Izabel
Tonight’s the big night; after weeks of training with Cesara—or pretending to train, because I know this stuff better than she does—I get to attend my first auction party. Well, technically it isn’t my first, but it will be the first time I attend as a trainer, as one of the pieces of shit I hate more than anything. But I learned from the best of them—and Cesara is far from being the best—and what better way to play this role effectively, believably, than from the one who taught me? And that is why I chose Izel, Javier’s sister, who, for so many years made my life a living hell.
The girls here are terrified of me, as they should be; I’ve had to make examples of some, and the punishments I chose were cruel, I admit—because they had to be, to avoid blowing my cover—but it was better than killing them. And I’ll never do that; I’d kill myself before I ever went that far with an innocent life. Besides, part of my plan is to get them out of here too, whenever I make my exit.
“You look good,” Cesara tells me, looking me over with the hungry sweep of her eyes. “And you seem so…relaxed. I thought you’d be at least a little nervous your first time.”
I slide another ring onto my finger, and then a gold bracelet around my wrist. When I go for the necklace, I see Cesara behind me in the reflection of the mirror; I feel her naked breasts pressed against my back, her minty breath moving along the shell of my ear, her fingers at my neck, closing the clasp on the necklace for me. “I had hoped you’d be a little nervous,” she says, and a shiver moves along my spine, attacking the back of my eyes.
“Is that what you want me to be, Cesara?” I whisper seductively, my eyes closed, tingling.
The warmth of her tongue traces my ear, over my cheek, until her mouth finds mine. She kisses me, one hand against the side of my face, turning it roughly toward her, the other hand sliding down my hip, my thigh, and then to my knee where my silk dress stops.
“I want you to be yourself,” she says, and then kisses my neck. “Your savagery, the way you carry yourself in front of men who want you, how you deny them, and despise them; it does things to me that no one has ever been able to do.”
I gasp and rest my hands against the vanity when I feel her fingers inside of me; she presses her other hand to the small of my back and gently pushes me forward so that I’m bent over the vanity in front of her. The coolness of the silk slides over my bottom and I feel it pool in the center of my back, exposing me naked beneath it; her warm hands caress my bottom, followed by her lips as she kisses it all over, taking her time with each spot.
“You sure you want me to be myself, Cesara?” I ask, my breathing shifting with her touch. “Even with you? I thought you”—I gasp again—“I thought you…liked the control.”
“I do,” she says as she crouches behind me. “Only with me do I ever want you to show weakness, Lydia. Is that understood?”
“Only with you…” I say, and shut my eyes as her tongue lashes me into guilt-filled euphoria.
It’s just after nine, and the guests—some, rumor has it, the biggest buyers in the business—are starting to arrive. This place is a fortress, located approximately fifty-miles from Cesara’s mansion and the compound she runs. Like every mansion I’ve ever been to, there have to be one hundred armed men guarding the grounds, and the roads at least five-miles out in every direction. Nobody gets into a place like this, or even close to it, without an invitation and proper identification. And anyone who tries is shot on sight. No questions asked. No chance to prove innocence.
Cesara and I make our way into the theatre where a stage is perched against the far back wall, surrounded by tall, heavy, black velvet curtains pulled open. Instead of theatre seats lined neatly in rows, there are about one hundred round tables with four matching chairs pushed underneath; place-cards are set upon the tables nearest the stage, reserved for those ‘big buyers’ everybody’s whispering about in the halls. Admittedly, the big buyers are the ones I’m most interested in, too. If Vonnegut is here tonight, he would have to be among them.
I am nervous; I can’t lie to myself to make myself feel better—if Vonnegut is here, chances are he will know who I am before I can figure him out.
“Come,” I hear Cesara say, and she gestures for me to follow her through the theatre and out a side exit.
Two slave girls, not trained enough to sell yet, tag along behind us everywhere we go. The redhead, Sabine, belongs to me. I glance back at her to make sure she’s keeping up and not doing anything to make me look bad.
“I want you to meet someone special,” Cesara tells me as we enter a much smaller room.
My heart nearly falls into my knees when I see the tall Mexican standing there in his dark suit and fancy silk tie, and for a moment I hope like hell no one but me notices I have to steady my breath—the resemblance is frightening.
“Lydia,” Cesara says, taking me by the elbow, “this is Joaquin Ruiz.” She’s all proud smiles and ass-kissing body language in this man’s presence, and I find it fitting and funny. “He arranges all of the auctions.”
I step right up to the man, who looks so much like his older brother, Javier, that for a moment almost too long, I can’t speak.
Finally, I hold out my hand to him as a customary gesture so he can either shake it, or kiss it—if I get a shake, it means he’s not impressed with me.
Joaquin takes my hand into his, and he bends just enough to plant his warm lips above my knuckles; his milky-brown eyes never leave mine, and I find myself swimming in them, thinking of his brother and the strange life I had with him.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Ruiz,” I say in a strictly professional voice. As with the rest of Javier’s family, I intend to kill Joaquin, too, before I leave here. But I have to get him alone to kill him—another task, like finding Naeva, that I can’t think about right now.
“Call me Joaquin,” he offers; a grin just barely tugs one corner of his mouth.
Noticing his interest in me, Cesara steps up closer—I can’t tell if her jealousy is over me, or Joaquin—and she hands Joaquin a glass of champagne.
“Lydia has been with me three weeks now,” Cesara tells him. “She’s already surpassed everyone I’ve ever had under me.”
“So, then maybe this one will last longer than the others?” Joaquin says in a darkly comical way, and then brings the glass to his lips.
Cesara smiles, and then coils her fingers around my elbow. “Oh, yes,” she says, “I like this one. A lot.”
Joaquin easily catches the hidden meaning behind her comment.
His attention shifts when another man enters the room behind us. Joaquin raises a hand, and waves the man over, smiling hugely as if they’ve known one another for many years—now Joaquin is the one with ass-kissing body language.
“Robert,” Joaquin says, “meet Cesara and Lydia; Cesara, Lydia, meet Robert Randolph.” He steps around to stand at Robert’s side, facing us, champagne class clutched in his hand. “They are the trainers of ten of the girls up for auction tonight.”
The man named Robert kisses Cesara’s hand, and then with reluctance he shakes mine.
“A pleasure, Mr. Randolph,” Cesara greets.
I nod respectfully, already knowing he doesn’t care to speak with me.
“What color is your card?” he asks.
“We are red,” Cesara answers.
Red cards identify trainers with their girls.
Robert nods. “I will pay extra attention to red tonight,” he says, and kisses Cesara’s hand again.
This man, probably one of the big buyers, is, without a doubt, one cruel and heartless bastard that any girl unfortunate enough to be sold to him tonight will wish she had died during training, instead. I can see it in his eyes, his hard-lined forty-something face incapable of a smile in any form: he is a rapist, and a murderer, and has no tolerance for mistakes or imperfections. It’s why he didn’t kiss my hand—with the blaring scar across my throat I’m worth less than trash to him. The handshake was simply out of respect, probably for Cesara, who is quite beautiful. And unblemished.
But is this ‘Robert Randolph’ the ever-elusive Vonnegut?
No—I don’t think so; I’ve never seen this man before, and there’s nothing in his eyes that suggests he has any idea who I am, either.
In under thirty minutes, the place is packed; every table and chair in the theatre has been filled. Some buyers have brought their property along, young women and men, sitting on the floor at their feet—it disgusts me to see such things; I wish I could just grab a gun from one of the guards and spray the place with bullets. I glance down at Sabine, my property, sitting obediently at my feet, her head lowered, back straight, hands folded within her lap, legs tucked underneath her bottom. I’m sorry, Sabine, that you’re here. I’ll do everything I can to keep this from being the rest of your life. She slouches, and as if Izel’s ghost lives inside of me, my hand snaps out and I grab her by the back of her hair, wrench her head back on her neck and force her to look up at me. “Keep your back straight or I’ll permanently bend it,” I hiss into her shrinking face.
I know Cesara is watching—that was the whole point.
Joaquin Ruiz walks out onto the stage and the dozens of conversations going on all around me cease in an instant. As Joaquin speaks into a tiny mic affixed to the lapel of his suit jacket, his hands free, motioning, his voice fades from my ears, replaced by my own: Not one of them looks familiar, I say to myself as I study the big buyers sitting at the tables closest to the stage in front of me. Not one of them! Joaquin goes on and on, detailing the rules and bidding procedures for new and return buyers; he discusses with the audience the importance of ‘no touching’ and ‘no speaking to the merchandise’ and all of the other stuff I purposely close my ears up to—I hear it, but I also block it all out. Besides, it’s something I’ve heard so often in my life that it’s stamped on my brain like a cancerous lesion.
Deciding that maybe I was wrong about Vonnegut being one of the big buyers, I turn my attention on the other, less conspicuous men in the room.
“What are you doing?” Cesara whispers next to me.
I snap out of my investigation, and turn my head in her direction, already knowing what she’s referring to: I wasn’t paying attention.
“I thought I recognized someone,” I answer effortlessly, and I lean in closer to her, point discreetly in the direction I had been looking when she caught me, and I whisper, “That man, second table to Mr. Randolph’s right, I can’t be sure, but I think I’ve seen him somewhere before.”
Cesara looks with curiosity at the man in question, whom I chose from the crowd on a whim, and then she smiles at me confusedly. “You can’t be serious, Lydia—you don’t know who that is?”
I glance at the man again, really having no idea, but getting the feeling I’m about to look like an idiot to Cesara.
She leans in closer, her shoulder touching mine. “That’s Andreas Cervantes; you’ve probably seen one or two of his films; he’s one of the top directors in the U.S.”
I never watch movies, or television, or pay much attention to anything concerning famous people, unless it’s directly related to my work—wow, I’m an eighty-year-old woman in my twenties. I shake it off, surprised by how disappointed that makes me feel, and I just play along.
“I never cared about who made the movies,” I say. “They’re not in them, so why should I?” I shrug.
Cesara smiles, and I feel her hand patting my thigh.
When the bidding starts, I use the distraction of the girls coming out on stage one by one, to continue to focus on the buyers. And after an hour, and still not seeing one person who I feel could be Vonnegut, I get frustrated. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy, and I knew there was really no chance in the world that I’d spot him at the first auction, but that doesn’t stop me from being impatient.
While I’m cursing myself, my attention breaks when I hear Joaquin laugh during one of the bidding wars.
I look up and every head in the theatre is looking at one woman in particular: long blonde hair, flashy silver dress—all I can see is her back. And she’s the only one in the room standing, which is odd because nobody ever stands while bidding; they just quietly raise their colored paddles when they see something they want.
“I don’t care who you are,” the woman says icily to a man at a table in front of hers—it’s Robert Randolph, piece-of-shit extraordinaire, “I want girl number eleven.”
Robert Randolph, like everyone else, looks at the woman with disbelief and confusion. Who does this crazy woman think she is? That’s the question on every face in the theatre. Including mine.
Joaquin is no longer laughing. He steps closer to the edge of the stage, his strong hands clasped together in front of him, and he gazes down at the woman critically. “Ma’am,” he begins, “the best way to…get what you want”—he opens a hand, palm-up, in gesture—“is to bid on it. Quietly. If you don’t mind.”
“Yes, I understand that,” she says, “but this man is determined to outbid me, and I will not have it.”
A low wave of laughter circulates around the room.
Joaquin tries to keep a straight face, but he finds the same humor in her comment as everyone else.
“That is the point, Miss…?”
The woman gasps dramatically; her hand flies gracefully to her chest. “Who am I?” she asks, so offended that I even feel offended for her. “Who am I?”—she gasps again, shakes her blonde head—“First, I get seated behind other tables; second, I don’t even get a place-card with my name on it; and now you ask me who I am—my father will be infuriated at how I’ve been treated here!”
I’m so stunned by this woman’s outburst, in a room literally full of the worst types of people, that I’m frozen on my chair. But I think I’m stunned more by how much I like her.
Oh. My. God. Is that Nora? Suddenly, my head feels hot, my blood pressure rising to furious heights. I’ll kill her…I swear to God…
Robert Randolph moves out his chair and stands. He opens his hand to the woman, tilts his head and says, “Ma’am, if you want the girl that badly, I will be a gentleman and let you have her.”
Gentleman, my ass, you prick.
The woman’s head snaps around—it’s not Nora. I’m so relieved, but have only a split second to enjoy it before this woman’s drama pulls me back in. She looks at the crowd aghast, oblivious to the fact that everyone thinks she’s nuts, and then she turns back to Robert Randolph.
“I will buy them all,” she says confidently, rounds her chin as if she’s the most important person in the room, and then she sits back down, bidding paddle in-hand, ready and waiting.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Cesara whispers next to me.
“Me either,” I whisper back. “She’s crazy. Does she really expect to buy every girl?”
“She’s pulled it off so far,” Cesara says.
I look at Cesara, and then back at the strange woman, and I realize just how much I’ve not been paying attention to the bidding process. She’s bought every girl so far? Wow. Of course, I pretend to already know this, or else Cesara will wonder what the hell I’ve been doing the whole time.
“Her father must be loaded,” a woman sitting at the table next to us says, “to be able to afford them all.”
“Loaded is what we like,” Cesara responds. “She may be a spoiled little bitch, but if Daddy’s got the money, she can throw as many tantrums as she likes.”
The woman nods, agreeing. “Mmm-hmm,” she says. “But it could put off the other buyers.”
“They’re big boys and girls,” Cesara says. “The best way any of them can handle it is by outbidding her. I look forward to seeing it, the look on her face when she loses.”
“That’ll probably happen soon,” the other woman says. “She’s going to spend all of her money on the opening girls, and not have anything left when the special ones are brought out. I’ve never seen anybody take such an interest in the openers.”
“Me either, but who cares?” Cesara says. “Though, when Daddy finds out, he won’t send her in his place anymore.”
“You know who she is?” the woman asks.
“I wasn’t sure before,” Cesara begins, “but now I remember—I ran her information myself. Her name is Frances Julietta Lockhart, daughter of Brock Lockhart, a wealthy investor and politician in the United States. I’ve seen him before, at previous auctions; first time I’ve ever seen his daughter come in his stead.”
“And probably the last,” the woman puts in.
Cesara nods. Then she looks over at me. “What do you think, Lydia?”
I think Frances Julietta Lockhart is a fraud—like me. Unlike me, I think she’s never done anything like this before. I think she’s in over her head. And I think whoever sent her here is an idiot, because she’s gonna get herself killed.
“I think you’re right,” I answer Cesara. “But it’ll be interesting to watch.”
All of us are right by the second hour, and ‘Frances’ is out of money. Cesara and the woman sitting at the table next to us marvel in the anticipated “look on her face” when Frances realizes she can’t afford the next girl whose starting bid is half a million dollars—a huge difference from the ten, twenty, and fifty thousand dollars she’s used to. Everybody else in the room sees a “tantrum” when Frances sits quietly in her chair, close-lipped, tense, a knot moving down the center of her throat every two-point-four-seconds. I see someone finally realizing she’s in over her head, someone who is as frightened as she is angry, and someone who thinks whoever sent her here is an idiot, because she just might not make it out of here alive.
Joaquin has a habit of looking right at Frances every time a new girl is brought on stage and it’s time to bid, expecting her to raise her paddle before anyone else. But after the fifth and sixth girl, who sell for one million each—to Robert Randolph, smugly, of course—nobody looks toward Frances Julietta Lockhart anymore except the two beefy bodyguards who sit with her at their lonely little table.
The first night of a three-night auction ends with Frances going back to her hotel, presumably—because she did not book a room in the mansion like many guests—with thirteen new slave girls, all totaling one million, one hundred fifty thousand—one girl, the last one she bought, she paid the most for, and it undoubtedly took all she had. It was a bidding war with Robert Randolph, but he was too smart and experienced for Frances. He knew when to keep raising his paddle; he could see the anxiousness and frustration in Frances’ face, just like I could, and he used it to his advantage: he bid against her until he knew she was out of money, and then he let her have it, forcing her to spend all that she had, and putting her out of the game. For a girl that wasn’t even worth half as much as Randolph forced Frances to pay.
And although she was a “spoiled little bitch” and she was here to buy girls, I couldn’t help but wonder what it was about her I liked so much.
But Frances is the least of my concerns, and not what I came here for. So, putting my interest in her away, and focusing on the task at hand—and finding Naeva—is all I have room for to care about.
Unfortunately, I’m going to have to figure out how not to have to fuck Joaquin Ruiz, because he just walked into my and Cesara’s room, and I already know where this is heading.