Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Col stares straight at me while replying, “He is already a registered bidder. She will lure him. She already has.” He drifts his eyes back to his comrade. “Then Rimi will take him down.”
3
GHOST
While tapping the end of my cigarette on its pack, I scan the senile yet still murderous men in front of me. Blue pills are no longer helping them, and they’re too old to request a discount from the whores who regularly dirty their sheets, so they’ve resorted to this.
A wife for purchase.
Or maybe I should say hire since most barely last a week and come with a ’thirty-day-guarantee’ all men in this room take advantage of.
They’ll be chewed up and spat out before being replaced with a doppelganger lookalike. Only the ones with exceptional fertility and tasty cunts last a year. But still, by the time they give birth, they’re replaced with a younger, fancier model.
Most of the men in this room could find their own virginal wives to train if they weren’t so spineless. They don’t know how to keep a woman in line. They’re as soft and pitiful as the bounce of the woman’s breasts who’s being auctioned in cubicle number three. She is barely the age to breed, so the men bidding ten thousand a piece don’t want her for a wife.
They want her cunt, and they want it bleeding.
“How much longer?” I ask Kirill, frustrated to have been dragged here while the waters are still extremely murky.
Rumors are circulating, and none of them are in the Bobrovs’ favor. We have a target on our back, a fucking big one, but no one is listening.
“I don’t trust these men,” I murmur in Russian, my tone low enough to ensure no one from the Popov crew hears me. “Since when have the Petrettis and Popovs worked together? They’re meant to be enemies.”
“Enemies with the same objective.” Kirill spins to face me, his age almost half of the men surrounding us. “To eradicate a mutual hierarchy.”
I breathe out a husky chuckle. “They tried and failed, remember? Blood was shed for months when Henry caught wind of the travesty.”
But you wouldn’t know that since you ran to Russia like a coward.
I wonder if I said my thoughts out loud when Kirill’s eyes narrow into tiny slits. I assume it is in response to my snipe but learn otherwise when they bring in the next lot of women to be auctioned.
Bland.
Demure.
Not a single interesting item up for auction.
They’re either brain-dead from being beaten into submission or so fucking high on drugs they have no clue where they are or what is happening.
“If you want to fuck a corpse, we could visit the local morgue.” I choke on the last half of my rile when the final member of the group of twenty enters the room. She is flanked by prospective bidders in under a second, and although she has the same manufactured walk and stare as the group in front of her, she is the only one to lock eyes with the people swarming her.
It is fascinating to watch a lamb enter a slaughter yard without the slightest quiver in her knees.
I’ve only ever seen such a riveting sight once before in my life.
When the redhead’s eyes finally reach mine, a spark in them almost knocks me on my ass. It is a defiant glare that makes my blood pump faster and my hands sweat.
She is a challenge every man in this room wants to solve.
Including me.
Except there’s one difference between the other bidders and me.
I never lose, and she is now of age.
4
KATIE
The evilness in the room is stifling, depriving the large space of oxygen. I feel sick to my stomach when I’m paraded on stage like my life isn’t worth anywhere near as much as the men swarming me. I’m stared at with belittlement, poked and pinched without remorse, and then there is him. The blond-haired man at the back of the pack. Half of his face is shadowed by the poor lighting, but I can’t miss that his hand is minus the bidding paddle most men are holding.
He watches me under the same set of hooded eyelids though, and although his stare is still startling, it doesn’t have my skin crawling like the men hovering in close to get a prime spot. He is also at least half the age of the men surrounding us but still most likely a decade older than me. He looks uncomfortable like he is out of his depth as much as me.
As horrendous as this is for me to say, he is my lifeboat in a stormy sea, hence, my prolonged stare. I’ll quiver if I continue scanning the room, thus not only increasing my bids but doubling the likelihood of me being purchased by a man like Ivey’s ‘husband.’