Such things as "millions" had been dangling over the smoky air. This was to say it marked the grotesqueness of the initial sale of a human soul-my soul. And here it was, as I stood glancing into the front row, at the one whose brutish feature and whose eyes burns like flame chips of flint. That man held in the sky his paddle with a triumphant, approaching-of-ownership type of air. He stared at me like you would a girl after all the meat-she'd ordered a whole side of beef. Those lips twisted into a sneewering sneule-like lip-curling to the crawl-up skin. The auctioneer-nay, maestro of this macabre theater-turned his eyes around the room: "I have one million dollars. A fine beginning for a fine specimen. Do I hear one-point-two?"
A paddle shot up from the second seat onward. Then another add from the side-off. The figures took off climbing with a sickening speed, much like dizzying. Each fresh link was something heavier than its predecessor, being chains forged around me. One-point-two became one-point-five. One-point-five became two. I felt disassociated from my own body, a spectator watching a play about a girl who looked just like me. Of course, my mind did try escape, retreating into those quiet, dusty archives of a university library, able at least to smell old paper and feel the pretty weight of a history book in my lap. But that voice of the auctioneer was a relentless whip, lashing me again.
"Two-point-five million from the gentleman in the front," the auctioneer shouted, giving that caveman which came to be the name Valenti a further zoom over his competitor with a dramatic slam of his paddle down onto the arm on his chair. But Valenti did not just want to win; he wanted to dominate. His hot and suffocating gaze seemed to trap me with the assurance of a future full of cavalier cruelty and rough careless hands. The bile rose in my throat.
The room had quieted. Two-and-a-half million dollars must be a staggering sum-an absolute barrier isolating the serious players from other, fewer serious contenders. For a terrifying, horrific moment, I thought it had come to an end. I was his. The auctioneer began his final call. "Two-and-a-half million dollars going once..."
My heart slammed against my ribs. No. Please, not him.
"...going twice..."
Then, like daggers through heart, a voice from the total blackness of the back of the room spoke. The voice was not loud, but it carried with the chilling precision of a shard of glass cutting through an unfriendly, deaf sound.
"Five million."
A collective gasp swept through the ballroom. Every head, including my own, swiveled towards the source. The voice was calm, almost bored, as if he were ordering a coffee. The sheer arrogance of it, the doubling of the price in a single, quiet phrase, was a display of power more profound than any shout. The auctioneer's cool professionalism broke for a second and then returned. "Five million dollars!" he boomed-in his voice and level of excitement. "The bid is five million from the gentleman in the back!"
That brutish face in the front row twisted himself in his chair, his features becoming a mask of furious rage. He glared into the shadows as if he were trying to work out just where this new rival of his was. "Five-and-a-half!" he growled, his voice a raw snarl.
The return came instant, as quiet and edged as before. "Ten."
Ten million dollars. It was an impossible, obscene number. It was no longer an auction; it was a declaration of war. The brutish man's face changed from red to mottled purple; he looked as if the pressure might make his head explode as his fists choked, unclenched, clenched again. And he was completely, utterly humiliated. The bid wasn't just about buying me; it was about crushing him, about reminding everyone in this room of the vast, unbridgeable chasm between their power and the power of the man in the shadows.
Valenti leapt to his feet, twisted a shaking finger toward the far end of the room, and yelled, "Who the hell—"
"Ten million dollars is the bid," the auctioneer cut him off, his voice turned sharp with a warning. In this world, there were lines you did not cross, and clearly challenging a man who could throw away ten million dollars without raising his voice was among them. "Do I have any other bids? Going once?" He didn't even look at the fuming man in the front row. He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of something like awe, or perhaps fear, in his eyes. He knew who had just bought me.
"Going twice?"
The silence was deafening, heavy with tension and defeat.
"Sold," was all that remain, and the auctioneer's voice fulfilled the purposive decay it enacted. The impact of the hammer sounded like thunder in the empty air of that cathedral room. Its echo was like an ending and a beginning for my life.
My mind froze, holding my breath hostage. He had saved me from the brutish man only to put me into the mouth of the beast lying in darkness. Who could he be? Who could afford to buy a man? The murmuring started again, but different now-hushed, nervous whispers. The name Moretti was passed from lip to lip like a forbidden prayer.
Quite like a reflection of summoned fears, a figure began to stir. He detached himself from the shadows and walked down the central aisle. Now the other men shrank back in their chairs: all the former arrogance evaporated, paving way for him as a king would. The man moved like liquid grace, a predator at home. He wore a black suit-knitted tailor-made button that, under a canvas of power and wealth, seemed to mold to his body. Then at the chandeliers' dim light, I could finally really make out his face.
He was beautiful-beautiful in that terrible, breathtaking way fallen angels are. Such high cheekbones, with a strong shadow of perfect stubble along that aristocratic jaw, and a mouth which looked chiseled from marble. But it was his eyes that caught me, ensnared me from fifty feet. They were dark, so dark they sucked up the light, and they fixed me with an unsettling intensity. My stomach tied a hard knot at the lack of heat or lust that I had seen as sexually charged in mine. Instead, that kind of possessive ownership looked like it belonged to a collector measuring his newest, most expensive acquisition. It was ownership. He didn't stop until he was standing at the foot of the platform, looking up at me. He was close enough now that I could see the faint silver of a scar that cut through his left eyebrow, the only mar on his perfect face. He said nothing. He simply watched me, his gaze a physical weight. My defiance, my anger, my fear—it all felt like a child's tantrum in the face of his immense, silent authority. This was Dante Moretti. This was the Devil. And he had just bought my soul.