She shut her eyes against the pain, but the auctioneer’s voice kept cutting through her skull—over and over—reminding her that everything she’d once called her own was now on the block, parceled out by Soren for strangers to take.
“It’s painful, losing someone you love, isn’t it?”
His voice was a dull, serrated blade, carving her heart without mercy.
“When my sister died, Linnea, I felt a hundred times more than this. So keep your eyes open. Don’t you dare look away.”
Her lashes lifted, and tears blurred her vision.
The first lot: her mother’s treasured piano. The same one her mother had cradled her beside, guiding her small hands across the keys to play songs written just for her.
The second: her parents’ engagement ring.
The third: the diamond crown her father had commissioned for her eighteenth birthday.
Bids rose sharply. “One million!” “Two million!”
Her chest constricted. “Soren,” she choked, tasting blood, “you can do whatever you want to me—but not to them. Please… give me back my parents’ things. I beg you.”
She pounded his arm with shaking fists. “I was wrong, I admit it. Please, I’m begging you…”
For an instant, his eyes flickered with something almost human. He almost reached to wipe her tears—almost whispered, Linnea, don’t be afraid. I’m here.
Then the moment died. Hatred smothered it.
“It’s easy to get them back,” he murmured. “Several of my partners are here tonight. Appease them, and your parents’ belongings are yours.”
Her grip on his sleeve loosened. “You… want me to sleep with them?”
Could this be the same man who had once beaten an investor bloody for brushing his hand against her leg?
He didn’t answer—only pressed room cards into her palm. “You owe me this, Linnea.”
Nausea rolled through her, her fever from the leukemia stoking her skin hot and cold. Still, she forced herself upright and walked toward the first investor’s room. She had no choice.
---
The door clicked shut behind her.
A portly man advanced, eyes glinting. “So this is the woman Soren kept for five years. Tender indeed. He’s ruined you already—why pretend to be pure for me?”
Her scream went nowhere. The lock held.
He shoved her onto the bed, tearing at her dress. The wound on her back ripped open, white-hot pain shooting through her. She thought she’d learned to live with agony—until the moment his weight crushed down and a sob forced itself past her teeth.
Delirium dragged her under. She was twelve again, clutching her mother’s hand as they bent over a starving boy collapsed by the roadside.
Mom, he’s so pitiful. Let’s take him home.
She had pulled him to his feet, dabbing blood from his face with her handkerchief, never minding the stains on her pink princess dress.
Her father agreed, eventually, to sponsor the boy. Soren.
She had given him her lucky bear. With this, you’ll be as lucky as me.
But he’d refused to stay. When he left, she chased him until she fell, knees bloodied—he never turned back.
---
Years later, her father’s money had made him the new darling of Kingsport. Marriage offers piled at his door, but he courted her obsessively: renting every city billboard for ninety-nine days of proposals, planting a thousand and one roses in Bulgaria, climbing three thousand steps to pray for her safety.
Bleeding from the effort, he had pressed a string of heirloom rosary onto her head.
“Linnea, I love you. I’d die for you.”
She had believed him. Loved him. Married him.
And tonight, he had sold her.
---
After the man was finished, she stumbled to the bathroom, scrubbing at her skin until it burned—but she couldn’t wash the violation away.
Her reflection was a ghost: hollow eyes, wet cheeks, wrists marked with the pale ridges of old suicide attempts.
“Why?” she whispered, voice breaking. “Why?”
She had told him a thousand times she had never harmed his sister. He had never listened.
Through her tears, a brittle laugh tore out of her.
“There’s no going back, Soren. But I’m going to die soon. And then… you’ll never get to torture me again.”
