The Auction (Wages of Sin #1)
Chapter 1
Imogen
“Have you heard who’s here?” The whispered question comes from the girl with brown eyes as wide as saucers. In my head, I
call her Kit because she reminds me of the kitten I found hiding beneath a dumpster when I was nine.
I take a furtive look around to make sure she isn’t caught speaking. The tallest guard, the one with a cobra tattoo on his
neck, is staring at the exit. One lone steel door—that’s the only way in or out of this room. The other two guards are watching
us, eyes greedily ogling our bodies like they own us. No doubt imagining all the things they’d like to do if they only had
the chance.
My skin crawls, but I refuse to let it show on the outside. Eighteen years of my life have been spent in preparation for this,
and I will not break. Especially not now that I’ve heard the crowd’s reaction when a girl breaks down onstage. It spurs them
on. Drives their cruelty.
“No, who?” the girl sitting beside me asks quietly, her knees tucked up to her chest and her back to the wall. I call her
Sam because she looks like a character from the kids TV show that I was occasionally permitted to watch.
While our guards observe us still, they no longer seem interested in stopping every attempt at conversation.
I suppose now that we’re so close to the end point, they have no need to prevent us from talking to each other.
From forming bonds that would have made our time together a little less hellish.
Now, it’s certain that we’ll never see each other again.
Many of us won’t make our next birthdays.
But that won’t be me. I’m a survivor. Larissa taught me well.
I remain silent despite our guards’ reduced interest in our conversation. I won’t do anything to incur their wrath. They are
no longer allowed to physically harm us, since we must be unblemished for the customers, but there are other ways to break
a person’s spirit.
And I will not break.
“Lincoln Knight,” Kit whispers even more quietly than before.
My ears perk up.
There are seven girls left in here, and Sam waits for the guards’ leery gazes to drift to the ones on the opposite side of
the room before she risks responding. “No way. How do you know that?”
I stare at the door, perfecting the art of looking like I’m not paying attention to either the girls or the guards while being
finely attuned to every movement happening around me. And most importantly, I don’t want to reveal just how intrigued I am
to hear Kit’s answer. Because Lincoln Knight is . . .
Well, he’s Lincoln Knight.
Billionaire. Recluse. Genius. Psycho. Depending on who’s telling the story.
“I was near the door earlier, and one of the guards told the ugly one that he was here.”
Sam lets out a barely audible gasp. Her legs are trembling, and I have to stop myself from resting a reassuring hand on her thigh.
I figure the ugly one is the guard nearest the door who has an unfortunate overbite that makes him look like his chin has sunk into his neck.
They are all equally ugly to me. Vicious. Pawing. Evil.
But Lincoln Knight. What the hell is he doing here? Of all the labels he has been given over the years, recluse is the one
I know to be true. The man hasn’t been seen in public in over a decade.
“You think he’s here . . . here to buy?” Sam murmurs out of the corner of her mouth.
“Shut the fuck up!” Snake Tattoo bellows, causing both Sam and Kit to clamp their lips together.
Of course he’s here to buy. I guess we can add sick puppy to his list of titles.
I’ve remained as detached as possible for the duration of tonight’s vile proceedings. Years of conditioning can do that to
a girl. I stared ahead, unblinking, as almost every girl to leave the room pleaded and begged for her life. I didn’t flinch
when the crowd cheered as Sam stumbled out the door with urine running down her bare legs. Or any of the times when they clamored
to see more.
Each of us will leave this room in an elegant black dress, but once onstage . . . Well, then we must submit to the will of
the crowd. Show off our assets in whatever way they demand.
But when it’s Kit’s turn to leave—Lot No.
50—something inside me finally cracks. She’s the last to go before me.
The last to be sold into a life of . . .
what? A quick death at best. Years of slavery, torture, and pain at worst. I already know I cannot hope for the former, highly prized as I am.
The daughter of the most infamous disgraced ex-member of the Brotherhood.
Here to atone for his sins eighteen long years after his death.
I suspect most of my peers are aware that the men who attend events like these aren’t here for any kind of benevolent purposes, for anyone who trades in human life cannot possibly be anything other than morally bankrupt.
But I’m blessed to know a little more about the kinds of men who buy women at Brotherhood auctions.
They come from all walks of life, but one thing they have in common is that they are rich and powerful enough to serve the Brotherhood in some way, and to do the kinds of things that ordinary mortals could never hope to get away with, and they act with impunity.
Perhaps this knowledge is not a blessing at all, but a curse.
But it’s not the knowledge of my almost certain fate which nearly unravels me. It’s Kit’s face. Her huge brown eyes swimming
with tears. The wobble of her plump lower lip.
“Move!” Ugly shoves his semiautomatic into the small of her back, and she stumbles forward. And then she lets out a strangled
cry, filled with terror and despair. It has every hair on my body standing on end, but still I don’t move. I don’t react.
Don’t show weakness.
“Please! Let me go. I’ll do anything,” she pleads with Ugly.
“Yeah, you’re gonna, little girl.” He sneers at her, his face twisted with cruelty. How can anyone with a soul partake in
this sick trade? How can anyone look into the face of another human being and then . . .
I blink away a single tear and hope that nobody notices, but thankfully, they’re all focused on Kit. Taking twisted pleasure
in her torment. In her abject terror. The girl is no more than eighteen, if that. Poor thing.
At least I had twenty-one years of my life before this. My upbringing wasn’t without its hardships, but I was alive. I was
always safe. Always untouched. I was eleven years old when I was first told how special I was. How my grandfather managed to spare my life by giving his sworn oath that he would prepare me for this—my ultimate
penance to the Brotherhood for my father’s mistakes.
Kit is shoved out of the room, still crying, and the crowd predictably jeers her for it. I imagined they would have grown smaller and quieter by now with forty-nine lots sold already, but they sound as great in number as they have all night. And even more riled up.
“They’re all waiting for you, ya know?” Snake Tattoo says.
I don’t look at him, keeping my eyes trained on the door.
He steps closer and trails the tip of the barrel of his semiautomatic across my cheekbone. “Lot 51.” He snickers like an adolescent
boy seeing a pair of breasts for the first time.
When he crouches down, his sour breath washes over my face and makes me want to retch. I fight back the instinct and stare
through his disgusting face. “They all want a piece of you, uptight little bitch. Some real sick fucks looking to spend a
lot of money to get their hands on your untouched cunt.”
Panic swims up from my gut, fighting for a stranglehold. But I breathe through it.
In. Out.
One, two, buckle my shoe.
Three, four, knock at the door.
He leans closer, his eyes only inches from mine, and tilts his head from side to side like the cobra on his neck would—right
before it strikes its prey. “And your ass, I expect. Mouth. Nose. Ears. Not a part of you will go unfucked and unused. Traitor.”
I stare, unblinking. In. Out.
Five, six. Pick up sticks.
He leans closer still, and then he licks a trail from my cheekbone over my right eye socket to the top of my forehead. I don’t
flinch. Don’t even blink. I leave his rancid saliva on my skin, where it sears my flesh like acid. My fingertips twitch and
my limbs ache to move, to wipe him off me. Gripped by a visceral need to clean his stench from my body.
But I don’t. I go on breathing.
In. Out.
Seven, eight. Lay them straight.
Mercifully, Snake Tattoo tires of trying to get a reaction from me and returns to his spot against the wall. And now we both
stare at the door.
I go on breathing. Reciting the nursery rhyme over and over while I drown out the sound of the crowd as they force Kit to
strip naked before some sick fuck buys her. I repeat the words like a mantra, until I unlock the safe space deep inside me,
the place where nobody else can ever be. Where nobody can touch me.
“Your turn, bitch,” Snake Tattoo says, yanking me out of the comfort of my trancelike state.
I jump to my feet before he has a chance to lay a finger on me, brush the creases from my black dress, and take slow, steady
steps toward the door. My knees quiver with each small stride, but I go on putting one foot in front of the other. This is
the end, but also the beginning. And every new beginning is an opportunity for change. Perhaps the person who buys me will
not be a devil, but a lonely man—or woman—who simply wants a companion.
I immediately chide myself for such foolish thoughts. Larissa warned me that my mind would try to make bargains like this.
But that is not the reality of the world I live in. Nice people do not come to auctions organized by the Brotherhood. Nice
people do not buy other people from heinous events where women are paraded like slabs of meat. Every new beginning is an opportunity
for revenge. For escape. For retribution.
The door is opened by Ugly, and despite my resolve, it takes a nudge from the barrel of Snake’s gun to urge me through it.
I stumble into the bright spotlights illuminating the stage, and I’m welcomed by a smiling emcee dressed in a smart tuxedo,
looking like he’s hosting a charity auction. Like all of this is in any way normal.
I walk onstage to a chorus of jeers, catcalls, and vile comments about my pussy.
Deep breath.
One, two, buckle my shoe.
Just a few words and I’m back in that space where they can’t get to me. Can’t taint me.
“Now, now, patrons,” says the guy in the tux, his shark teeth glinting under the lights. “I know this one here is tonight’s
star prize. But we’re going to behave with some decorum, gentlemen. There’ll be no seeing the goods until we have some serious
bids. I’m authorized to open at half a million dollars.”
Gentlemen, my ass! Sick, twisted fucks.
The crowd starts up again. But through their lewd comments and their disgusting noises, one loud deep voice cuts through them
all. “Ten million dollars.”
The room falls silent. Tux Guy holds his gavel aloft, his mouth hanging open as he shields his eyes, trying to see where the
voice came from.
I squint, trying to do the same, but the blinding stage lights mean I can only make out shadows.
“We should get to see her virgin pussy at least,” a lone voice calls out, but it’s met with an eerie silence as thick vines
of tension begin threading their way through the room.
My still-trembling knees want to buckle, but I breathe deeply. In. Out. I need to stay focused. Need to be alert to any and
every opportunity to gather any information that may be of any use to me. Knowledge is power, Imogen.
Yet I can’t stop wondering what kind of man is capable of bringing a room so full of evil to silence. Surely only someone
who is more of a devil than all of them combined.
“Any advance on ten million?” Tux Guy asks, his voice shaking with excitement.
Silence.
“Sold to Mr. Knight!”
My knees give way. I drop to the wooden stage with a thud.
Panic overwhelms me.
In. Out.
One, two, buckle my shoe.
“Deliver her to my car,” Lincoln Knight demands.
In. Out. Three, four, knock at the door.
The spotlights seem to grow closer, and I’m blinded by them. Then there are hands grabbing me, lifting me. Instinctively,
I struggle, forgetting all my years of conditioning.
Until I hear her voice. They may touch you. Defile you. They may take your body, my sweet child, but they can never take your spirit. Never have what’s
inside of you. That is yours and yours alone.
I stop fighting, close my eyes, and breathe.
In. Out.
I will not break.