I shook my head; a man was allowed some jealousy.
“Why don’t you sit,” I said quietly, gesturing to the couch by one of the floor-to-ceiling shelves full of old books.
She nodded stepping past all of us, and I swear her breath caught as she did. She took a seat in the middle of the couch, smoothing her skirt down. Erik sat to one side of her, while Oliver took a seat in his favorite wing-backed chair across from the couch. Me, I just stood, arms crossed.
“You need to know about the other night — about us…” Oliver looked down, trailing off.
“About us buying you,” I growled.
She looked up, eyeing me. “What is that place?”
“It’s what you think it is,” I spoke evenly. “It’s a place for men like us — men with means and with certain, I guess you could say tastes to buy what we need.”
“Girls.”
I nodded, watching that fire roar behind her eyes.
I could have sugar coated it, but I wasn’t going to. Because Mia struck me as the type to want things straight and honest.
“Yes,” I said evenly. “To buy women.”
Her jaw tightened, but I held a finger up.
“But, it’s not what you think it is.”
“Enlighten me how that could possibly be,” she hissed.
“It used to be different,” Erik said quietly. “Look, there are women to whom the idea of being auctioned to a man of means, and to be controlled and disciplined is quite appealing.” He raised a brow at her. “Apparently, some women don’t know they like having the control taken from them until they experience it.”
She blushed, and he grinned.
“The Auction House used to be different,” Oliver tapped his fingertips together. “It used to be, well, consensual.”
Her brows perked up.
“It was a show of a sorts — a stage. Yes, there was an exchange of money, and we’d go home with a woman—”
I noticed Mia’s face glower with jealousy, and I smiled to myself at the flash of emotion there.
Oliver continued.
“It was all a fa?ade, because the whole thing was two willing parties. But things changed. Power shifted in the upper parts of the world we belong to, and—”
“And what world is that?”
“The criminal one.”
Again, I wasn’t going to sugar coat for her.
Mia’s eyes went wide, her lips tight.
“Nothing sinister,” I said. “No murder or mayhem or any of that. We sell arms.”
She barked out a laugh. “Oh, nothing sinister at all.” She narrowed her eyes at me.
“No, not—” I shook my head. “Not to the streets, or kids or shit like that.”
“To who then?”
I shrugged. “To who the US Government can’t be seen selling guns to. And they pay us handsomely for it.”
“So what changed?” she said quietly. “With the…” she trailed off, shaking her head. “The Auction House,” she said icily.
“Cunningham,” Erik spat. “Ryan, the man who dragged you there, and his father Johnson. Power shifted, they took over, and they also took over the Auction House, and that’s when things went bad.”
“Things stopped being consensual,” Oliver muttered. “At first we didn’t realize — we’d go and the girls would just be extra…I don’t know, like they were better at playing the role. It set off an alarm with us though, and we stopped going.” He gave her a hard look as she scowled. “No one else besides you has come home with us after the change, Mia.”
She managed a small smile at the floor.
“And then, something happened,” Erik said gruffly. “Something we couldn’t ignore anymore.”
Mia frowned. “What?”
“Amy,” I said quietly.
My two friends looked at me before glancing away. Mia seemed to sense the sudden cloud in the room, and her face fell.
“Who is she?”
“Was.” I looked away, glancing out the window at the trees and gardens of our estate.
“I’m so sorry,” Mia whispered from behind me.
“We came up in the foster system,” Erik said slowly. “The three of us coming up together. We were always bickering, always fighting each other.” He smiled and shook his head. “Then we met Amy, at one of our new foster houses. She was a little younger than us, a tiny little thing, but it was like she was the missing piece for all of us. She was the calming factor, the one that got us to stop getting at each other. Basically, she was the sister we never had — a kid sister for all three of us to care for and watch out for.”
Erik’s shoulders slumped as he slowly shook his head, his hand clenching on the arm of the couch next to him.
“We stayed together after that, through growing up, through getting out of the foster system, through us building our fortunes, all of it. Amy did her own thing though. She was off on her own a lot, sometimes in with the wrong crowds. But we were always there to protect her, and keep her safe.”
“Until we weren’t,” I whispered bitterly.
Oliver pushed his fingers through his hair. “We don’t know how it happened, but she was taken, sort of like how you were, and brought to the Auction House against her will. We weren’t there, of course, but we heard about it later.”
“Did you save—”
“No,” I husked out, “No we didn’t. Ryan got her that night.”
My voice sounded like it was coming from outside my body, my heart shattering like it always did when I thought of Amy.
“He took her home, he beat her senseless, he forced himself on her—”
My voice broke, and I watched Mia’s hands fly to her mouth.
“She died that night,” I said coldly. “He killed her.”
Silence took over the room, until Oliver finally spoke.
“After that, we had a new mission,” he said quietly. “After that, it was about getting back into the Auction House scene, putting things in place, getting Ryan to slip up, and making a move.”
“What’s the move,” Mia said in a hushed voiced.
I took a deep breath, leveling my eyes at her. “To burn him, his father, and everything they have to the fucking ground, and then sweep away the ashes.”
Chapter 16
Erik
The room was quiet for a minute after that, Mia just shaking her head in the silence.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“It is what it is,” Ash growled, looking away.
“Thats awful.”
We were quiet another minute before I spoke. “We aren’t telling you this to bring you down or anything, Mia. We wanted to tell you because we need you to know why you’re here — why you’re really here. We couldn’t let Ryan do to you what he did to Amy, or any of the other girls he’s hurt.”
“So you bought me.”
I grinned, shrugging. “Yep.”
“Just…because?”
The three of us glanced at each other before I turned back to her. “We’d have bought anyone we saw that night to save them from Ryan, you need to know that. But…”
She glanced up into my face.
“But you were different.”
Mia blushed, swallowing quickly.
“You—” I shook my head. “You do something to us, Mia. You walked into the club the other day and you just… fuck, I don’t even know. You make something click in us we’ve never felt before.”