Page 4 of Worth

The room chuckles along with the rough laugh over the speaker.

“We’ll start the bidding at–”

“One hundred thousand!” another voice yells.

“One-fifty!” another bidder—female this time—calls.

The announcing voice laughs again, not missing a beat over being interrupted. “Do I hear two hundred?”

“Three!” the first bidder bellows.

My knees buckle, my restraints holding me up. Three hundred thousand dollars to have sex with me? The same two voices go back and forth until they’re up to seven hundred thousand dollars. Seven. Hundred. Thousand.

“Seven hundred thousand, going once,” the announcer says. “Going twice.”

“Two million,” a cool third voice says, not yelling, but commanding the attention of the entire room anyhow. “Contingent on ownership rights.”

The room explodes into a flurry of whispers as I feel every drop of blood drain from my face. There’s a pause from the announcer, some hushed conversation playing over the speaker. Spat would probably be a better way to describe it. I can hear shouting through the muffling of the mic, even if I can’t understand what the shouter is saying.

I yank at my restraints again. I don’t know why. Even if I got free, the armed guards at every door would keep me from escaping. The ropes, of course, don’t give.

The announcer clears his throat. “Current owner agrees to contingency. Sold to bidder number two with full ownership rights for two million dollars.”

Chapter 1

My hands are fucking numb. Again.

I try to shift my sore and battered body up higher on the bed, to ease the dead feeling in my hands, but nothing works. Nothing ever does. I don’t even know why I try anymore.

The sounds of the turning lock and shuffling feet make me breathe a sigh of relief, anxious to be free of my bindings. The awkward pitying silence from whoever has drawn the short straw of seeing to me weighs heavily in the air.

I turn my head to watch the nameless, dark-haired girl face me from the small eating table, where she’s set my breakfast tray. Without meeting my eyes, she makes her way over to help me out of the ropes. She wisely holds her tongue while she’s at it.

The others always learn quickly that they should only speak to me at their own risk. I lost the ability to speak kindly in the mornings a long time ago—not when I’ve been tied to a bed for hours.

When the ropes slacken enough to pull my arms free, I sit up and yank the rough blanket over my naked flesh, more annoyed by the chill on my skin than my nudity. The girl turns and leaves without uttering a word, the lock clicking into place once more.

Wrapping the blanket around myself, I go to the table, moving slower than normal. My vagina feels like someone kicked me dead in it. Five times in a row. With steel-toed boots. The need to put something in my belly so I don’t vomit overrides my ever-present desire to scrub at my skin, to remove the vile memory of last night. Sitting gingerly, I still wince when my sore body rests on the hard surface, even as I let it fuel my hate.

I eat my oatmeal and fruit with slow methodical bites, being careful to sip at my orange juice with a straw. It takes only a time or two of drinking citrus with busted lips to teach a person to be more careful, and the split bottom lip I have from last night is no exception.

It isn’t an abnormal occurrence—the rape and beatings I receive on a near nightly basis. It’s what my purpose is; what I had been purchased for. By day, I am held in my room under the stairs, waiting for night to come. Because when the sun sets and my dinner arrives, I know my time to fight is coming.

Every night there’s hope that I will finally overpower Damien Ainsbury—my very own bidder number two.

Every night I fail and end up tied to my bed, raped until I’m raw and more pissed than a cat dumped in a cold bath.

For the last three years.

The first couple of weeks, I screamed and pled for mercy—even around the gag, once Damien began placing it in my mouth to quiet me. That girl died long ago. I didn’t even like to remember her name in this room. The only name I know is the one I have been given—a simple, dainty Elizabeth that doesn’t come close to matching the hellcat prowling under my skin.

I taught myself to become numb during everything, my eyes open but unseeing; rage burning a hole in my chest; plotting vengeance while my body was exploited. I didn’t have a single night that I hadn’t detached myself from what was happening to me, increasingly violent visions of Damien’s death helping me pass the time.

Even when I had gotten my period for the first time since arriving, there had been no break. It had been a few months after I was sold, my body falling off its regular cycle as I endured Damien’s torture and abuse. One of the household Skins had found me sitting in a puddle of blood in the bathtub when she brought my dinner tray. At least they’d deigned to give me a couple of boxes of pads and tampons.

I could still remember how much my pelvic area was cramping when Damien arrived at his normal time. I had been pacing, amping myself for battle. My mind had already been churning through idea after idea of how I could murder my owner. But instead of shredding my clothes, as he always did, he only perched on the edge of the bed.

“I hear you’re bleeding,” he said, sounding disappointed.

---