Chapter 1
“Get the car ready,” Lincoln ordered.
His right-hand man, Devon, nodded his head and spoke through the earpiece to inform the driver that their business was done.
As the two men walked through the halls of the underground building, they entered the large auditorium, the most secluded way to get in and out. Lincoln and Devon stood in the back as they waited for their ride to be ready at the side door.
Though he provided the venue, Lincoln himself didn’t participate in human auctions. However, he had no right to judge those who did. He had his own sick games he liked to play, but buying humans off the black market wasn’t one of them.
Women—and girls—were being auctioned off, and Lincoln watched as the whole thing unfolded before his eyes.
Three cages in total rolled onto the stage and they were filled with a dozen nude girls each, ranging from as young as thirteen to as old as thirty. Some of them were crying, others were frantic, and a few were behaving in suspiciously lewd business. Lincoln could also tell from the looks on some of their faces that from the moment they were released from their cages, they were going to make a run for it.
But their attempts would be in vain.
Devon stood silently beside Lincoln and watched the event start as well. He wore a blank face, unaffected by the human auction. Not much affected Devon, and Lincoln preferred it that way. He wasn’t an easy man to move, and since his loyalty was towards Lincoln, he wouldn’t betray him.
“Welcome ladies and gentlemen!” The auctioneer shouted with a proud grin on his face. “Welcome. Welcome. I hope that you will be satisfied with the selections tonight and return home with new toys for your entertainment.”
A few men opened the cages and pulled out some of the girls. From their unstable walks, it was obvious that they had been drugged. Some of the girls’ legs glistened from the bright lights which shone only towards the open stage. The audience was left in the dark for their privacy.
At first, Lincoln assumed the girls wet themselves out of fear, but then he realized from their flushed faces and sweaty bodies that they were given aphrodisiac drugs. Their sexual desires were at their peaks.
What dripped down their legs wasn’t urine; it was the remnants of their arousal.
That explained why some women were having sex in the cages. They couldn’t contain their desires and resorted to shameless acts even with spectators.
“We’ll start off with #2195 at five thousand dollars!”
Immediately, the voices of men and women began shouting their prices—thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Once those who were out of their cages sold, more were taken out to be auctioned.
“The car’s here, Boss,” Devon muttered to Lincoln.
He nodded in acknowledgement and pushed himself off the wall to walk away. However, he couldn’t help but glance one last time at the girls left in the cages, and found himself intrigued by something he spotted.
Or more specifically, by someone.
Like the rest, she was completely bare. But unlike the others, she wasn’t frantic.
The auctioneers definitely wanted the girls to be fully conscious as they were sold off, which explained why they were only given aphrodisiac drugs and nothing else to make them lethargic. Seeing the looks on their faces as they were treated as merely objects drove the bidders’ emotions.
But she—that single girl—didn’t show anything to pleasure the crowd.
She was malnourished and looked to be in her late teens. Her body was skin and bones and her medium-length brown hair was choppy and disheveled. Her appearance wasn’t anything special. Instead, it was that terrifyingly calm demeanor that made him unable to look away.
There was a short commotion on the stage when two of the girls tried to make a run for it. But the light confused them and they didn’t realize that they stood on an elevated stage. They ran straight to the edge and fell off. Of course, they were captured and would most likely be punished later by their new owners.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, we saved the best for last!”
The auctioneer motioned with his hand to move the remaining six girls forward. All of them were young, and one of those girls was the one who had caught Lincoln’s eye. Even though she was now out of her cage, her expression remained blank.
“We assure you, dear customers, that these girls are completely untouched with their innocence still intact!”
All their legs were wet, glistening from their sex fluids.
Just like Lincoln, the attention of the crowd had been captured by the expressionless girl. He knew without a doubt she would bring in a high price.
#2231
No matter how long she stood there, no matter how loud the voices were, no matter how bright the lights that beat down on her shone, she didn’t twitch once.
She was practically a husk.
While the others were sold off, she remained onstage. The girls who were bought sobbed and fought as they were dragged away, and yet, she didn’t bat an eye from their desperate screams. It was as if she had tuned out everything around her.
When it was finally her turn to be auctioned off, her price rose, just as Lincoln predicted. From four digits to five digits to six digits, men and women shouted their prices.
Beside him, he heard Devon mutter into his earpiece, “We’ll be out in a few minutes.”
“Do we have anything higher than five hundred thousand dollars?” the auctioneer asked as he looked around the crowd.
Lincoln saw that many were bitter from the loss. The girl’s stoic expression made her popular. However, the hundreds of perverts who had bid for her were probably eager to break her mask and make her cry from the top of her lungs below them.
His eyes had gotten used to the darkness and he scanned the audience to see exactly who had betted for her. It was a male who Lincoln recognized as one who liked to torture his toys until they completely crumbled. The girl would end up the same in his hands.
“O-one million dollars!” someone shouted in the crowd.
The previous highest bidder furiously looked at the man who shouted the new price. The new buyer was older, much older. He was in his sixties or seventies and Lincoln also recognized him. He constantly frequented auction houses because he always overused his toys. The old man had games he liked to play with them during sex.
Lincoln heard that he fucked girls while strangling them during their orgasms to reach the highest pleasure. Of course, they died afterwards.
“One million dollars!” the auctioneer shouted with glee. He proudly looked over his shoulder at the girl. It seemed he expected a high price from her, but never one million dollars. He got exactly what he wanted. “Will that be the final bid?”
The audience murmured with bustling conversation and the old man stood up and scanned the crowd warningly, intimidating anyone who dared to bid even higher than him.
Lincoln looked back at the stage and saw that the girl had finally looked up from the floor in front of her feet. It seemed her eyes had gotten used to the darkness as well because she also stared at her buyer.
He saw her eyes scan the old man from head to toe at a slow pace. When she settled her eyes on his face, she blankly stared at him. And that was when Lincoln finally recognized the look on her face.
Defeat. She had given up since the beginning.
She gave one last look at her buyer before looking back down at her feet with hooded eyes. Lincoln was able to catch the slightest movement of her jaw and knew exactly what she planned to do. Before he could even comprehend it, his body moved forward and he roared.
“Ten million!”
The audience gasped at the price, but many also recognized his voice. Lincoln didn’t care that they would identify him as he made his way to the stage. What he focused on was the fact that the stupid girl paid no attention to the sudden change in buyer. She was still going to do as she planned without hesitation.
Lincoln clenched his jaw and quickly made his way to the stage, revealing himself to everyone in the auction room. The guards who were holding the girl immediately released her and backed away, but she didn’t make any movements. Instead, Lincoln saw the blood slowly seep through her lips and down her chin.
He snatched her jaw and forced her to open her mouth. She didn’t react at all, but he was able to see through her lips that she had, indeed, planned to bite her tongue and bleed to death. He tsked at the red puddle in her mouth before he shoved her head forward. Right away, all the blood in her mouth poured out and splattered on the stage.
The crowd gasped with shock and Lincoln grabbed her by the roots of her hair and raised her head back up to stare into her face. She remained calm, even though he knew his grip on her hair must’ve hurt. Her tongue also wouldn’t stop bleeding.
He scowled before calling out, “Devon.”
Devon walked on stage and threw the briefcase in his hand near the feet of the auctioneer. Then he took the girl out of Lincoln’s arms and walked off the stage to make his way to their readied car.
Lincoln motioned with a nod of his head to the briefcase. “Ten million. Cash.”
Then he turned around and walked out of the auction house, paying no attention to the chaos he had incited in the room behind him.
Never had he participated in a human auction before. Until now. And he just spent ten million dollars on an insignificant girl. What overcame him to do that, he didn’t know. But the rumor would spread that Lincoln Clement had bought a girl for his own sexual pleasures when he truly had no need for her. Her body was frail, her frame was like a board, and he had no desire to hold her.
And yet, he was impressed and shocked. He didn’t know of any girl brave enough to bite her own tongue to end her life. All the other women on stage valued their lives too much to give them up at that moment. They would rather live as broken toys than commit suicide.
But she planned to do just that.
Lincoln made it outside and saw Nash, his driver, holding the door to the backseat. He also spotted Devon still holding the girl in the backseat and scowled before motioning Nash to shut the door.
“I’ll sit in the front.”
Nash grinned. “I expected as much.”
He slammed the door shut before opening the passenger seat for Lincoln. Once he sat down, Nash closed the door and jogged back to the driver’s seat.
As they drove away, Lincoln glanced over his shoulder at the two in the backseat. Devon had the girl in his lap as he gagged her mouth with a cloth to stop the bleeding. She was still conscious, but her body was even paler than before—part from blood loss, part from fear. He could now detect new emotions in her eyes.
“So who’s the new girl?” Nash asked as he looked at her through the rearview mirror. “Did you guys get her for the exchange?”
“No,” Lincoln answered as he glanced at her thighs. They were wet, unsurprisingly. “We got ten million dollars.”
“Really?” Nash said surprised before he looked at Lincoln, then Devon. “Well, where is it?”
“We spent it on her.” Lincoln glared at the girl before he faced forward once more.
“What?! That thing cost us ten million dollars?!” He took a double take at her. “What’s so special about her?”
She definitely heard, but Lincoln didn’t know what she was thinking. In fact, he didn’t even know what the hell went through his own head. He spent ten fucking million dollars on a girl—a girl who wouldn’t be able to satisfy him in bed nor serve him otherwise. He had no use for her, and useless people, he threw away.
Yet, she was supposedly worth ten million dollars. He couldn’t waste money.
“Nothing,” Lincoln admitted to Nash. “But I’ll think of something.”
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When they reached the complex, Lincoln headed straight to his penthouse with Devon following behind. They passed by many subordinates along the way and they all noted the naked girl in Devon’s arms. He had placed his suit on top of the girl, but from the look on her face, it seemed like she wouldn’t have cared about being bare in front of so many men—especially after already experiencing it in the auction house.
He ordered Devon to place her in his penthouse and also to send for Tessa, Lincoln’s personal secretary.
Devon left to do as ordered while he stared at the girl who stood in his wide living room with nothing but Devon’s suit draped over her shoulders. Lincoln stared at her, but she didn’t react to his eyes.
“Name,” he demanded, and to his surprise, she responded.
“Celeste.” Her voice was muffled a bit due to the fact that she bit the hell out of her tongue, but he could still make out what she was saying. And so, he continued to interrogate her.
“Age.”
“Twenty.”
Another surprise. She was small for a twenty year old. Then again, she was malnourished. Once he got her back to normal weight, she would most likely look her age. He had to take care of her. After all, she cost him ten million fucking dollars.
“Family,” he sneered the question as he thought about her price.
“None.”
Lincoln narrowed his eyes at her. “Date of birth.”
“I don't know.”
“You know your age, but you don’t know your birthday?” he said in annoyance. Again, the girl didn’t respond and just kept her eyes down. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you,” he nearly growled.
Finally, she raised her eyes and he saw that they were gray. Bland, just like her.
“If you think about pulling off another stunt like you did before, I’ll pull out each and every single tooth you have in your mouth. You’re now equal to ten million dollars and I’m not going to allow myself to feel as if I wasted it on you.”
Even though I already do.
“From now on, you work for me. You’ll address me as Boss, like the rest of the people in this complex do. Take any step out of line and you’ll be punished to the last thread of your life.” She didn’t respond and he growled in frustration, “Do you understand?”
“Yes, Boss,” she replied, looking straight into his eyes.
He glared at her in disappointment. She was too boring, too…obedient. Those who struggled and cried were more interesting than her. And yet Lincoln hadn’t bought a sobber or a runner. He bought the one who accepted her fate—the one who had the guts to bite her own tongue and bleed to death.
At that moment, the door to his penthouse opened and in walked Tessa. She immediately spotted the girl and her eyes widened with surprise and worry.
“What—?”
Lincoln cut her off. “Clean her up. And don’t let her out.”
Then he walked past the two of them and out his penthouse. He had to figure out what the hell he could use a frail twenty year old girl for.
