What does this mean? Why am I not fuming beneath the surface? How can it be that I can sit here on this chair and watch these helpless girls—oh, and that one poor guy—be prodded and gawked at, treated like cattle at an auction, and not want to fly out of this chair and kill all of these fucking people? It’s not because I don’t care, or that I’m like these evil pieces of shit. Jesus—can a person be so desensitized to something that it no longer affects them at all?
I believed in myself enough to know that I could at least get through the mission without blowing our cover—I know I can pull that off no matter what Niklas thinks—but I didn’t expect for a second that I’d be this calm underneath.
But I haven’t seen everything yet, I’m sure.
No…I haven’t seen everything yet.
Nora
I’m going out of my fucking mind; can’t raise my head, can’t speak. This is extraordinarily boring; I forgot just how mind-numbing a role like this can be at times. I can’t believe I ever looked forward to it.
But I’m a professional; even more-so than Niklas and Izabel with their ridiculous bickering—they should just fuck and get it over with already—and I won’t break character, despite how badly I want to point out the real Francesca Moretti to Niklas and get this show on the road. Because I know who she is. I’ve known from the moment we walked into this place. And she’s as good at playing her role as I am—oh, she’s good all right.
Niklas
Trevor Chamberlain buys the virgin for one-and-a-half million dollars. That’s a lot of money, and it would seem like Mr. Chamberlain would be the man of the hour, getting all of the attention from the Moretti family on the stage, but they appear more interested in me. It’s been over an hour and the showing is coming to a close; there’s nothing else to bid on, and I didn’t raise a paddle or a hand once. They want to know why, I’m sure. Because it was clear they made every effort to point out—subtly, of course, so no one but me knew what they were doing—the flaws of each girl who walked out on stage: the brown-haired German girl with a scar on her knee; another brown-haired girl from France with a strange birthmark left in-tact in the center of her back; there was a brown-haired American girl who had thin lips—all of these things were made aware to me so that I could bid on them, or pay to get a closer look, but I did neither.
“The Madam will see you now,” Miz Ghita says after descending the steps of the stage in front of me.
The fake Francesca and Emilio Moretti leave through the exit on the stage, taking the two servant girls with them. Valentina Moretti stays behind to say goodbye to the guests, flanked by servant girls of her own.
“Nothing you saw suited your needs?” Miz Ghita inquires; her voice is laced with tamed censure.
With my briefcase in-hand, I walk alongside her down another brightly lit hallway; Izabel and Nora follow behind us.
“The girls were stunning,” I say. “But none of them had what I was looking for, unfortunately.”
“And what exactly is it that you’re looking for, Mr. Augustin?”
I glance over at her. “I’ll talk about that with the Madam.”
Miz Ghita’s aging face sours, but she doesn’t respond.
In under a minute later, we’re entering an enormous room that looks like three offices in one. Books line the tall walls from floor to ceiling, surrounding a massive desk with an arc-shaped window situated behind it. A matching leather sofa and loveseat and oversized chair is placed strategically out ahead of the desk; expensive Italian rugs cover the marble floor underneath the furniture, giving some red and brown and blue color to the otherwise blinding white floors.
“Have a seat.” Miz Ghita gestures toward the furniture.
I sit in the oversized chair; Izabel sits next to me; Nora on the floor at my feet with my briefcase.
Miz Ghita leaves the room.