“I speak like a man who would burn down the earth for the woman I love.”
Then I realize this isn’t like any time in the past when we’ve done things in the name of high crime. Riley is firing from another weapon, one he hasn’t owned before, and I should have known. The first time he saw her when she didn’t know he was watching, it was there. Every time I saw him with her after, the world didn’t revolve around a job, or extortion, it was just her. Our leader speaks. “Son, this isn’t reprisal or anything in our control. Drew will be so sedated that even if someone heard her speak and she said who she was, they wouldn’t understand her. This is a game of bodies. This is The Ring.”
The Ring is just as powerful as our family, but in different ways. The Astors don’t sell bodies, and bodies are priceless. A powerful man has a budget for his fleet of cars, his mansions—a budget for running his empire. The same man walks into The Ring with bottomless pockets. I exhale. “I’ll go. Riley says there’s no limit on how much he’ll pay.”
“They may recognize you as an Astor.”
“They might, but I won’t be an Astor when I buy her.”
“You don’t mean,” Mr. Astor says, eyeing me.
“I’m dead either way. Might as well give him what he wants.” I look at Riley. “I’ll denounce my family ties and pretend join the sick fucks if I have to. Should be easy if they’re as corrupt as we think. We’ll try to use fake identities first, obviously.”
“If you join them and denounce your name, you don’t come back from that. You aren’t pretending, Jesse,” he replies. Riley stays silent, staring at both of us. “You forfeit everything that belongs to you.”
“Like I said, I’m dead either way. If this plan works, I’ll bring her back and then leave.”
“You think for one second I’d let you get away that easy?”
“No.”
“Why should I trust you?” Riley says. “After you’ve given me every reason not to believe anything that comes out of your mouth.”
I shake my head and offer my devil-may-care smirk. “Do you have another option?”
Chapter Eighteen
Jesse
This is no longer about revenge, or that goddamn bitch Bethany, though it always kind of is. It’s about the mess I got Drew in. When you boil it down to the basics, I am why she’s in this mess. If she dies, the blood is on my hands. I’m why she met Riley and every decision after leading us to this shitty hole in the ground. Literally, The Ring is holding the body auction near the airport in an expansive underground bunker. It’s not as nice as it should be, given how much money this racket takes in. Sometimes a single woman will sell for high seven figures. Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard. I feel guilty when I start daydreaming that instead of Drew being in this dank pit of despair, it’s Bethany. That’s my life though, always mixing my desires with people who don’t have a stake in my fucked-up revenge game.
To get inside the belly of this filthy animal, Reggie and I had to split up. He has diamonds as currency, and I have the wire number to the bottomless account. It’s the emergency account. The one that, even as a boss, I didn’t know if it truly existed or if was a myth until now. The world is at my fingertips. Literally. After the semantics of confirming our false identities and verifying funds, they let us pass into a chamber and then an arena. Reggie got as much information as possible from a former contact, and we look the part. I’m a chameleon. Put me in any situation and I’ll blend in seamlessly. I went from a Grot dirtbag to a refined gentleman. I can kill, paint, or cook. The Ring though? This place and what’s about to take place? Makes my mouth water and my stomach turn. Men look at me, but I only hold eye contact long enough to remember their face. A photographic memory labeled me a freak in childhood, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve been successful as an adult. It’s not just faces either. It’s words, numbers, entire conversations, maps—basically anything I focus on. It’s why I’m good at painting, and why they’ve always sent me to new places first. While I’m here for Drew, I know they’re expecting more from me.
There are no cell phones or weapons allowed inside, and even if we have a non-descript chopper waiting at the nearby airport as do the other buyers, getting above ground undetected when we don’t belong is going to be miraculous. I swallow hard as I make a left and enter the row I was assigned at the door. The fact I’m unarmed makes me uneasy. Surrounded by evil, it makes me scared shitless. It reminds me of the pit in a way. Seating areas are spaced far apart though, and instead of a dirt ring like where I fought, there are huge cages. Right now, they’re covered with black fabric, hiding the women underneath. My heart pounds as I take in the exits, and others in different areas. Reggie, by some act of God, is directly opposite of me so we’ll be able to communicate with the hand signals we went over on the way here. They are very subtle, so I have to watch myself to make sure I don’t accidentally signal something I don’t mean. Reggie isn’t looking at me. He’s scouring the cages like he’s trying to figure out where she is. Riley was right. His guilt over his misstep is large. The only thing keeping him from offing himself is the fact he has to help try to win her back. The chance to right his wrong.
I get angrier every second I study the setting. Electric sticks lean up against each of the fifteen cages. Like zoo animals. I close my eyes for a few seconds. It’s the only way to stop my brain from moving my legs to rip off the covers to find her. What has Drew endured already? What will she look like? To prove we aren’t the law, we have to do bad things before we leave with our purchases. They didn’t tell me specifics when they vetted us. The Ring makes me sick, and I’ve committed some fucked up crimes against humanity in my life. I don’t know how Reggie, a man who treads above the line most of the time, is going to get out of here. Maybe his plan is to die down here after he’s seen Drew to safety. I rub my hands together. Reggie notices. A man dressed in a black suit, flanked by guards, walks from a side door. It’s starting. Be on alert. He shifts in his seat—his confirmation of understanding. We don’t have any idea what comes next. The metal doors all clank closed at the same time. I exhale out my mouth, and I count my breaths.Calm down, Jesse. Calm down. You’ve been in worse situations before. This feels different. Reggie meets my eyes, and everything starts in a rush.
We’re all looking down from our seats above at the cages on ground level, gazes locked on a man I’ve never seen before, yet will now never forget. He has a pocked face and small beady eyes that scan everyone in the room slowly as he tells us simply how the auction will work. Highest bidder wins, and we bid by raising our hands. The announcer paces in front of the cages, peeking under the curtains, then smiling at us, giddy for us to see. When he meets my gaze, even from this far away, my skin crawls. The smarmy smile disappears from his mouth, and he holds eye contact for a beat too long. My mouth is dry as I try to compose myself—hide the fact I want this man dead, a fact he can inevitably sense.
“Lift them,” he says, his mic reverberating his voice throughout the dank space. The black curtains rise and the women all look alike. Their naked bodies positioned on their sides are covered in a thin, white silk sheet. Blonde. Blonde. Blonde. Red. Hair too light. Hair too dark. Their makeup is all done, and their eyes are closed because of whatever they’ve been drugged with. Their hair is the only distinguishing factor from our vantage point. Another blonde. Another one has black hair.Where is she?Sweat beads on my forehead as my memory skips and trips over all the features it’s trying and failing to find.Drew. She’s second to last, her dark hair cascading over the cement below her. Her lips are painted bright red, and her breathing is slow but even. Spotlights flicker to life above each cage, displaying soft, limp bodies. Those in their seats around me look excited as they take in the prospects, but I feel nothing but guilt and sickness. I glance at Reggie, and he turns his gaze from Drew to me but then casually looks at the other women.
Once it begins, the auction moves swiftly. So quickly that I find myself uncomfortable. No one seems to be bidding much over the starting value. Does that mean there won’t be competition? When Reggie gets into an aggressive bidding war for the woman in cage number eight, I wonder why he’s drawing so much attention to himself. We agreed that if this scenario happened, he’d bid on another woman. The way his eyes linger on the cage as the woman rolls from her side to her back tells me there’s more to it. I swallow hard and study the woman. Even with a thick layer of makeup, I can see the bruises on her cheekbones and above her eyes. It’s Drew’s friend. The one I set up in Florida, away from all of this. No one realizes once you’re in this life, it’s near impossible to get out. Callie must have gotten wrapped up with someone in the business. She didn’t need to hook to afford her lifestyle. We paid her, so she attracted the wrong companion and fell into the wrong crowd. I can’t believe this is random like Drew’s kidnapping was. Callie’s was planned.
I nod when Reggie looks my way. The budget wasn’t specified, and Riley did say he didn’t care how we accomplished the goal. There are other bidders who are bidding on every woman. They’re decoys to bump up the price so The Ring fetches top dollar. I watch them carefully, their body movements—where they’re looking and when. Reggie bids up Callie twice more before the decoy relents and his hand remains down in his lap instead of in the air. Reggie is called as the winner. A man in a dark suit takes his fake name and number, and the announcer moves on to the next. The whole process takes less than five minutes for each woman. Keeping my eyes focused on anything but Drew is hard when all I want to do is count her breaths. Reggie lets his gaze flick across the room, not stopping on mine, and rubs a thumb across his bottom lip. I’m being watched from somewhere I can’t see. It must be behind me. I exhale hard, my response, and hold my breath.
If I’m known as a bad guy, those bidding are the devil’s right-hand men. It feels like eternity as the next women are auctioned off. Even if I wanted to save them all, I couldn’t and save Drew. It would draw unwanted attention. More than I’m already receiving. My heart races as the man next to me wins number thirteen.She’s next.This is it. Play it like an evil man, I remind myself. The world seems to slug into slow motion—the announcer walks to where Drew is lying, and it’s finally acceptable to study her. He stoops down and brushes his hand down her silky hair, and every muscle in my body tenses. I work to unclench my jaw and swallow hard. Every fiber in my being wants to end him, but that’s not how this needs to play out. I can’t kill him yet.
“Number Fourteen is a fine specimen, unlike any of the others.” He lists her physical stats, including the fact she’s never had a child, and my stomach swerves as my mind slips into a dangerous place. He finishes, “We’ll start the bidding at five million US dollars. Do I have a starting bid?”
More than any of the women started at. After he asks the question, his eyes find mine. How could he possibly know? It has to be a guess. A good one, but just a hypothesis after my silence during the first thirteen. A man seated next to Reggie raises his hand, and an electric buzz shoots through my body. Gone are any reservations I might have had about standing out.
I put my right hand in the air. “Six million,” I call out.
There are gasps and chattering, but I keep my gaze constant. On her. There’s silence as the ringleader waits for a counteroffer.
“Six and a half,” the other man says. He brought his girlfriend or wife, and it makes me hate him more.
“Seven,” I say, hand back in the air.