CHAPTER 2: THE AUCTION

Thursday morning, I called in sick to both jobs.

The lie tasted like metal on my tongue as I gave my excuses food poisoning, no I’m really not sure when I’ll be back, so sorry for the short notice and then I sat in my apartment with the phone pressed to my ear, listening to my manager at the diner sigh in a way that suggested I was on the edge of being fired anyway.

By noon, I didn’t care.

I’d spent the entire night refreshing the Discretionary Elite website, watching my profile accumulate bids like they were breeding in real time. Each notification lit up my phone with a small red bubble that felt like a countdown to my own destruction.

By 2 AM: $1.2 million

By 5 AM: $1.8 million

By 8 AM: $2.1 million

Now, at 11:47 AM on Thursday, the number sat at $2.7 million and climbing.

I had the auction open on my laptop, hidden behind a browser window in case anyone could see, though the only person who might walk through my apartment door was Evan, and Evan was in the hospital fighting for his life. The irony of my privacy wasn’t lost on me.

There was a live feed showing the current bidders no names, just account numbers. A scroll of bids climbing higher. A timer counting down to the moment when someone would own me.

The countdown was set for Friday at 8 PM.

Twenty hours and thirteen minutes from now.

My hands were shaking so badly I could barely navigate the site. I clicked into the ‘bidder information’ section something I’d been avoiding because knowing who wanted me felt more real than just knowing that someone did.

The current highest bidder was listed as A. Blackwood.

No photo. No profile information. Just an account that had been created seven months ago and had placed exactly three bids in that entire time. The first bid had been six months ago on a different profile some girl from London. The second bid had been on someone from Miami four months prior. Both bids had been retracted.

Until now.

Until me.

I clicked on his account, hoping for some nugget of information that would make him feel less like a phantom and more like an actual person. But there was nothing. Just the account number and a single line:

Verified Elite Member. Multiple transactions completed with confidentiality rating: 5/5.

Multiple transactions completed.

Meaning he’d done this before. Had bought nights with other women. Had spent millions on whatever it was he wanted from people like me.

The realization should have terrified me. Instead, it was oddly comforting. He wasn’t some psychopath he was just someone wealthy enough to treat human interaction as a commodity. Someone so rich that privacy came before personality.

I was about to close the tab when another bid came through.

$2.8 million.

Not from A. Blackwood.

From a new account: D. Sterling.

I watched as the numbers climbed. Bid after bid, the two accounts trading places like they were playing a game with millions of dollars as chips.

$2.85 million — A. Blackwood

$2.9 million — D. Sterling

$2.95 million — A. Blackwood

My mouth had gone completely dry. I was watching men bid against each other for the right to be inside my body. For the right to touch me. For the right to experience the one thing I had left that was completely, irrevocably mine.

The strangest part was the detachment. I watched it like I was watching a stranger’s auction, not my own. Like I was a curious observer in my own destruction.

$3.0 million — D. Sterling

$3.05 million — A. Blackwood

The bids were slowing now. The gap between them stretching longer. Five minutes passed without movement. Then ten.

I held my breath.

$3.1 million — D. Sterling

For the first time since the bidding war had started, A. Blackwood didn’t respond immediately. I refreshed the page three times, my heart doing something strange and uneven in my chest.

What if no one else bid? What if D. Sterling was the one who got me?

I didn’t know why that thought made my skin crawl worse than the idea of A. Blackwood winning, but it did. There was something about the way A. Blackwood’s account felt that 5/5 confidentiality rating, the seven month dormancy, the fact that he’d only bid on a handful of women that made him feel less like a predator and more like a collector.

I had no idea which was worse.

The timer ticked over. Forty three minutes left in the auction.

A notification popped up: BID ACTIVITY DETECTED. A. Blackwood has entered a new offer.

I clicked to refresh the page.

$3.5 million.

My vision tunneled. The number was so large that for a moment my brain rejected it. Three and a half million dollars. That was enough for Evan’s surgery. That was enough for recovery. That was enough for him to have a future beyond this hospital bed.

That was enough.

I waited for D. Sterling to respond. Five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen.

Nothing.

The account went dormant. The bid stood. The timer counted down thirty minutes left, twenty-five, twenty and I felt something crystallize inside my chest. Something that wasn’t quite relief and wasn’t quite terror, but existed in the space between them.

This was happening.

At 8 PM tomorrow, I would walk into whatever this was.

My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

Tomorrow, 7:45 PM. Wear something nice but simple. Black car will be waiting at the corner of 5th and Atlantic. Don’t bring your phone. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t change your mind.

The text came from A. Blackwood.

I stared at the message until the words started to blur together. He’d gotten my number somehow. Probably through the site. Probably the moment he’d placed his final bid.

I texted back: I’ll be there.

The response was immediate: Good girl.

Something in those two words the possessiveness, the assumption that I would obey, the casual dominance sent a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with the temperature of my apartment.

I closed the laptop and sat in the dark for a long time.

The next morning, I woke up to seventeen text messages from my mother.

The hospital had called her. Evan had taken a turn. His fever had spiked. The surgery had been moved up. They needed authorization.

They needed me.

I called back immediately, my hands shaking so badly I could barely hold the phone.

“What do you mean he’s worse?” I asked, not bothering with pleasantries.

“The infection is progressing faster than they predicted. The cardiologist said if they don’t do the transplant evaluation today, his heart might not be strong enough to survive the surgery at all.” My mother’s voice had that tight, panicked edge that only came out when she was truly scared. “Lena, they’re asking if you can authorize the procedure.”

“I’m on my way.”

I hung up and grabbed my jacket. The auction was in ten hours. The black car would be waiting at 7:45 PM.

Evan was running out of time.

So was I.

The hospital was chaos. Machines beeping louder than they had any right to. Doctors moving with that careful urgency that meant they weren’t panicking yet but they were getting close.

Evan looked smaller than he had two days ago. Or maybe I was just seeing him differently now seeing him as the reason I was about to do something unforgivable.

“Hey, Leen,” he said weakly from the bed, his voice thin as paper. “You look like someone killed your puppy.”

“Shut up,” I said, but I sat on the edge of his bed and took his hand. His palm was hot and damp with fever sweat. “You’re going to be fine.”

“The doctors said they might do surgery today. That I might not have to wait anymore.” His eyes, the same brown as mine, searched my face. “That’s good, right? That’s what we wanted?”

“That’s good,” I confirmed, and the lie felt heavier than anything I’d ever said.

“You’ll stay?” he asked, and he suddenly looked so young. Eleven years old and sick and scared and completely dependent on someone me who had already decided to sell herself to a stranger for three million dollars.

“I’ll stay,” I promised.

But we both knew I wouldn’t.

At 7:30 PM, I kissed Evan on the forehead and told him I had to use the bathroom. I didn’t tell him I was leaving. Didn’t tell him that when I walked out of this hospital, I wouldn’t come back until after I’d done something that would either save him or destroy me.

The fall evening was cool and sharp. The kind of weather that made you feel alive in a way that hurt. I walked toward the corner of 5th and Atlantic, my heart hammering against my ribs with the force of something trying to escape.

The black car was already there.

A sleek sedan with tinted windows. The kind of car that said money and discretion in the same breath. The back door was open, revealing a dark interior.

I stopped on the sidewalk, one foot on the curb, my whole body vibrating with the sudden realization that I was about to step over a line I could never step back across.

A woman in the driver’s seat older, professional, her face completely neutral caught my eye in the mirror.

“Ms. Carter?” she asked.

I nodded. My voice had stopped working.

“Mr. Blackwood is waiting.”

I got in the car.

The door closed behind me with a soft, final click, and the city swallowed us whole as we drove toward the part of Manhattan where people like me didn’t belong.

What I didn’t know what the darkness of that car kept hidden from me like a secret waiting to detonate was that Adrian Blackwood had been watching my every move since the moment I’d created that profile.

He’d had me investigated. My mother. My brother. My entire life, laid out like a map he could read.

He knew exactly who I was.

And he had no intention of letting me leave.