So silent, it was an assault, not empty silence, mind you, but heavy silence which pressed on me from all sides in a small, windowless room where I had been left to wait. It contained a single piece of the most unforgiving wood in the shape of a chair, and I have been standing for what I feel is the maximum time that I can refuse to use it-with sunk teeth. To use it would mean to accept. To wait patiently for my own slaughter. The air was stuffy and bore the faint cloying scent of a chemical cleaner that can only fail to mask along with sweat and old fear-the old smell of sweat and ancient fear. My fear. And that of whoever had been here before me. Cold perspiration dripped from my hands, and I clenched them into fists at my sides, where my short, clean nails dug into my palms. The mild ache was an anchor, one tiny point of reality in a world that had dissolved into a nightmare.

My father's face flashed in my memory: not the smiling, laughing father of my childhood but rather a desperate, hollowed-out stranger whom he had become. Three nights ago, the image of him filled me-with eyes that betrayed a terror that dwarfed my own, the deep shivering hand-quaking as he succumbed to telling me what he had done. He would call it a deal-it would be called a remedy. He had promised to a man whom he could not repay with money the only currency left; me. The memory was a fresh stab of betrayal exactly so potent that it almost buckled me. I had screamed at him then in a raw, wounded sound. That scream, however, is now caught in my throat-a solid lump of rage and terror that I cannot swallow.

Without a knock, the two heavy men clad in dark suits filled in the door. They didn't speak; they didn't have to. Their expressions were slabs of granite, devoid of pity or interest. One gestured with his chin, a silent command to follow. My feet felt like lead, but some primal instinct for survival forced them to move. I walked between them down a long carpeted hallway, and the plush runner absorbed the sounds of our footsteps, erasing our passage. We were ghosts here.

They pushed open a pair of enormous mahogany doors that led into the great black void of the ballroom. Such a ballroom I had never before seen except in an art history textbook. There were gilded rococo carvings dripping from the ceiling and huge frozen chandeliers dangling overhead, their light purposely dim to cast longer, darker, more menacing shadows. And there were not dances and couples alike; rather, there were armchairs in semi-circle formation encircled around a small, raised platform. It was my very stage. My auction block. The miasma hit me immediately-thick, expensive bourbon, rich cigar smoke, and finally the predatory scent unmistakably belonging to powerful men. It is the smell of a lion's den.

With their grip firm on my upper arms, they directed me up to the platform. The emerald green silk of the dress I wore felt grossly out of place, a gory slash of life in a room steeped in gloom and decay. They had selected it, of course; the color brought out the flush in my cheeks and the burn in my auburn hair. It was for marketing. I was an object to be exhibited, evaluated, and sold. As I stepped onto the dais, a low murmur involuntarily rippled through the assembled crowd. I could feel their eyes on me, dozens of them baring me more efficiently than any touch could. I saw glimmers of them-a gleaming gold watch on a thick wrist; the predatory arc of a smile on a man in the front row; the cold, dead eyes of another who looked more like a butcher than a businessman. My mind hyping itself up and cataloguing the sights in a desperate act of preservation, it was an alive Caravaggio painting trying to survive. Tenebrism at its most terrifying-extreme contrasts in light and shadow with an absolute darkness dominating, the figures up from that black background, faces displaying lechery and cold calculation.

I forced myself to look out, to face the oppressive weight of their collective gaze. I would not cower. I scanned the faces, the indistinct shapes in the gloom. Most were blurs of entitlement and brutish power. But one figure, seated in the deepest shadow at the very back, was different. I couldn't see his face, not clearly, but I could feel him. While the others radiated a loud, boorish energy, his was a void. A silent, immense gravity that seemed to pull all the light and sound in the room toward him. He was perfectly still, a predator conserving its energy, and I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. It was the primal fear of a mouse realizing the hawk is no longer circling, but has already chosen its target.

A flawless tuxedo, a man whose silver hair gleamed under dim light, stepped on the stage beside me. He did not even cast a glance at me, as though I were a part of the furniture. His voice, when he spoke, was a smooth, chilling baritone that slid over the crowd like oil on water, silencing the murmurs instantly.

"Gentlemen," he began, his tone resonating with practiced authority. "Thank you for your patience. We have truly exceptional offerings this night. A rare piece: untouched and of impeccable lineage." He gestured sweeping toward me: his hand stopping shy of touching my back. "Lot 7. Twenty-two years of age. Healthy. Educated." He paused, letting the words dangle on the verge of absorption. "Purity, lineage, and spirit. A rare gem in today's market."

He made me feel as if blood were running cold through my veins at this robotic narration. He was putting on the block a prize filly, not a human being. The same rage burned hotter in my chest-an impotent inferno. I locked my jaw, raised my chin sharply higher, and stared straight ahead into darkness, refusing to look at the auctioneer or the leering faces. I would give them my presence but not my submission.

The auctioneer smiled, an expression that was thin and reptilian. "We shall start the bidding at one million dollars."

The silence hung on that heartbeat-just the one, agonizing. Then, from the front row where the butcher-eyed man sat, up went the numbered paddle. "One million," he ground out.

The auction of my life, my body, and my future had begun.

Such things as "millions" had been dangling over the smoky air. This was to say it marked the grotesqueness of the initial sale of a human soul-my soul. And here it was, as I stood glancing into the front row, at the one whose brutish feature and whose eyes burns like flame chips of flint. That man held in the sky his paddle with a triumphant, approaching-of-ownership type of air. He stared at me like you would a girl after all the meat-she'd ordered a whole side of beef. Those lips twisted into a sneewering sneule-like lip-curling to the crawl-up skin. The auctioneer-nay, maestro of this macabre theater-turned his eyes around the room: "I have one million dollars. A fine beginning for a fine specimen. Do I hear one-point-two?"

A paddle shot up from the second seat onward. Then another add from the side-off. The figures took off climbing with a sickening speed, much like dizzying. Each fresh link was something heavier than its predecessor, being chains forged around me. One-point-two became one-point-five. One-point-five became two. I felt disassociated from my own body, a spectator watching a play about a girl who looked just like me. Of course, my mind did try escape, retreating into those quiet, dusty archives of a university library, able at least to smell old paper and feel the pretty weight of a history book in my lap. But that voice of the auctioneer was a relentless whip, lashing me again.

"Two-point-five million from the gentleman in the front," the auctioneer shouted, giving that caveman which came to be the name Valenti a further zoom over his competitor with a dramatic slam of his paddle down onto the arm on his chair. But Valenti did not just want to win; he wanted to dominate. His hot and suffocating gaze seemed to trap me with the assurance of a future full of cavalier cruelty and rough careless hands. The bile rose in my throat.

The room had quieted. Two-and-a-half million dollars must be a staggering sum-an absolute barrier isolating the serious players from other, fewer serious contenders. For a terrifying, horrific moment, I thought it had come to an end. I was his. The auctioneer began his final call. "Two-and-a-half million dollars going once..."

My heart slammed against my ribs. No. Please, not him.

"...going twice..."

Then, like daggers through heart, a voice from the total blackness of the back of the room spoke. The voice was not loud, but it carried with the chilling precision of a shard of glass cutting through an unfriendly, deaf sound.

"Five million."

A collective gasp swept through the ballroom. Every head, including my own, swiveled towards the source. The voice was calm, almost bored, as if he were ordering a coffee. The sheer arrogance of it, the doubling of the price in a single, quiet phrase, was a display of power more profound than any shout. The auctioneer's cool professionalism broke for a second and then returned. "Five million dollars!" he boomed-in his voice and level of excitement. "The bid is five million from the gentleman in the back!"

That brutish face in the front row twisted himself in his chair, his features becoming a mask of furious rage. He glared into the shadows as if he were trying to work out just where this new rival of his was. "Five-and-a-half!" he growled, his voice a raw snarl.

The return came instant, as quiet and edged as before. "Ten."

Ten million dollars. It was an impossible, obscene number. It was no longer an auction; it was a declaration of war. The brutish man's face changed from red to mottled purple; he looked as if the pressure might make his head explode as his fists choked, unclenched, clenched again. And he was completely, utterly humiliated. The bid wasn't just about buying me; it was about crushing him, about reminding everyone in this room of the vast, unbridgeable chasm between their power and the power of the man in the shadows.

Valenti leapt to his feet, twisted a shaking finger toward the far end of the room, and yelled, "Who the hell—"

"Ten million dollars is the bid," the auctioneer cut him off, his voice turned sharp with a warning. In this world, there were lines you did not cross, and clearly challenging a man who could throw away ten million dollars without raising his voice was among them. "Do I have any other bids? Going once?" He didn't even look at the fuming man in the front row. He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of something like awe, or perhaps fear, in his eyes. He knew who had just bought me.

"Going twice?"

The silence was deafening, heavy with tension and defeat.

"Sold," was all that remain, and the auctioneer's voice fulfilled the purposive decay it enacted. The impact of the hammer sounded like thunder in the empty air of that cathedral room. Its echo was like an ending and a beginning for my life.

My mind froze, holding my breath hostage. He had saved me from the brutish man only to put me into the mouth of the beast lying in darkness. Who could he be? Who could afford to buy a man? The murmuring started again, but different now-hushed, nervous whispers. The name Moretti was passed from lip to lip like a forbidden prayer.

Quite like a reflection of summoned fears, a figure began to stir. He detached himself from the shadows and walked down the central aisle. Now the other men shrank back in their chairs: all the former arrogance evaporated, paving way for him as a king would. The man moved like liquid grace, a predator at home. He wore a black suit-knitted tailor-made button that, under a canvas of power and wealth, seemed to mold to his body. Then at the chandeliers' dim light, I could finally really make out his face.

He was beautiful-beautiful in that terrible, breathtaking way fallen angels are. Such high cheekbones, with a strong shadow of perfect stubble along that aristocratic jaw, and a mouth which looked chiseled from marble. But it was his eyes that caught me, ensnared me from fifty feet. They were dark, so dark they sucked up the light, and they fixed me with an unsettling intensity. My stomach tied a hard knot at the lack of heat or lust that I had seen as sexually charged in mine. Instead, that kind of possessive ownership looked like it belonged to a collector measuring his newest, most expensive acquisition. It was ownership. He didn't stop until he was standing at the foot of the platform, looking up at me. He was close enough now that I could see the faint silver of a scar that cut through his left eyebrow, the only mar on his perfect face. He said nothing. He simply watched me, his gaze a physical weight. My defiance, my anger, my fear—it all felt like a child's tantrum in the face of his immense, silent authority. This was Dante Moretti. This was the Devil. And he had just bought my soul.

Time twisted and stretched in the suffocating silence that followed the falling gavel. I was now a statue on a pedestal, and below me was the sculptor who owned me. Dante Moretti stood there, without moving or speaking. He only looked up at me with those cold, fathomless eyes, and his expression was different to me, probably completely unreadable. Pure, undiluted possession was the look in his eyes: nothing more, nothing less. The world around shrinks down to the space between us — a chasm, a power-feared chasm. My defiance, which up until that moment had been my shield against the leering crowd, felt flimsy as a paper wall against him. It wouldn't hold.

He made a small, almost imperceptible gesture with his head. A tilt. A command. Come. It wasn’t a request. It was an expectation of obedience as natural to him as breathing. For a heart-stopping second, my feet refused to obey. Every instinct screamed at me to run, to fight, to do anything but walk toward that man. But where would I run? The room was filled with monsters, and he was their king. My legs began to tremble, and with a slow, agonizing surrender that felt like a part of my soul tearing, I took the first step down from the platform. Then another. I moved with the grace of a puppet whose strings had just been pulled, descending from the stage of my humiliation directly into the hands of my new master.

When I stepped down, he was still about six feet away from me, but the density of his presence surrounded me like a waivering suffocation. He didn't offer a hand. He simply turned, expecting me to follow. And I did. I fell into step behind him, my eyes fixed on the intimidating breadth of his shoulders in that perfect black suit. As he moved, a path cleared before us. The men who had been bidding on me moments before now averted their gazes, their faces a mixture of fear and deference. They wouldn’t meet his eyes, let alone mine. I was no longer an object for their perusal; I was Dante Moretti's property, and to look at me now would be a trespass.

I caught a last glimpse of the brutish man, Valenti, as we neared the exit. His face was a thundercloud of fury, and his hateful eyes locked onto mine. There was no defeat in his gaze, only a raw, violent promise of future conflict. I saw in that look that this wasn't over. I wasn't just a prize Dante had won; I was a prize Valenti had lost, and his rage made me a target. A shiver of premonition went through me. I was a pawn, a trophy in a war I didn’t understand, and my new owner had just painted a target on my back.

Dante appeared to take no notice of it or care. He thrust through the heavy mahogany doors into the hallway, and the two silent guards fell in behind us to form a human cage around me. They swept me down various corridors and out a back exit into a cold, sterile concrete garage. The night air was a shock to my lungs, resting against me, waiting for a long, low panther-like black car, rumbling softly with its engine. It waited with the back door held open by a driver. Without a work, Dante slid inside. His unflowing movements were fluid and economical. He glanced back at me. His shadowy face gave the impression that it had just issued another silent order.

I only hesitated before stepping in after him and dropping into the plush leather seat. The door shut with a heavy final thud, sealing us in. The inside of the car fell into an even more profound silence than the waiting room had had. It was absolute, insulated. The tinted windows turned the gritty city lights into soft, distant blurs, separating us from the world. The interior smelled rich leather and faint, clean hints of his cologne. It was a prison, albeit a luxurious one, and it could be carried.

He was not looking straight into my eyes either. He was gazing out his window as the car smoothly pulled out of the garage into the rain-slicked streets. The silence stretched, becoming a weapon in itself. It was so designed to unsettle me, to make me feel like an object, a package being transported. My thoughts raced madly attempting to comprehend the man beside me. I stole glances at him from the corner of my eye. The profile was sharp and severe, a study in controlled power. A ridiculously expensive watch gleamed on his wrist, the face intricate and dark. His hands rested on his knee, long-fingered and perfectly still. These were not the hands of a man who engaged in brutish violence himself. These were the hands of a man who gave orders that others carried out without question.

What was it about him? What was so valuable about spending loads of money on me? Surely, it couldn't be desire. I had felt desire in Valenti's eyes. There was only cold, calm satisfaction in the intelligent eyes of Dante Moretti. Like a chess master who had just captured his opponent's queen. As if reading my thoughts, his phone vibrated, a low buzz against the leather. He pulled it out, his thumb swiping across the screen. He read the message, and the corner of his perfect mouth tilted in something that wasn't a smile. It was colder. A look of grim triumph. He typed a short reply and then his gaze drifted from the phone and landed on me.

And now, for the very first time, he would have his close inspection of me as his eyes moved from my ruffled locks to the straight lines of that silk drapery down to the bare feet I had planted upon the floor mat. His scrutiny made me feel pinned like a butterfly under glass. "The Romano name used to mean something," he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble in the quiet car. It was the first thing he'd said directly to me. "Now, it's just another debt to be collected."

The words hit me like a physical jab. Debt. Not just bought, but collected by him. I had been collected as the settlement for something my family owed. Before I could process the chilling implication, the car was slowing down, descending down a ramp into a private, brightly lit underground garage. The place was spotlessly filled with all the luxury cars shimmering under the white lights. The car stopped, and the engine was on cut, plunging us again into that heavy silence. We had arrived. I looked outside the window to barren concrete walls with an elevator bank above it marked 'PENTHOUSE.' This was it. The gilded cage. The Devil's lair. And I had just been delivered to the front door.