Page 8 of Brutal Empire

The first thing I saw was the top of a head. Black hair like a crow’s feathers gleamed. The woman was petite, but she wasn’t like the other women here. They disgusted me. All of them came here dressed in their finest jewels and designer dresses. They looked ready for the Met, not the gates of hell.

She was dressed in black from head to toe, no dress, just a long-sleeve shirt and a pair of cargo pants.

“Come with me,” she told me.

Her voice was alluring, not soft and delicate, but something in it was like a siren that you wanted to let lead you, even if it meant to your death.

I looked back at where the stage was. If I left, I wouldn’t be able to save anyone.

“If you stay here any longer, you will die,” she added.

Curiosity got the best of me, so I gave a tense nod. She held on to my hand and led me away from the bidding. I cursed myself because now I was turning a blind eye to the victims being sold.

The woman walked with authority and opened doors as she went. These events were set up like a damn labyrinth that if you took a wrong turn, there was no way you were making it back home. It was probably the only reason why I was able to pull off being a guard in the last one. My guess was in case it got raided. The producers had to have enough time to escape and ensure the safety of their clients. You had to pay fifty thousand dollars to get an invitation to this place. That guaranteed you an entrance and merchandise, but if you wanted their more exclusive stock, you had to drop a lot more cash.

The room she led me into was small. I was barely inside when the woman reached behind her back and pulled out a gun on me.

My hands went up on instinct.

“Careful, sweetheart. You don’t want to hurt yourself,” I told her.

She glared at me.

“Sit on the chair.” She pointed to a chair that was in the center.

Slowly, I did what she asked. As soon as my ass made contact with the chair, her hand struck the side of my head.

* * *

The first thingI noticed was pain coming from the side of my head. Then it took me a moment to open my eyes. As soon as I did, it came rushing back to me. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t.

My hands had been tied to the chair, keeping me in place. I could break the chair, and it wouldn’t be hard to slip out of them after that.

“If I were you, I would stay still.”

My head turned to the sound of the woman’s voice. She wasn’t facing me. She was looking ahead, and I couldn’t figure out why.

“What do you want with me? I can give you mon—”

“I have money,” she cut me off.

“An orgasm?” I joked, and she turned back and looked like she wanted to murder me.

Thanks to the dingy light above me, I could make out her features better. Her face was beautiful and pale. She looked like a porcelain doll. Funny how someone with skin that looked breakable had pulled one up on me.

“You men are all the same,” she told me. I cocked my head now, noticing the faint accent she had. She was not from around here. “You think with your dicks, and that’s why the world is going to shit.”

“I was just trying to lighten the mood,” I confessed. Truth be told, I was terrified. The first time I landed at one of these events, I couldn’t sleep for a month. The first time I saw what was happening, I threw up as soon as I got home. The sad fucking truth was the more time you spent in places like these, the more used to them you became. And the more used to them I became, the tighter the leash around me got.

She turned around and leaned against the wall she had been staring at.

“Are you afraid, Bastian?”

She said my name easily, as if she were familiar with it. The way her eyes roamed me was like a predator.

“No,” I lied.

I’d been lying through my perfectly white teeth since the moment I landed in this hellhole. Never in my wildest dreams did I think shit like this existed. Did I think corruption was real? Yes, but I didn’t think the one percent of the world kept organizations like these from being bankrupt.

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