Chapter Two
Viktor
This week has been a fucking mind game.
When I crawled into the back of that limousine, I honestly expected to be stopped.
I waited for the bastards who trafficked me to show up with their goons and guns, beat me half to death, and throw me back into the brothel to fuck women who love the power trip of forcing a man who can’t say no to his knees.
Except, I got into the car without anyone whispering a word to me. We drifted off to a mansion that looks like something out of a dream, and I was given a bedroom.
I have a bedroom.
A real fucking bed. I lie on it and wait for someone to kick me off, to tell me I’m a dog and I belong on the concrete, but the command never comes.
I spend hours in the bathroom. The water is hot—so hot it turns my scarred skin a violent shade of red. I stand there until my lungs are thick with steam, fighting the urge to never leave. Back in that hole, I shivered under a trickle of grey water that never washed the smell of sex off my skin.
They gave me clothes. Designer tags that scratch against my neck. It’s been ten years since I wore something that wasn't a hand-me-down stained with some other guy's piss or a client's perfume.
And the food actually looks like something a human is supposed to eat. No more grey sludge or blended gristle.
With no one forcing steroid injections into me anymore, my muscles have shrunk a little.
But I don’t let a day pass without working out—if I do, I wake up in cold sweats from dreams of being beaten.
I don't go to the gym they offered—I hate crowds.
I hate the way people look at me with pity, sometimes even disgust. People have brought me nothing but pain, and I don't want them looking at me while I train.
So, I stay in my room and use the couch as a weight.
Even though I know—I just know—I’m like a cow they’re fattening up before the slaughter, a part of me prays to never leave here.
For the first time in a long time, I’m being treated like a human being.
I’m not deluded; I know it’s only because they want to use me.
They get a massive cut if some millionaire decides I’m worthy of their bed.
It’s not noble, but at least there are mutual benefits now.
They’re using me, but for the first time, I’m getting something back.
The hope in my chest that says I’ve actually escaped my traffickers stays muffled, though. I can't let it breathe. It couldn’t have been this easy—just selling myself in a different way to buy my life back.
The auction is forty-eight hours away.
This paradise is an illusion. I’m trying like hell not to be positive, to keep my guard up.
But it’s hard to imagine how anything in these upcoming three months could be worse than the decade of filth I just crawled out of.
I’ve been a communal toilet for the dregs of the earth.
I’ve been a punching bag for men who wanted to see if a giant could cry.
What could these rich bastards possibly do that hasn't already been done to me?
The people here gave me a pen and a piece of paper and asked me what my "hard limits" were for the contract.
No men.
All the power to the gay community, but I find men as sexually appealing as a fucking boiled potato.
Back in the hole, the traffickers tried to force it.
They’d shove so many pills down my throat I could taste the chemicals in my sweat, but my dick would always go limp the second a man’s hand landed on me.
Truth is, it’s been years since I’ve looked at a woman and felt a spark of anything other than exhaustion.
There’s something fundamentally wrong with me.
The wiring is fried. But I’ll never tell them that.
If they knew, they’d haul me back to the brothel and let the traffickers finish me off. A toy that doesn't play is just trash.
I added more. No cutting. No burning. I’ve got more than enough scars; I don't need any fresh ones. If the buyer wants to hurt me in other ways, let them. I’m numb to it.
No anal on me.
That was it. The sum total of my dignity on a single sheet of paper.
In two days, I’ll be standing on a pedestal in front of the world’s most polished monsters. I’ll be naked or close to it, waiting for someone to put a price on my misery.
I’ll find out if there’s a level of hell I haven't visited yet.
I’m betting everything I have left—which is nothing but muscle and a broken name—on the idea that I can survive ninety days of whatever sick fuck buys me.