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OPHELIA

“Ophelia, your days as a free woman are over.” My eyes fly up to Topher, my soon-to-be ex-boyfriend. The casual tone of his voice doesn’t match his weird, fucked-up announcement, so I must’ve misheard him. I must have. “We’re having an auction tomorrow, and you’ll be sold to the highest bidder. I hope you understand.”

My fork and knife clatter on the table.

The steak on my plate hasn’t been holding my interest to begin with.

Auction?

Highest bidder?

Hope I fucking understand?

What the hell?

I shouldn’t even be here. Yesterday, I gave him the infamousWe need to talkline over the phone. He asked me for one last dinner at his dad’s place, which I foolishly agreed to.

A dinner, that’s all. Not this.

My mind races as Topher’s words replay in my head.

Snap out of it!

“Topher?”

He sits across from me at the long table in the dining room. His expression is blank, his mouth sealed. He can’t do that to me.

After the bomb he’s dropped on me, I’m owed an explanation. A million of them.

“Topher, what did you just say?”

Nothing.

His father, James, who sits at head of the table, is equally silent. I don’t dare look at him.

Can’t, since my mind is still hard at work. Since I’m frozen in place, furious and shocked. What the hell is this?

I couldn’t have heard it.

You’ll be sold to the highest bidder.

If he were actually saying what I think he did, James would have intervened.

Selling people is illegal. He’s a lawyer; he has to know that.

He doesn’t even have to care about me to realize that it’s against the law. That it’s wrong.

James and I have only met three times over the last month, five months after I started dating Topher. The impersonal dinners we’ve had in his mansion on the outskirts of New York City is not a lot to go on, true. We aren’t friends.

But he’s given me the impression of being a serious, no-nonsense type of man.

And if selling me isn’t nonsense, I don’t know what is.

Yup. I must’ve misheard Topher, then.

Deep breath.

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