AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter two
Lyla, Present Day
Themonsterwasgoing to die.
She sighed inwardly, watching the middle-aged man old enough to be her father walking toward her in the auction room after winning his bid. The dark ambiance amplified by the strobes of light didn’t hide either his good looks or his dripping wealth. Well, he had to be wealthy to get a foot in the auction door, and his looks didn’t mean a thing. She’d been with worse. More importantly, she knew better than most how the worst monsters lurked beneath a pretty face. They came below to this hellhole to live out their most detestable fantasies, ripped and shredded and went back to their facades above of being upstanding, moral citizens with wives and families and picket fences. She hated those kind the most. It was easier to deal with a monster who was a monster upfront and not a snake in the grass.
The man’s eyes took in her form on display in the translucent robe, going from her neck down her ample breasts down to her waxed mound down to her painted toes, and even after so many times, she barely controlled her flinch at the lecherous perusal.
She knew why they bid on her. She was a rarity, an exotic natural redheaded delight in a sea of blondes and brunettes, and she was attractive. She brought in good fucking money at every bid, which was exactly why the organizers kept putting her up on the stage and the idiots kept risking their lives. They all thought they’d be the one to get away with it, blinded by their power and arrogance.
They were wrong. For six years, they had been wrong, every single one of them, and there were over a dozen corpses to speak for it.
Before she could fall into her thoughts, she schooled her expression to the one of serene calmness that her early handlers had taught her.
“You are soft, inviting. Look pretty, lower your chin, and stay silent.”
The man—she was calling him Fifteen in her head since he was the fifteenth man to buy her at the auction—stepped close to her, taking a lock of her long, wavy hair in his hands.
Oh, he shouldn’t have touched the hair.
She didn’t voice the thought.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked with a smooth grin, the lasciviousness in his eyes naked enough for her to know exactly what he was thinking.
“Lyla,” she spoke quietly, exactly at the volume she had been trained to talk at.
Every girl got trained in a way that suited their looks to make them seem most appealing. For Lyla, everything was supposed to be soft, docile, meek—her voice, her mannerisms, her demeanor. She had to give off sexy siren and sweet submissive vibes all at once.
One of her only friends, Malini, had been trained exactly in the opposite way. She was bold and forward. She’d been told to behave wildly, to make a man want to tame her. A small sliver of amusement spiraled through her at the thought. The trainers had it all wrong. It was all an act they did. Malini was the gentlest, sweetest soul. Lyla could not remember the number of times she had sought out her care when the other girl had soothed her in ways she imagined mothers or sisters soothed their loved ones—with light touches and soft words and enough love to make her want to see another day. But she hadn’t seen her friend in a few months, and when she’d asked around, one of the handlers told her a man had taken her for a long contract. That could mean years before she saw her again, if she ever saw her at all.
“And how old are you?” The buyer’s words broke through her thoughts, making her focus again. She knew exactly what men like him wanted, and even though she was twenty-four, she said, “Eighteen.”
The man smiled. Fucking asshole. Although he at least tried to cloak his monstrosity, she had seen too many adults rip through innocence to believe in decency anymore.
The man touched her breast unabashedly and she stayed still, her hands fisting at her sides as she let him test the weight of them.
He wasn’t just going to die, he was going to die.
She held her breath, her eyes roving over the dark corners of the room, unable to see the silhouette of the devil in the shadows, one who was both the bane and the blessing of her cursed existence. As the hand pawed her, she let her mind drift to the first time she’d seen him at the auction six years ago, the second time she had seen him ever. She remembered the surprise she’d felt, mainly because she hadn’t thought she would find him again, and she’d felt hope that he would bid on her. She had wanted him to be the one to choose her. He hadn’t. He’d stayed in his corner and simply watched as another man won her and took her to the hotel a block away from the auction house.
That had been the first night she’d felt the spray of blood on her face, a bullet-hole gaping through the head of the man who’d been about to undress her. She had frozen on the spot, her eyes going out the window to the silhouette of a man moving in the building opposite, and she had known it was him.
Lyla watched the shadowed corners as Fifteen in the present leaned down to kiss the side of her neck while tugging at her breasts openly in auction room. The corners were empty but that meant nothing. She knew better now.
He was watching. He was always watching.
She’d learned that the second time she’d been auctioned, and the two men who took her home for a week both found themselves strangled with a barbed wire on the first night while she’d used the bathroom. She'd come out to see him placing a black eternal rose on the countertop, along with a set of clothes she could change into, his mismatched eyes locking with hers before he'd left. The rose, the prettiest thing she had ever seen, all black and frozen in time, had been the first gift she remembered receiving, the clothes the softest fabric to touch her skin. She had taken them both with her.
It had happened again the third time in a sex club, and the fourth, and the fifth, and again and again until she and the rest of the organizers knew—anyone who bid on her died. Yet, she brought in big money so she was put on the stage again and again, and he was there every time to take them out.
It had taken her a while to understand it was most likely game for him. A man who cared wouldn’t have left her standing there naked, ready to be bought.
And yet, she stood there, worthless, discarded, unclaimed.
She shuddered as the black hole in her mind opened, beckoning her, calling her to fall into it and forget everything else, let everything about her existence be crushed out until nothing remained of herself.
The man’s tongue touched her neck, and revulsion settled in the pit of her stomach, her hatred of her body intensifying as the black hole got closer and she hurtled toward it. Fifteen wouldn’t care if she was catatonic, he wouldn’t care if she wasn’t there as long as her body was. But it had been years since someone had completely used her and she couldn’t understand how this middle-aged monster got so close.
