Chapter 1

Alina's POV

"Shit! The little bitch is running—grab her!"

The man who had knocked me out at the underground fight club and dragged me here was screaming at my back, trying to haul me in before the auction.

His shrill voice startled the birds resting on the windowsills. They scattered into the quieter darkness beyond the castle walls.

I couldn't afford to care.

This was a castle in New York—the kind of place where the powerful bought and sold human beings. The corridors twisted and doubled back on themselves, and I kept hitting dead ends, kept stumbling into masked men in expensive suits.

I ran and screamed for help at every one of them. They'd clearly seen this kind of thing before. They watched me with amusement, some of them even cheering on the man at my heels—as if the whole thing were a sport. A cat chasing a mouse, and they were the audience.

The moment I understood that, I stopped screaming.

I had years of underground fighting behind me, and I used every bit of that conditioning now, pushing myself forward at a dead sprint. The stolen coat I'd thrown over my shoulders snapped in the wind as I ran. The cold of late autumn cut across my face like a blade.

When the castle's front gate came into view, a spark of hope caught in my chest—and at the same moment, the man behind me screamed again:

"Don't let her leave here alive! Run her down—I'll cover it!"

The words had barely left his mouth when I caught movement in my peripheral vision: a black sedan swinging around the corner, aimed directly at me.

There was no time to dodge. It didn't matter how fast I was. A car with its accelerator floored would always be faster.

For one suspended instant, time seemed to stop entirely.

Then the impact came, and I felt something leave my body—as though I were floating above myself, watching from a distance as I hit the ground.

The sound of bone breaking reached me from somewhere inside my own skull. Pain spread through me like floodwater. The world went black, and through the darkness I could hear the man who'd been chasing me walk up and spit.

"Pathetic. Let's see you run now." He had a scar across his face, and he looked down at where I lay without moving, his voice flat and contemptuous. "Cross the wrong people and think you can just walk away. You brought this on yourself."

"Sir—" The driver scrambled out of the car, his voice tight with panic. "She's not—she won't be permanently damaged, will she? What if she's unsellable?"

"Relax," the scarred man said. "Some clients have a thing for that. If anything, she'll fetch a higher price. Bring her in."

As the scarred man and his crew dragged me upright, I forced my eyes open—and saw, directly in front of me, several pairs of black dress shoes polished to a mirror shine.

Survival instinct took over before conscious thought could. I reached out, grabbed the ankle of the man nearest to me, and tried to speak. What came out instead was a mouthful of blood.

I wiped it away as fast as I could and tried to arrange my face into something pleading, something that might appeal to whoever this was—but the pain made even that impossible. All I could do was hold on and pull myself closer, inch by inch.

I knew how I looked. Pathetic. Desperate. Something less than human.

But I had no other choice.

I would not be auctioned. I would not become a plaything for the powerful. I was going to survive—and every person who had ever looked down at me, every person who had ever ground me underfoot, was going to watch me do it.

Anyone else could give up on me. I never would.

The sheer force of that will drove me lower, and the man I was clinging to didn't step back.

Slowly, painfully, I looked up. The light from the castle came from behind him, outlining a broad, powerful frame. I couldn't make out his face.

He tilted his head slightly to look down at me. I turned my face up toward him, and pushed the words out through gritted teeth: "Help me… save me, and I'll… I'll do anything… I'll pay you back…"

A cold autumn wind moved through the space between us, carrying the faint, expensive scent of cigar smoke.

Silence.

Then the man beside him spoke first—snapping at the men behind me: "What the hell kind of operation are you running? Get her out of here."

The scarred man wrenched my fingers loose from the stranger's ankle, twisting them back one by one, and offered the man in front of a greasy smile. "Pardon this trash—she's got no business being in front of a man like you. I'll have her apologize right now."

The others forced me to my feet, seized my arms, and twisted—hard. Then a slap landed across my face. "You filthy whore. Do you have any idea who you're in front of? This is the most distinguished director on these premises. Apologize. Now."

The side of my face blazed. The cold wind hit it like a dull knife dragged slow across skin.

The blow had knocked stars into my vision, and it took a moment before my head cleared enough to see the man properly.

He was striking—the kind of face that would stop you in the street. But the eyes beneath those features were cold. Remote. The eyes of someone who felt nothing.

A director. I stared at him, still trying to breathe.

He had the same look as my foster father and his associates. I recognized it instantly.

The fear those kinds of men had built in me over the years was no longer a feeling—it had become part of my bones.

I could never forget the way my foster father looked at me. In bed, his eyes said I was something in heat, something animal. Outside the bedroom, they said I was an asset he owned completely—a tool for making money, a tool for his use. It was because of him that I had ended up in this auction at all.

One afternoon I'd been lying in his bed, barely conscious after hours of what he'd done to me, when one of his business associates stopped by.

"Come to the study with me in a minute, sweetheart."

When I didn't respond, he hooked a finger through the labial piercing he'd had put on me by force, and pulled.

I cried out. His release ran down my thighs as I dragged myself upright and moved toward the bathroom. He reached out as I passed and squeezed.

"Filthy little animal," he said.

After my eighteenth birthday, that kind of language had become daily. I'd moved past pain into numbness somewhere along the way.

What would refusing him accomplish? There was no way out. Resistance only invited harsher punishment, crueler words.

When I came out of the bathroom, he wouldn't let me dress properly—just a thin shirt, nothing else. He wanted me to meet his guest like that.

I thought I'd been compliant enough. But he kept pushing. That was the first time he ever saw reluctance on my face.

The consequence was having my wrists bound and a vibrator forced inside me before he brought me out to entertain his business associate.

Men like him had everything—money, power, social standing, the ability to bend the world to their will. And yet they still found ways to strip a person down to nothing. In a civilized society, taking someone's dignity—forcing degradation from a living, breathing human being—seemed to be its own reward for them. Another proof of their superiority. Another conquest.

I still remember what it felt like to be made to climax in his arms. The collapse happening inside me outlasted any physical pain by far.

That look men like him have—contempt that goes beyond class, beyond hatred—it cuts like a weapon.

To them, I was a financial instrument. A body to use. A curiosity to satisfy.

So no—I didn't feel particularly lucky to find myself in front of this man.

"Apologize!" the scarred man was still snarling in my ear. "A word from someone like Lord Rowell is more than someone like you deserves—"

The man holding me from the other side drove his fist into my stomach.

Pain detonated through every part of me. I clenched my teeth. Blood seeped from between them. I said nothing.

I raised my head and looked at every one of them with pure, open hatred.

It was men like these who had destroyed my parents—who had left me an orphan before I was ten years old, who had sent me to an institution with nothing.

Everything that had broken my life began with people exactly like them.