Chapter One: Auction Room 19
1374 Words
They’d told her she wasn’t on the list.
Now her feet were bleeding on marble, and the doors had just locked behind her.
Twelve men. One chair. No names.
Valentina stood in silence, jaw set, wrists still red from the restraints they’d just cut loose. Her blouse clung to dried sweat and sea-salt air. The lights above her were low, deliberate, as if the auctioneers wanted her half-shadowed enough to sell the illusion but not the humanity.
A man in the corner adjusted his cufflinks. Another lifted a whiskey glass like it was a bell summoning her closer.
She didn’t move.
“You understand the rules?” a voice said from behind a velvet curtain. “No refusals. No conditions. No escape.”
Valentina blinked slowly. Once.
She didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.
This wasn’t her first time witnessing an auction.
It was just the first time she was the product.
She scanned the room with careful eyes. Twelve men. But one was watching her like he knew something. Not desire calculation. Two others exchanged notes without looking at her. One looked sick. Good.
The bids started low. Formal. Bored.
Someone yawned.
Then a man in the back said, “She’s marked.”
Everything changed.
Chairs shifted. Voices dropped. Even the curtain behind the auctioneer rustled like someone had suddenly stood up.
Valentina’s stomach twisted.
“What mark?” another asked.
The first bidder cleared his throat. “Turn her around.”
A guard moved forward.
She took a step back.
Another voice flat, amused “Afraid to show your value?”
She didn’t flinch. Let them see it. She turned.
Gasps. A laugh. One soft curse.
The mark on her back wasn’t simple. It wasn’t a brand it was a signature. Etched across her spine like someone had carved their name into her before throwing her to market.
But she didn’t remember getting it.
Whoever did this drugged her first.
She faced the room again.
That one man the calculating one smirked and raised two fingers.
The room fell still.
“Sold,” the auctioneer said.
That quickly.
A door opened.
Valentina didn’t hesitate. She walked.
But her chest burned.
She was never supposed to be for sale. Not again. That was supposed to die with Clara. That was supposed to end the night they buried the last of the Benedetto bloodline.
Unless…
Unless it didn’t.
The man didn’t speak in the car. Didn’t look at her.
Black windows. Black gloves. Black silence.
No name.
No demands.
They passed two tolls. She heard a train in the distance, then water—waves lapping wood. A boat nearby.
She couldn’t place the route.
When the car stopped, a door opened. Sea air. Gravel.
“Blindfold off,” a voice said.
She hesitated.
He added, “No one’s aiming at you. Yet.”
Valentina pulled the fabric from her face.
And froze.
He wasn’t old.
Wasn’t what she expected at all.
Late thirties, maybe. Clean jaw, tired eyes, a faint scar down his collarbone, like a reminder of something he survived. Button-down shirt. No tie. No ring.
But he was holding a file.
Her file.
“Valentina Benedetto,” he said.
She didn’t confirm.
He continued. “Daughter of Davide. Marked by Clara. Sold twice.”
Her heart thudded once. Hard.
He looked up. “You’ve had a life.”
She said nothing.
“I’m not like them,” he added.
“You bought me,” she replied coldly. “You are exactly like them.”
The man’s lips twitched, but no smile came.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t buy you. I intercepted you.”
She didn’t respond.
He walked ahead. The house behind him was stone. Isolated. Overlooking the cliff’s edge like it didn’t care about consequences.
Valentina followed him inside.
The interior was sparse. Not luxurious. Not cold.
Functional.
There was food on the counter. Water. A glass already filled.
He handed it to her.
She didn’t drink.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
He paused.
“Lucian.”
She folded her arms. “No last name?”
He shrugged. “None that matters.”
Valentina stared at him.
“You plan to ransom me?”
“No.”
“Kill me?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Lucian looked at her carefully.
“Figure out who sent you,” he said. “And why.”
That night, she didn’t sleep.
The room was locked from the inside.
The bed smelled clean.
Still, she waited until 3:11 AM before getting up and walking to the mirror.
She stripped off the shirt they gave her.
Turned around.
And saw it.
Between her shoulder blades. Red. Raw.
Not the D’Agnelli mark.
Clara’s.
The dead woman’s initials, stylized in ink, curled with a snake eating its tail.
Below it: two numbers.
47:2
A scripture reference? A code? A countdown?
She didn’t know.
Didn’t care.
Clara was dead.
This was someone playing god with her body and maybe her legacy.
But they didn’t get to rewrite her.
Not without blood.
Lucian was already awake when she came downstairs.
He handed her a cup of coffee without speaking.
She didn’t touch it.
“I want answers,” she said.
“You’ll get them.”
“When?”
“When you remember.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“What does that mean?”
Lucian placed a folder on the table.
Photos.
Surveillance.
Her.
Outside a bar in Naples. Inside a café in Marseille. Talking to someone.
A man she didn’t know.
But she looked… calm.
Open.
Like she trusted him.
Valentina felt the blood leave her face.
Lucian said quietly, “You were compromised before they sold you.”
She stepped back. “I don’t remember that.”
He studied her.
“I believe you,” he said. “But the people watching you don’t.”
“Who’s watching?”
Lucian hesitated.
Then: “Everyone.”
She paced the room. Heat rising in her throat.
“You’re telling me I was followed for weeks?”
He nodded.
“You knew about this?”
“Yes.”
“And you still let me be taken?”
He flinched.
“I tried to intercept earlier. I missed the window. Thirty seconds too late.”
Valentina walked to the wall and hit it.
Hard.
Lucian didn’t move.
She spun around.
“Then why am I still alive?”
He stared at her.
And said:
“Because I didn’t tell them you were in love with your target.”
Her heart stopped.
“What?”
He held up the photo again.
“Naples. Marseille. Paris. He was your handler. You were giving him names.”
“I wasn’t”
Lucian’s voice sharpened.
“Don’t lie to me, Valentina. Not now. I’ve burned my last favor keeping you breathing.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t tell anyone anything.”
“Then why were you seen with Bellini’s envoy?”
Bellini.
That name.
The blood froze in her throat.
“You think I betrayed you?” she whispered.
Lucian didn’t answer.
He didn’t have to.
She backed away.
“You bought me to what? Interrogate me?”
“No.”
“Punish me?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Lucian’s voice cracked.
“I bought you because someone put a bullet in your name. Because I’ve seen enough women die for secrets they didn’t choose. Because when I opened the file and saw your face I remembered.”
“Remembered what?”
Lucian’s jaw clenched.
He said nothing.
Valentina’s voice dropped.
“Who the hell are you?”
Lucian exhaled.
Finally, he said:
“You’re not the first Benedetto I failed.”
Then walked away.
Valentina sat alone at the table.
The photos still open.
The file still bleeding.
The mark on her back still burning.
She traced the numbers in her mind. 47:2.
Somewhere deep, a memory stirred.
Her father, drunk.
Reading from a worn leather Bible.
Clara laughing in the next room.
A phrase he kept saying:
“Though the betrayer sits at my table, he eats with my blood.”
Outside, the sky darkened.
She didn’t cry.
She didn’t pray.
She just whispered:
“This isn’t over.”
Because it never was.
- Writer
