Chapter 2 - “Let go of me!”
His fingers tightened around my upper arm.
I looked toward Kara.
She stood beneath the entrance canopy, trembling.
“Kara, tell him!”
She lowered her head.
“Kara!”
She turned and disappeared through a side door.
For a moment, I couldn’t understand what I had witnessed.
Then the truth struck with such force that I nearly stopped breathing.
My best friend had brought me here deliberately.
The man dragged me toward the mansion.
I kicked backward, catching his shin.
He swore.
Another guard caught my other arm.
“Touch me again and I’ll report you for kidnapping!”
I shouted.
The man in gray leaned close.
“You can report whatever you want after midnight.”
He smiled.
“If anybody lets you.”
Inside, the mansion smelled of expensive perfume, polished wood, and fresh flowers.
Music drifted through the hallways.
A string quartet was playing somewhere ahead.
Guests laughed softly.
Servants carried champagne.
Everything looked like an elegant charity gala.
That somehow made it worse.
The man in gray led me through a corridor into a dressing room.
Five women waited inside.
One wore a green cocktail dress.
Another had mascara streaked across her cheeks.
A third sat motionless beside a mirror.
A woman with shoulder-length dark hair looked up when I entered.
She appeared to be around twenty-seven.
“Are you here for the auction?” she asked quietly.
I stared at her.
“What auction?”
Nobody answered.
The man pushed me toward a chair.
“Sit.”
I remained standing.
He took a numbered tag from his pocket.
Seventeen.
“I said sit.”
“I want a lawyer.”
He laughed.
“You are studying to become one, aren’t you?”
My breath caught.
He knew.
He knew about law school.
He knew my name.
This wasn’t a random kidnapping.
Someone had researched me.
I looked at the other women.
“What is this place?”
The woman with dark hair rose slowly.
“My name is Mina,” she whispered.
“Mina Reyes.”
The guard snapped his fingers.
“Quiet.”
Mina fell silent.
He attached the number to my vest.
I slapped his hand away.
“Don’t touch me.”
For one dangerous second, I thought he might hit me.
Instead, he bent closer.
“Mr.
Wexler doesn’t like trouble.”
“Then tell Mr.
Wexler to come explain why he’s committing multiple federal crimes.”
His expression hardened.
He pulled my phone from my pocket and dropped it into a box with several others.
Then he left.
The door locked.
I stood motionless.
Across the room, the youngest woman began crying.
Mina approached me carefully.
“Don’t waste your strength on the guards,” she said.
“What are they going to do?”
She swallowed.
“Sell us.”
The word seemed impossible.
“Sell?”
“They call it an exclusive placement service.
Nobody here believes that.”
I looked at the locked door.
At the other women.
At the numbers attached to their clothes.
My knees weakened.
“This can’t be happening.”
Mina touched my sleeve.
“I was offered a nursing position caring for an elderly woman.
They took my passport when I arrived.”
“Do you have family?”
“A younger sister.”
“Does she know where you are?”
Mina shook her head.
I swallowed the panic rising in my throat.
I couldn’t help anyone if I fell apart.
I forced myself to examine the room.
One locked door.
A surveillance camera in the upper corner.
A narrow window that opened onto a courtyard several stories below.
No immediate escape.
“Listen,” I whispered.
“We need names, dates, anything we can remember.
If we get out, they’ll need evidence.”
Mina studied me.
“You really are a law student?”
“Yes.”
“Then maybe there’s hope.”
I wanted to believe her.
But the longer I listened to the laughter beyond the wall, the more I understood something horrifying.
The people outside weren’t hiding their crimes.
They were celebrating them.
At eleven twenty, the guards came for us.
They led us down a carpeted hallway toward the ballroom.
I counted doors.
Two on the left.
One service staircase.
A guarded passage leading toward the kitchen.
Then we entered a room filled with approximately sixty guests.
Crystal chandeliers illuminated polished marble.
Gold-framed paintings covered the walls.
A long bar stood beside an enormous fireplace.
Men in tailored suits watched us without embarrassment.
Several women in designer dresses stood beside them, their expressions carefully neutral.
At the front waited a raised platform.
A middle-aged man with silver hair held a microphone.
Charles Wexler.
I recognized his face from financial news.
He owned a consulting company that arranged offshore investments and corporate restructuring.
I’d once encountered his name while researching a Voss Maritime subsidiary.
The memory sent a fresh chill through me.
Wexler smiled as though welcoming donors to a museum fundraiser.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience.”
He gestured toward us.
“Tonight’s final selections are particularly exceptional.”
I felt physically sick.
The first woman stepped onto the platform.
The bidding lasted less than a minute.
A man offered thirty thousand dollars.
Another offered forty.
The auctioneer declared her sold.
She was escorted through a side door.
The next woman was crying so hard that she could barely walk.
Nobody stopped.
By the time Mina’s number was called, my hands had gone numb.
She squeezed my fingers before stepping forward.
“Remember my name,” she whispered.
“I will.”
A man near the fireplace purchased her for seventy thousand dollars.
I watched as a guard led her away.
Mina looked back once.
Then she was gone.
I wanted to run after her.
Instead, somebody seized my elbow.
“Seventeen.”
I turned toward the guard.
“Where are they taking her?”
“Move.”
“Where?”
He pushed me toward the stairs leading to the platform.
I nearly fell.
The auctioneer glanced at his notes.
“Next, an unusually interesting candidate.
Twenty-four years old.
University educated.
No known criminal history.”
A few men chuckled.
He smiled.
“Currently completing a law degree.”
Someone whistled.
I stared into the room.
These were men with money, influence, and probably children of their own.
Men who paid taxes.
Men who shook hands with judges and donated to hospitals.
And not one of them looked ashamed.
“Bidding opens at twenty thousand dollars.”
A man in the second row raised his hand.
“Twenty.”
Another offered fifty.
A third leaned toward his companion.
“A law student.
That could be entertaining.”
I felt something inside me harden.
“You’re all criminals,” I said.
Wexler’s smile stiffened.
“Miss Seventeen, please remain quiet.”
“My name is Olivia Carver.”
An uneasy murmur spread through the crowd.
“I haven’t consented to anything happening here.
Your contracts are worthless.”
A man near the front laughed.
“She’s spirited.”
“Kidnapping is a federal crime,” I continued.
“So is trafficking.
And buying someone doesn’t give you legal ownership of their body.”
Wexler’s eyes flashed.
“Remove her if she cannot behave.”
Two guards moved toward me.
I backed away.
“Don’t touch me!”
Then the ballroom doors opened.
The guards stopped.
A change swept through the guests.
People straightened.
Conversations died.
Charles Wexler lowered his microphone.
And Nolan Voss entered the room.
I’d seen hundreds of photographs of Nolan.
None prepared me for the reality.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in a black three-piece suit over a charcoal shirt.
His dark hair was combed back, revealing the thin scar above his right eyebrow.
The same scar I’d seen eight years earlier.
His expression was controlled, almost indifferent.
A younger man followed two steps behind him.
Black suit.
Short dark hair.
Alert eyes that never stopped studying the room.
Nolan’s security chief, I assumed.
Wexler approached immediately.
“Mr.
Voss.
We weren’t expecting you.”
“Apparently.”
Nolan’s voice was low.
He scanned the ballroom.
His gaze passed over the men, the guards, the raised platform.
Then it reached me.
For one instant, his eyes narrowed.
I stopped breathing.
Had he recognized me?
His gaze moved away.
Then returned.
Something about his expression changed, but it happened too quickly for me to understand.
Wexler laughed nervously.
“We’re just concluding our final selection.”
“I can see that.”
“Perhaps you’d like a private viewing?”
Nolan ignored him.
“How much?”
Wexler blinked.
“I’m sorry?”
“The current bid.”
“Fifty thousand.”
Nolan raised two fingers.
“Four hundred and fifty thousand.”
The room fell silent.
Someone actually gasped.
Wexler stared.
“Mr.
Voss, did you say—”
“You heard me.”
There was no raised voice.
No dramatic gesture.
Just absolute certainty.
Nobody challenged the bid.
As the auctioneer raised his gavel, I stared at Nolan with a hatred so fierce that my vision blurred.
Eight years.
I’d spent eight years wanting answers from this man.
And now he had paid four hundred and fifty thousand dollars to take me away.
The gavel fell.
“Sold!”
Applause erupted.
Nolan didn’t look pleased.
He looked furious.
But I was too frightened to understand the difference.
A guard brought me down from the platform.
My legs shook with each step.
Nolan stood beside a marble column while Wexler handed him a cream-colored envelope.
“Everything is included,” Wexler said.
“Identification, documentation, and transfer authorization.”
Nolan looked at the envelope.
Then at me.
“Remove the number.”
The guard hesitated.
“Sir?”
“The tag.”
The guard pulled it from my vest.
The pin caught the fabric, tearing a small hole.
I flinched.
Nolan’s eyes sharpened.
“Careful.”
The guard immediately stepped back.
Wexler chuckled.
“She’s yours now, Mr.
Voss.
I’m sure you’ll find her—”
“I’m not a car.”
The words escaped before I could stop them.
Nolan turned toward me.
“No,” he said.
“Then stop acting like you bought one.”
A man standing nearby nearly laughed.
Nolan didn’t smile.
Instead, he looked directly into my eyes.
“What’s your name?”
I felt a cold, bitter disbelief.
He genuinely didn’t recognize me.
He didn’t remember the terrified teenager standing outside that Brooklyn warehouse.
He didn’t remember my father’s face.
Or perhaps he remembered everything and simply didn’t care.
“Olivia.”
“Olivia what?”
I lifted my chin.
“Carver.”
His expression changed.
Not much.
But enough.
His jaw tightened.
His blue eyes moved to the envelope in his hand.
Then back to me.
“Michael Carver’s daughter?”
Hearing my father’s name in his mouth made me want to strike him.
“Yes.”
Nolan went completely still.
Wexler shifted uneasily beside him.
“Is there a problem, Mr.
Voss?”
Nolan didn’t answer immediately.
When he finally spoke, his voice was colder than before.
“Who entered her into tonight’s auction?”
Wexler’s smile vanished.
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“It’s a simple question.”
“The documentation was submitted through an approved intermediary.”
“Name.”
Wexler glanced toward the guards.
Nolan’s security chief moved half a step forward.
That was all.
Wexler swallowed.
“Kara Bennett.”
The name struck me like another betrayal.
I knew it was true.
Hearing it confirmed didn’t make it hurt less.
Nolan looked at me.
“Did you agree to come here?”
“No.”
“Did you sign anything?”
“No.”
He glanced at Wexler.
“Then your paperwork is fraudulent.”
Wexler attempted a smile.
“Mr.
Voss, these arrangements are delicate—”
“Get out of my way.”
The auctioneer obeyed.
Nolan turned toward me.
“Come with me.”
I took a step backward.
May you like
“No.”
His eyes met mine.
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