VOLKOVA

[Lilia]

I was lying on cold hard ground. My wrists and feet were bound behind my back, and my left knee pulsed with sharp pain. My eyes were covered, and my mouth was gagged with a strip of cloth that tasted of iron and dirt.

Where am I?

I don’t know.

How did I end up here?

My father happened.

It all happened too fast for my mind to make sense of.

It was after midnight. I was asleep when my father came home, reeking of alcohol. Nothing had changed. He was the same man he became after my mother died of leukemia when I was fifteen. He hadn’t been sober once since then.

He drowned himself in vodka and cards, gambling with what little he had left of his life. He forgot that he still had a daughter who needed him.

I worked from a young age to keep us afloat, to make sure we had a roof, food in the fridge, and lights that stayed on. But it was never enough. Working in a coffee shop wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.

Even so, I couldn’t leave him. He was the only family I had, no matter how much it broke me to stay.

That night, he woke me up by kicking open my bedroom door. His voice was hoarse and desperate.

“Lilia! Get up!”

My heart jumped as I sat upright. “What is it, Papa?”

He stumbled in, face pale and sweaty. “I need money. Now. They’re coming for me.”

“What? Who’s coming?” I asked, half-asleep, half-afraid.

He didn’t answer. He went straight to my drawers, pulling them open and throwing clothes to the floor.

“I know you’ve been hiding cash.”

I froze. He meant the savings I had for school, two thousand dollars I’d saved from every extra shift, every meal I skipped.

“Papa, please stop. That’s all I have. I’m trying to go back to school—”

“I don’t care about that!” His voice cracked, a mix of rage and terror. “They’ll kill me if I don’t pay them!”

He slammed his fist into the wall so hard it made me flinch. “Where is it?”

“Papa, you’re drunk again—”

“Don’t you dare lie to me!”

He was trembling, eyes wide and bloodshot. I had seen him angry before, but this was something else. Fear.

I stood frozen as he tore through my desk. When he reached for the bottom drawer, I lunged forward.

“Papa, please!”

He ripped it open and found the envelope. My stomach sank.

He tore it open, his expression twisting when he saw the small stack of bills.

“This?” He laughed bitterly. “You think this will save me?”

“Give it back,” I said, my voice shaking. “That’s for me. Please.”

He turned on me so suddenly I didn’t have time to move. His hand clamped down on my shoulder.

“You ungrateful girl. You’d rather let your father die?”

Before I could respond, three loud knocks shook the door.

He froze. His face drained of color.

“Who’s that?” I whispered.

He didn’t answer. He looked at me with wild, bloodshot eyes. “Don’t make a sound.”

The knocks came again, louder this time.

“Ivan Varga!” a deep voice called out. “Come out. Don’t make us come in.”

My father cursed under his breath and grabbed my shoulders.

“Listen to me, Lilia. Stay here. Do not speak.”

“Papa, who are they?”

He shoved me back toward the wall. “Stay quiet.”

The front door burst open. Boots thundered against the floorboards.

“Ivan,” the voice said again, almost cheerful now. “You’ve been hard to find.”

My father stepped into the hallway. “Sergei, please. I told you I’ll pay—”

“Pay?” The man laughed. “You mean the hundred thousand rubles you lost last week? You think I forget things like that?”

My blood ran cold. Hundred thousand.

I crawled to the window, my heart pounding.

“I just need more time,” my father said.

“We’ve given you time,” Sergei replied. “You ran out of it.”

Then my father said the words that shattered everything.

“No, I have a daughter. Take her instead. Please don’t hurt me.”

At first, I thought I heard wrong. The words hung in the air, heavy and hollow.

My breath caught in my throat. The room tilted. I stared at the doorway, waiting for him to take it back, to say he didn’t mean it.

But he didn’t.

He meant it.

The man who was supposed to love me, protect me, the one I starved and worked for had just traded me for his own life.

Something inside me cracked. It wasn’t just fear. It was the kind of pain that didn’t make you cry right away. The kind that burned slow and deep, stealing your air and leaving nothing but disbelief.

“Papa?” My voice came out broken, barely a whisper.

He didn’t answer.

Sergei laughed softly. “How touching.”

The gunshot came a second later.

The sound split the air, sharp and final. I didn’t look. I didn’t breathe. I ran.

I threw the window open and jumped.

Glass shattered as I landed hard on the pavement below. Pain tore through my left knee as blood soaked my pants. I tried to crawl, dragging myself toward the back alley.

“Get her!” someone shouted.

I forced myself forward, gasping through the pain. I didn’t make it far. Hands grabbed my hair, yanking me back.

“No! Please!” I screamed, but my voice broke against the night.

Something hard struck the back of my head.

Everything went black.

When I woke, the ground beneath me vibrated. I was lying in the back of a moving truck. My wrists and ankles were bound, and the taste of blood lingered on my tongue. My head throbbed, and my knee burned.

I heard whimpers beside me, muffled cries, and the clinking of chains.

“How many of them?” a man asked.

“Ten, boss.”

“Good. Take them to Irina and prepare for the auction.”

Auction.

The word made my stomach twist. I pressed my forehead against the cold metal floor as sobs echoed in the dark.

The truck jerked to a stop. I rolled onto my side, bumping into someone beside me. My knee hit the floor, and I bit down a cry.

The door creaked open, flooding the darkness with blinding light. Boots scraped against the metal.

“Get them out,” a man ordered.

One by one, they pulled us from the truck. When a rough hand grabbed my arm and yanked me up, the pain in my knee flared.

“Boss! This one’s injured,” the man holding me said.

Another man approached. His voice was low and smooth. “Let me see.”

I flinched when his fingers touched my face.

“She’s a pretty little thing,” he said. “Be careful with her. Irina will want her cleaned up.”

I was scooped up and thrown over a shoulder. The movement made my head spin. The smell of gasoline and rust clung to the air as we moved through what felt like an underground facility.

When they finally set me down, I heard low whimpers all around.

“Listen up,” a woman’s voice cut through the room, sharp and cold. She spoke with the kind of authority that made my skin crawl.

“I will remove your blindfolds and gags. One of you screams, you die. One of you runs, you die. You understand?”

No one dared to make a sound.

My heart pounded. My body was trembling, but I nodded without meaning to.

Someone moved behind me. My blindfold was yanked away, and the gag was removed. Light stabbed my eyes.

A woman stood in front of us. Tall, composed, with golden curls pulled into a tight bun and a black latex suit that gleamed under the harsh lights. A whip rested casually in her gloved hand.

She must be Irina.

She walked toward me, heels clicking against the cement floor. She crouched down and grabbed my chin, forcing me to look up.

“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.” Her smile was thin and cruel. “A fine face. What a shame about the knee.”

She tilted my head side to side, inspecting me like property.

“You’ll be patched up. If you heal well, you’ll be displayed tonight.”

Her words made bile rise in my throat.

“Take her,” she said, standing.

The guards dragged me to another room where a woman cleaned and bandaged my wound, injecting something that made my leg go numb. Then they dressed me in lace and thin fabric that barely covered my skin. A metal collar was fastened around my neck, a silver chain running to the cuffs on my wrists.

When they were done, a tug on the chain brought me back to reality.

The girl next to me looked no older than twelve. Her eyes were swollen from crying.

We were led down a long corridor. The air was thick and stale, smelling of perfume and fear.

A red satin sheet covered the cages we were in, but I could see silhouettes moving behind the curtain of fabric. We were pushed out onto a stage under blinding lights.

Irina’s voice carried across the room, cold and rehearsed.

“Welcome to the Annual Red Auction. Tonight’s collection is a rare one.”

People in the seats wore masks, their faces hidden, their attention focused on us.

The man at the podium raised a gavel.

“Lot seventeen,” he announced. “Healthy. Unbroken. Young.”

Bidding numbers echoed.

Ten million. Fifteen. Twenty.

Each number was a nail sealing my fate.

And somewhere behind the glass, a man I didn’t yet know placed the winning bid that would change everything.