Page 105 of Buried in Blood
“No further bids?”
Nothing.
“Sold,” he announces, striking the gavel. “One hundred fifty-five thousand dollars.”
Brooke doesn’t flinch.
She’s collected like always. She lets herself be led offstage by a man in black gloves. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t touch her beyond the elbow.
I rise from my seat.
Harmony turns toward me. Her mouth opens, then closes again. I step out of the box onto the platform.
“Who bought her?” I demand, my voice low but lethal.
The host says nothing.
The bidders pretend not to hear.
I stalk toward the hallway, pushing past a pair of guards with no time for manners.
That voice wasn’t local.
It wasn’t logged in our pre-screen.
No ID tag. No raised hand. No standard protocol.
Just numbers.
Just money.
Just a ghost.
I pull out my phone and fire off a code to the surveillance team.
No one ghosts me at my own fucking auction.
Not without a name.
And not without a consequence.
31
Lucien
“One hundred fifty-five thousand.”
The number rolls off my tongue with a calm I don’t feel. Inside, every nerve is taut. Every heartbeat, a countdown.
The host blinks—just once—then slams the gavel.
“Sold.”
I don’t move right away. That’s how you get caught. I sit still, spine straight beneath the crisp black suit I borrowed from a corpse two cities over. I feel the weight of the gun holstered beneath my jacket, the outline of the forged ID in my breast pocket, and the heat of a hundred eyes I refuse to meet.
No one knows it’s me.
Not yet.
