Time twisted and stretched in the suffocating silence that followed the falling gavel. I was now a statue on a pedestal, and below me was the sculptor who owned me. Dante Moretti stood there, without moving or speaking. He only looked up at me with those cold, fathomless eyes, and his expression was different to me, probably completely unreadable. Pure, undiluted possession was the look in his eyes: nothing more, nothing less. The world around shrinks down to the space between us — a chasm, a power-feared chasm. My defiance, which up until that moment had been my shield against the leering crowd, felt flimsy as a paper wall against him. It wouldn't hold.
He made a small, almost imperceptible gesture with his head. A tilt. A command. Come. It wasn't a request. It was an expectation of obedience as natural to him as breathing. For a heart-stopping second, my feet refused to obey. Every instinct screamed at me to run, to fight, to do anything but walk toward that man. But where would I run? The room was filled with monsters, and he was their king. My legs began to tremble, and with a slow, agonizing surrender that felt like a part of my soul tearing, I took the first step down from the platform. Then another. I moved with the grace of a puppet whose strings had just been pulled, descending from the stage of my humiliation directly into the hands of my new master.
When I stepped down, he was still about six feet away from me, but the density of his presence surrounded me like a waivering suffocation. He didn't offer a hand. He simply turned, expecting me to follow. And I did. I fell into step behind him, my eyes fixed on the intimidating breadth of his shoulders in that perfect black suit. As he moved, a path cleared before us. The men who had been bidding on me moments before now averted their gazes, their faces a mixture of fear and deference. They wouldn't meet his eyes, let alone mine. I was no longer an object for their perusal; I was Dante Moretti's property, and to look at me now would be a trespass.
I caught a last glimpse of the brutish man, Valenti, as we neared the exit. His face was a thundercloud of fury, and his hateful eyes locked onto mine. There was no defeat in his gaze, only a raw, violent promise of future conflict. I saw in that look that this wasn't over. I wasn't just a prize Dante had won; I was a prize Valenti had lost, and his rage made me a target. A shiver of premonition went through me. I was a pawn, a trophy in a war I didn't understand, and my new owner had just painted a target on my back.
Dante appeared to take no notice of it or care. He thrust through the heavy mahogany doors into the hallway, and the two silent guards fell in behind us to form a human cage around me. They swept me down various corridors and out a back exit into a cold, sterile concrete garage. The night air was a shock to my lungs, resting against me, waiting for a long, low panther-like black car, rumbling softly with its engine. It waited with the back door held open by a driver. Without a work, Dante slid inside. His unflowing movements were fluid and economical. He glanced back at me. His shadowy face gave the impression that it had just issued another silent order.
I only hesitated before stepping in after him and dropping into the plush leather seat. The door shut with a heavy final thud, sealing us in. The inside of the car fell into an even more profound silence than the waiting room had had. It was absolute, insulated. The tinted windows turned the gritty city lights into soft, distant blurs, separating us from the world. The interior smelled rich leather and faint, clean hints of his cologne. It was a prison, albeit a luxurious one, and it could be carried.
He was not looking straight into my eyes either. He was gazing out his window as the car smoothly pulled out of the garage into the rain-slicked streets. The silence stretched, becoming a weapon in itself. It was so designed to unsettle me, to make me feel like an object, a package being transported. My thoughts raced madly attempting to comprehend the man beside me. I stole glances at him from the corner of my eye. The profile was sharp and severe, a study in controlled power. A ridiculously expensive watch gleamed on his wrist, the face intricate and dark. His hands rested on his knee, long-fingered and perfectly still. These were not the hands of a man who engaged in brutish violence himself. These were the hands of a man who gave orders that others carried out without question.
What was it about him? What was so valuable about spending loads of money on me? Surely, it couldn't be desire. I had felt desire in Valenti's eyes. There was only cold, calm satisfaction in the intelligent eyes of Dante Moretti. Like a chess master who had just captured his opponent's queen. As if reading my thoughts, his phone vibrated, a low buzz against the leather. He pulled it out, his thumb swiping across the screen. He read the message, and the corner of his perfect mouth tilted in something that wasn't a smile. It was colder. A look of grim triumph. He typed a short reply and then his gaze drifted from the phone and landed on me.
And now, for the very first time, he would have his close inspection of me as his eyes moved from my ruffled locks to the straight lines of that silk drapery down to the bare feet I had planted upon the floor mat. His scrutiny made me feel pinned like a butterfly under glass. "The Romano name used to mean something," he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble in the quiet car. It was the first thing he'd said directly to me. "Now, it's just another debt to be collected."
The words hit me like a physical jab. Debt. Not just bought, but collected by him. I had been collected as the settlement for something my family owed. Before I could process the chilling implication, the car was slowing down, descending down a ramp into a private, brightly lit underground garage. The place was spotlessly filled with all the luxury cars shimmering under the white lights. The car stopped, and the engine was on cut, plunging us again into that heavy silence. We had arrived. I looked outside the window to barren concrete walls with an elevator bank above it marked 'PENTHOUSE.' This was it. The gilded cage. The Devil's lair. And I had just been delivered to the front door.