The Highest Bidder

❊ Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ Tᴡᴏ ❊

When I came to, I noticed two things: my wrists were shackled behind my back and I had a blindfold over my eyes. I raised my head, forcing the sudden urge to vomit away, and moved my eyes around behind the pitch black blindfold. From what I could see out of the bottom, I was on a concrete floor in the same running clothes that I'd been taken in. They were still damp and my body shivered in the air conditioning of the room.

"Ah, she's awake."

I turned my head in the direction of the voice. I was still lightheaded from the tranquilizer, and the movement almost made me topple over.

"Sorry about the sudden shot," he said. I curled my lips into a snarl, finally placing the voice as the man who shoved a needle through my throat.

I set my jaw and turned my head away from him. I was afraid, but thankfully the obvious show of fear was covered by a thick piece of cloth. Everything else, I could hide.

I wasn't sure if he was the only one in the room, or if there were more. What the hell did they even want with me? I was just running. What was the appeal with that? Or was it because I was a woman and he was looking for someone to stab with that tranquilizer needle? What was the point of sedating me?

"Alright." A new male voice echoed throughout the room. "I'm going to ask you some questions, and you're going to answer truthfully."

I cocked an eyebrow, wishing that they could actually see it through the blindfold. They expected me to answer questions? Yeah, that'll happen when Hell froze over.

"Name?"

I pursed my lips in defiance. I knew that the one thing a person was supposed to do when someone threatened their life was to comply with everything they said. But my stubbornness would get the best out of me in the worst situations.

Something cold pressed against my temple and I cringed away from it. I wasn't one hundred percent sure what it was, but I had an idea. People like them loved their guns and loved even more to use them.

"I'll ask again." His voice was closer to my ear and my jaw clenched. "What is your name?"

"Eva," I snapped. "My name is Eva, you asshole."

He chuckled. "Eva, huh? Last name?"

"Whelan," I mumbled, only then realizing that I probably should have lied. Who gave out their actual name in situations like that?

Apparently I did.

"Eva Whelan." My name was a song on his lips and I growled. The only reason why I answered his question was because he threatened me with a gun. Apparently that was the one thing that could get me to talk. No matter how much I told myself that I wasn't afraid of death, obviously that wasn't the case. I didn't want to die. Not in the hands of these people.

I bit my lip to keep it from quivering. I had to keep up my farce of stubbornness. If they saw how afraid I truly was, there was no telling what they would do to me. Getting off on fear was a real thing, and if anyone would get off on it, it would be them.

"So, Eva." He was in front of me the next time he spoke. I could see his polished black dress shoes below the blindfold. "Is that your natural hair color?"

"Yes."

"Age?"

I forced myself to breathe. I rested my head back against the concrete wall behind me. "Twenty four."

"Are you a virgin?"

What the hell kinds of questions were these?

I shook my head slowly. I didn't know anyone my age who was a virgin, so the question was odd to me.

Something about these questions set off something in my brain. They weren't planning on killing me, if those questions were any indication. But what were they planning? Sex trafficking? Slavery? Both?

No matter what happened, I promised myself to fight until the end. That's how my family was. We were fighters. Bull-headed and stubborn until the day we died.

"Will she be ready for the next auction?" The man I ran into finally spoke up.

My lip twitched. Auction?

"Hmm." The man in front of me hummed his response and I could feel his eyes on me. "I believe so. Tell me, Eva Whelan, are you prepared to be sold to the highest bidder?"

I spit in his general direction and felt a sudden rush of smugness when I heard him make a disgusted noise. I hit him. I didn't know where I hit him, but I hit him nonetheless.

I sneered. "Tell me, jackass, how much do you want to bet that I'll escape whoever it is you sell me to?"

His fist cracked against my skull and my head snapped to the side. Pain exploded from my cheek and I bit back a cry, even as I fell hard against the concrete floor. There would be a bruise there, no doubt. The area where he punched continued to throb, even as I sat back up. I worked my jaw back and forth, trying to ease the pain. If anything, that movement only made it worse.

"Not if I have anything to do with it," he whispered in my ear, and I attempted to lift my hand to slap him away, but was met with resistance. Not only were my wrists shackled, but the shackles were attached to the wall behind me.

I lowered my head. There was no way to escape. Both he and I knew that well enough. If there was a way to escape, I would have found it. But with the resistance on my wrists plus the fact that I had no idea where I was, they didn't even give me a chance.

"Make sure you tell the auctioneer that she'll be difficult to break in," the man said. "Some of them like that."

The door to whatever room we were in opened. "Ten minutes until the next auction. Is she in the lineup?"

The person who had walked in was a woman. I could hear her high heels clicking on the concrete as she made her way over to me. She knelt and I felt her cold fingers on my face. Instead of flinching away from her, I growled. It was probably humorous for them, seeing as though I couldn't do any real damage with the way I was shackled to a wall. But none of them laughed.

"What is her eye color," the woman asked, fiddling with the blindfold like she was about to take it off.

I wanted to say that I had the ability to answer, but refrained. I knew why they weren't taking the blindfold off, even though I wished they would mess up and do it anyway.

"I think they were green," the man that I ran into answered. "But I don't know for sure. It was dark out when I got her."

"And raining, I see." The woman's voice was soothing, but it didn't relax me. She sighed. "I would check, but I'd rather be safe than sorry later. We'll have to change her clothes before she goes on, anyway. Do you have the outfit?"

The woman began cutting away my clothes and I kicked out, barely missing her. She laughed, a musical kind of chuckle that only irritated me more.

In a matter of moments, I felt the cold air on every single inch of my naked body. I shivered and curled my knees up to my chest in an effort to cover myself. But the woman only pushed my legs back down and began to dress me in a lace dress. I sat there in astonishment, looking down through the blindfold at the see-through black gown.

"Stand her up, please so that I can get this all situated." A man's rough hand gripped my bicep and pulled me up to my feet after they unhooked my cuffs from the wall. I shook in the coldness of the room, still trying to control the fear that was seeping through my pores.

The woman worked quickly, tying up the back and tightening it so that it fit my form. Her hand replaced the man's and she began to pull me along.

I stumbled and began to fight against her, only to have the cold barrel of a gun pressed against the back of my neck with a warning to behave. And so I did. I allowed the woman to pull me along to an unknown place where my fate was in the hands of yet another unknown.