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“Who would like to place a bid?”
Immediately, cries came from the crowd. Any normal crowd might have been full of condemnation. But not this one. No, this one was primed and ready on a dozen synthetics.
“INDIGO!” Christo rushed the stage and flung himself at Indigo with an aggressive cry of rage and tackled him, slamming him down onto the stage with a heavy thud which brought gasps and laughter from the crowd, who were now thoroughly entertained.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Christo snarled.
“Selling your daughter.”
Moving like a python, Indigo wrapped his legs and arm around Christo’s neck and used the elbow grip to choke him just to the point before he lost consciousness. Like most men born into wealth, Christo had never learned how to properly defend himself against someone who really wanted to hurt him.
“Of course, you could always buy her. Do you want to buy her, Christo? Save daddy's little girl from being brutalized and impregnated by one of these monsters you call friends?”
“Fuck you, Indigo.”
“No? Then I guess the auction continues.”
He squeezed a fraction tighter until Christo went limp. This was even easier and more humiliating for the man than Indigo had planned for it to be, and he couldn’t have been more thrilled.
He stood up, brushing a few flecks of dust from his suit, and addressed the crowd again.
“Now, where were we?”
It was right and proper in a poetic sort of way to be auctioning off the youngest Monteverdi over the insensate body of her father.
The man of the hour had become the victim. It was the sort of switcheroo this crowd enjoyed immensely. Indigo could feel the shift of energy as they gravitated toward him.
“Usually we would have the specimen on display, but in this case it’s not possible. However, images are available at the following web address. W W W dot f u r n i t u r e w a r e h o u s e s t a t i o n a r y dot com slash daisycouch. Daisy couch is all one word. Hit purchase and enter code INDIGO at checkout.”
People began to look up the address given, an ostensibly tedious and boring website which sold furniture and stationary. The daisy couch claimed to be an inflatable beanbag, which was not a thing. However, when they entered the code at checkout, a download began. It contained multiple images of the girl in question, as well as relevant information from accredited DNA laboratories linking her to her father.
There was a hum of excitement in the air. The Monteverdis had been rich since before the crusades. Their empire had grown in wealth, but dwindled in heirs. It was said that Christo had gone out of his way not to have any children in order to stop this sort of scenario from occurring. However, he must have arrived at that decision after the one night stand which left his DNA gestating inside the unsuspecting womb of a waitress in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
“Shall we start the bidding at an easy ten million.”
“TWENTY!” The first bid came in fast and loud.
“FORTY!”
Indigo laughed and welcomed them all. A furious onslaught of offers followed; each multitudes larger than the one before. It was greatly amusing that at Christo’s own party, all the friends who had been invited to help celebrate were turning on him at the first chance to betray him. Indigo knew them all to be duplicitous, amoral bastards, but such a stark demonstration was still noteworthy.
“Stop!” Christo leaped up off the floor, rubbing his neck with one hand and gesticulating wildly with the other. “Stop! I have first right of purchase!”
“The auction has already begun, Christo. It would be poor sportsmanship to stop it now. People would be disappointed.”
“You’re trying to sell my family, you bastard.”
Christo’s scowling visage was sharply contrasted by the blown up images of him smiling broadly all around the room. The entire hall had been decked out to honor him, and the perversion of that intention was almost more delicious than Indigo could bear.
“A single one of you places another bid, and by tomorrow morning, every single investment you currently hold will be in flames. I promise you that,” Christo snarled, his leonine ire on full display. “Betray me, and the full wrath of Apex will fall on your heads.”
“You just launched a new line of scented toilet paper, didn’t you?” Indigo quipped smoothly.
“Yes. Twice as soft, half the price. We also just launched a new missile in our weapons division,” Christo replied menacingly. Apex was the company of companies, the mega-corporation under whose umbrella thousands of other companies and tens of thousands of brands fell. Christo fancied himself the closest person alive to an actual god-Emperor.
Indigo knew that, because he had Christo’s therapist on retainer. Indigo knew of Christo’s every weakness, every life event, secret fear, prideful moment, hell, every awkward fart that had taken place in that room for the past three years.
