I knew something was wrong when the room went still.The silence stretched so thick it felt alive.
One second, men were laughing too loud, spilling liquor on their expensive suits while they shouted over each other like it was some grotesque game show. The next, the air turned heavy. Silence fell like a guillotine blade.
The laughter, the clinking glasses, the sickening chants of men bidding on trembling girls, it all died at once, cut off as though a hand had strangled the noise from the room. I thought for a second that maybe I had gone deaf. But then I noticed it: men fidgeting in their chairs, swallowing hard, suddenly interested in their shoes instead of the stage.
Even the master of ceremonies, the man with too much cologne and too little spine, stiffened like a puppet whose strings had just been yanked. His hand froze in mid-air, his knuckles white around the microphone.
I tilted my head. "What's the matter, big guy? Stage fright? Forgot your lines?"
He didn't even hear me. His lips barely moved, voice breaking on a whisper that carried anyway because the world had gone so deathly quiet.
"Jesus Christ… the Devil is here."
The Devil.
I almost rolled my eyes and snorted. I'd grown up hearing that name. Whispers in my father's house when business went bad, when someone turned up dead in the river. A bedtime story for criminals, a bogeyman for men in suits. Whenever someone disappeared, whenever a deal collapsed in blood instead of ink, they blamed him.
The Devil.
It always sounded like a story men told themselves to explain away their failures. Monsters were convenient like that.
I thought it was just that. A story.
But then the double doors at the back of the hall opened, and the story walked in.
And I realized monsters walked like men.
He didn't rush. Didn't strut. Just walked, and the entire room bent around him. He didn't even look at anyone. Yet every head dipped, every chair creaked as men shrank in their seats when he passed.
Men scrambled out of the way without being asked. The air itself seemed to recoil. Two shadows in black suits flanked him, but they were furniture compared to him.
I watched, refusing to look away.
I watched every step, and for the first time in my life, a man unnerved me.
Not that I showed it.
I straightened my spine, widened my eyes in deliberate innocence and stared back.
He was—God help me—handsome. But not the kind that belonged in daylight.
How do I describe this man?
He was… beautiful. That was the next word my mind reached for, though it immediately felt wrong again.
Beautiful was too soft. Beautiful was sunlight and poetry. This man was carved in darkness. His face looked like it had been designed to ruin peace.
Yes, his beauty was sharp, merciless, the kind that promised ruin.
Sharp cheekbones, a mouth set in permanent disdain, eyes the color of gunmetal. Handsome, yes, but in the way a knife could be considered handsome before it slid between your ribs. His beauty didn't belong on earth. It belonged to something colder. Crueler.
And it radiated off him, an aura of ruthlessness so heavy I swore I could feel it in my chest.
No wonder they called him the Devil. He looked like sin dressed in a three-piece suit.
And he was looking at me.
Not glancing. Not sweeping his gaze over the stage like the other bidders had. His eyes locked on mine and didn't move. As though I were the only thing in the room worth noticing.
My stomach did a little flip, but I arched my brows like I was bored out of my mind.
You're not getting my fear, Devil.
He reached the edge of the stage, stopping so close I could smell him. Expensive cologne, smoke, danger. His gaze burned into me, but his lips curved in something that wasn't quite a smile.
My heart knocked hard once, but I tilted my chin like I was still bored.
The auctioneer cleared his throat nervously. "M-Mr. De Rossi, we weren't expecting—"
"Clearly." His voice was low, velvety steel. Then, without looking away from me, he added, "Don't stop on my account. Start the bidding. Don't let me spoil your fun."
The MC's knees wobbled. The man looked like he'd swallowed a frog, but he stammered into his mic anyway "Y-Yes, of course. Gentlemen, the final lot of the evening—"
Luciano didn't look at him. He didn't look at anyone but me.
I crossed my arms. "You know, staring is rude."
That earned a ripple through the crowd. No one talked back to De Rossi. No one.
But instead of snapping my neck, he tilted his head slightly, curious. "And yet you're still breathing. Remarkable."
"Trust me," I arched a brow, "if I wasn't about to be sold like cattle, I'd be trembling under your glare. Maybe even bowing. But I've got bigger problems tonight."
One of his bodyguards who was massive and scowling, actually snorted. Then quickly coughed into his fist when De Rossi's head turned like a guillotine blade.
The Devil looked back at me, eyes glinting. His lips twitched, just a fraction. "Bigger problems than me? That's bold."
The auctioneer, desperate to regain control, squeaked, "We'll start the bidding at half a million!"
"Six hundred!" someone shouted, his voice just a little too shaky.
"Seven!" another barked.
The numbers climbed, but De Rossi didn't even blink. I barely even heard them. His gaze pinned me like a butterfly in a case.
I smirked. "If you keep staring at me like that, people will think you like me."
A dark brow arched. "Or hate you."
"Ah," I said lightly."Romantic either way."
Another cough from the bodyguard. Another dagger-glare from the Devil. The man straightened like he'd been shot.
And just because I was stupid and incapable of knowing when to be serious, I nodded at the bodyguard with a slight frown on my face, "Yes, you! What's so funny? Lucifer here would like to know."
The bodyguards looked thrown off. They exchanged confused looks, obviously wondering if I'm insane.
The Devil just stared at me with an evil snare, like I was an experiment.
"Eight million!" someone croaked.
"Ten!"
The auctioneer tried to sound thrilled, but his voice wobbled like a drunk on ice. He kept glancing at Luciano like he was waiting for the thunderclap after lightning.
Meanwhile, I was still trying to figure out why his eyes looked like they wanted to burn holes through me. "You look at me like you know me." I said before I could stop myself.
His lips curved in danger, not humor. "I don't waste time knowing people."
"Well, you're wasting an awful lot of time staring."
For a second, silence stretched between us, heavy and electric. Then he leaned an inch closer, voice dropping for me alone. "You don't bow, do you?"
I raised my chin. "Not to devils. Sorry to disappoint."
His mouth twitched. Not a smile. Something sharper. Something more dangerous.
And then he said, calm as death "Fifty million."
The room imploded.
The auctioneer nearly dropped the microphone. "F-F-Fifty… fifty million?"
Gasps, curses, the sound of someone choking on his drink. Another man muttered, "She's not worth—" before his friend elbowed him so hard he nearly fell out of his chair.
No one else spoke. No one dared.
The Devil didn't move. Didn't blink. Just kept watching me, as though fifty million was pocket change.
The auctioneer's Adam's apple bobbed. "G-Going once… going twice…" He swallowed hard enough I heard it. "Sold! To Mr. De Rossi."
The gavel came down like judgment.
The Devil had bought me.
I forced my face into calm, though my pulse thundered in my ears. Slowly, I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.
Fifty million. For me.
"Jesus," I whispered to myself, the words barely leaving my lips. "Was my body and soul just sold to the Devil?"