still crawling through the walls no matter how many I cut out.
For years, I have lived by rules because rules are the only reason men like us do not become animals.
Do not touch what is not yours.
Do not make promises you cannot enforce.
Do not mistake possession for loyalty.
Do not mistake fear for love.
And never, ever take a woman because you want her more than you trust yourself.
My father broke every one of those rules.
I made myself into the opposite of him by force.
Then Nina appeared on a screen, furious and unbroken, and something inside me chose before my mind had time to object.
“Delivery is tomorrow night,” Alessandro says carefully. “Same process as Olivia before the reroute. They’ll send her to the location attached to the buyer account unless I change it.”
“My house.”
Nico’s eyes narrow. “Here?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t want a safehouse?”
“No.”
“Matteo, think.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re reacting.” His voice stays low, but steel threads through it. “There’s a difference.”
I turn toward him slowly.
Most men would step back.
Nico does not.
That is why he is still at my side.
“I know what she came from tonight,” he says. “I know what this looks like. You bring her to your house, you keep her there, and what exactly do you think she’s going to see?”
The answer comes too easily.
A captor. A monster. A man who paid for her and brought her home.
My silence is answer enough.
Nico’s expression shifts, not softer, but less sharp. “You said you were done with this part of the business.”
“I am.”
“Then don’t start building private exceptions.”
The words hit closer than I like.
I move back toward the screen, where the auction has continued without my attention. Another woman. Another set of bids. Another nightmare dressed in polished graphics and encrypted security.
“I’m not building an exception,” I say.
“Then what the hell do you call this?”
I look at Nina’s file as Alessandro pulls what little information exists onto a side monitor. Age. Height. Basic medical scan. Capture location unknown. Resistance level marked high.
Resistance level.
My mouth flattens. “I call it removing her from men who would destroy her.”
Nico gives me a look that says he hears the truth and the lie inside it.
Alessandro, wisely, says nothing.
The auction continues for another hour.
I buy three more women through different accounts and reroute them to extraction teams. Each purchase is clean.
Controlled. Strategic. Evidence gathered.
Drivers tagged. Facilities traced. Alessandro builds the network map piece by piece until my father’s remaining filth glows across the screen in lines of red, each one leading to a man who will not see the end of the year.
I do my job. I give orders. I mark names. I decide who dies first.
But part of me remains fixed on a woman named Nina who spit in a monster’s face and looked into a camera like she would burn the world down if someone gave her a match.
By three in the morning, the auction closes.
The screen goes black.
The office remains quiet.
Alessandro scrubs the final trace of our access and sends the package to the secured drive. “We have enough to dismantle three transport routes immediately. Maybe five with pressure.”
“Do it.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
Nico exhales. “That’ll start a war.”
I button my jacket. “No. It’ll finish one my father participated in.”
Neither of them argues with that.
They know better.
War has been circling my family name since before I was born. Men like my father create enemies with every breath, then leave their sons to inherit the consequences. I inherited his money, his soldiers, his territory, and every ghost he thought would stay buried.
But I also inherited opportunity.
He thought cruelty made him untouchable.
I proved blood still leaks from powerful men.