Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 435(@200wpm)___ 348(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 435(@200wpm)___ 348(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
I look up at Trevor. He’s watching me with that same blue-eyed intensity, and this time I know exactly what it means.
I don’t know how I’ll pay for any of this.
But I know, bone-deep, that the games have just begun.
17
PAYING FOR (OR JUST AFFORDING) MY SINS
Kayleigh
Trevor disappears as the auctioneer beams. “Come with me, little lady,” the pudgy man chortles. His suit is glossier up close, and the knuckle of his thumb digs into my bicep as he guides me across the carpet and out of the ballroom. We stroll down a hallway, and then past a velvet rope marked with a sign that says PRIVATE. Stella tries to follow, but the auctioneer stops her—“Sorry, miss, only winning bidders are permitted in the closing room”—but Stella ignores this and slithers after me anyway, pretending not to hear as she fake-chatters on her phone. Gotta love this girl.
The world narrows: the private hallway is paneled in dark, aged wood, the lighting sudden and direct, like in a movie where the hero is about to be interrogated. The carpet underfoot is thick as oatmeal, the air inside carrying a cool, medicinal tang that makes me want to shrink into my dress and vanish. The auctioneer’s grip is a leash. I follow him because I don’t know how to do anything else.
The side room itself is colder and grander than I expected. There are no windows, just a sweep of polished mahogany interrupted by a chandelier made of crystal daggers, each one catching the overhead spotlights and spraying them onto the floor in shards. The room smells faintly of mothballs and old money. There is a large, gleaming desk set dead center, and behind it sits a woman who has the energy of a person who could wait out a nuclear winter if it meant getting what she wanted.
She’s older—maybe seventy—but not weak. Her hair is a steel wire chignon, not a single strand out of line, and her suit is blood-wine burgundy with a sheen that’s both luxurious and vaguely predatory. The pearls at her neck gleam cold and sharp, and her eyes—gray, exact, the color of winter storm clouds—move over me like she’s making a list of everything I might have concealed on my body.
“Kayleigh McEnroe,” she says, as if correcting my name at roll call. “And guest.” She doesn’t smile.
The auctioneer introduces her as Regina, Chair of the Minneapolis Children’s Fund Board and tonight’s chief closing officer. He bows out, shutting the door behind him with a muffled click, and suddenly it’s just me, Stella, and this woman who looks like she could strip the flesh from my bones using only words.
“Come closer,” Regina commands, and both Stella and I do, tiptoeing up to the desk.
Stella is next to me, not beside me but half-hidden, her hands tight on my wrist. Her voice is a rapid, frantic whisper I can feel on my skin: “How are you going to pay? Oh my god, Kayleigh, what’s the plan? Do you have a plan? Was this a plan or did you just—” Her nails press into the soft tissue between my thumb and index finger, grounding me in the pain.
Regina watches this for a full ten seconds, unblinking, then arranges a tablet and a fountain pen on the desk. “Miss McEnroe, congratulations on your record-breaking win,” she says, but there is zero warmth in the phrase. “To facilitate payment, our preferred methods are wire transfer, certified funds, or crypto. If you have a VIP token, our Treasurer can facilitate escrow within the hour.” She slides the tablet toward me, a spreadsheet already open, a QR code pulsing at the bottom like a blinking eye.
My mouth opens and no sound comes out. For a moment, I’m aware of the warmth pooling under my arms, the wet silk pasted to my sides, the trickle of cold sweat down my lower back. My brain repeats the phrase one million dollars, over and over, as if repetition will shrink the number to something I can manage.
“I—” I try. It comes out wet. I swallow and start again. “Is there an installment plan, or—?”
Regina doesn’t sigh, but the set of her lips suggests she might like to. “I’m afraid not. For sums above a hundred thousand, it’s club policy to accept only immediately cleared funds.” Her eyes cut to Stella, then back. “Unless you have an institutional backer. But then, most buyers at this level are quite liquid.”
My vision blurs. The pearls at Regina’s throat start to float and jitter. I grip the edge of the desk with my left hand and feel the laminate squeeze into my skin, the only real thing in the room.
Stella’s still whispering, but now it’s more desperate, panicky: “Kayleigh, we can fix this, just tell them it was a mistake, they have to have rules for this, you can say you blacked out, or it was a dare, or—”