Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 56620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
OK. Here goes nothing. I knock on the divider. Immediately, the rolls smoothly forward. At the same time, the screen begins playing another video. Same calm voiceover.
"You are being transported to The Cheyenne Club Estate in Jackson, Wyoming. Your driver will take you to the FBO at Idaho Falls Regional Airport. Flight time is approximately fifteen minutes. Please relax and enjoy the journey."
It's a very specific message. Not generic. Not something they play for everyone. Unless they only choose girls from Idaho Falls, and somehow I find that hard to believe. Girls as dumb as me don't exist in concentration—you need to spread that net wide.
I would not call this realization comforting, but it does speak to the details. They made the message for me, and only me.
The car glides through dark streets as my thoughts spiral inward.
Four hours ago, I didn't even know I was in debt.
I mean, I did. Theoretically. In the abstract way you know the sun will eventually explode. Every single moment of my adult life has been spent drowning in various flavors of debt—student loans, credit cards, overdue rent, the slow suffocation of never having enough.
But it existed in the background, ambient dread I'd learned to tune out like tinnitus.
Now, I'm on my way to Jackson—a place normal people like me do not go, where billionaires park their private jets and buy second homes they visit twice a year—so I can sell my body, my boundaries, and my sexual fantasies to the highest bidder for forty-four thousand dollars.
Forty-four thousand dollars that will evaporate the moment it touches my bank account, swallowed whole by the endless maw of debt I've accumulated through a combination of bad decisions, worse luck, and the fundamental inability to function like a responsible adult.
All right. Enough already, my snarky inner monologue snaps, sharp and defensive. You've established the premise. You're poor, you're desperate, you're fucked. You're dumb enough to get in a stranger's car, naive enough to sign a contract probably overflowing with fine print, and broken enough to think selling yourself is a viable solution to your problems. You're gonna be killed, probably. Dismembered. Disappeared. You're long past cautionary tale and well into tragic ending territory.
Try and enjoy it, for the sake of fuck.
The chuckle burbles up out of me unbidden.
Sake of fuck. Only my writer brain—
The car stops.
I blink. Look out the window. We're not at an airport.
We're on the edge of a dark runway. A single building off to the side, all glass and steel, lit from within. Beyond it—
Oh God.
A helicopter.
Rotors spinning. That low, thudding sound that vibrates through your chest. Red and white lights blinking against the night sky.
The driver opens my door.
Cold air rushes in. Snow. Wind. The deafening roar of instant karma.
I don't move.
Get out of the car, Scarletta.
I can't.
You've come this far. Get. Out.
My legs work without permission. I climb out. Stand on the tarmac. The wind tears at my clothes, whipping hair across my face.
A man appears beside me. Dark coat. Headset. He's yelling something but I can't hear him over the rotors. His mouth moves. Words I can't process.
He gestures toward the helicopter.
I shake my head.
He grabs my elbow—not rough, just firm—and tugs me forward.
My feet move. One step. Two. The noise gets louder. The wind stronger. I'm walking toward a helicopter. I'm getting on a helicopter.
You're going to die. This is it. They're going to throw you out over the mountains and no one will ever find your body.
The rational part of my brain is screaming that this is insane. That normal sex auctions don't involve helicopters. That I should run. That I should—
The man opens the door and practically lifts me inside.
The interior is—
I don't know what I expected. Cramped seats and exposed machinery, maybe. Military transport. Utilitarian.
This is not that.
The space is tall enough to stand in. Cream leather seats arranged in pairs facing each other. A single chair positioned near the front. Large rectangular windows lining both sides. A closed door at the back that has to be a bathroom.
Everything is cream, and tan, and polished wood. Clean lines. Expensive materials. More space than seems necessary for one person.
Of course it is. Because billionaires don't fly coach.
The pilot turns in his seat. Looks at me. Points at one of the cream leather seats and then at the seatbelt.
"Buckle in," he yells over the noise.
I nod. Autopilot. I walk to the nearest seat—my legs shaking, my hands numb—and collapse into leather so soft it feels obscene.
The door closes.
The noise drops to a manageable roar.
I fumble with the seatbelt. Four-point harness. My fingers are clumsy. Frozen. Useless.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
The lights dim, the roar deepens, then a piercing whine as the helicopter lifts.
My stomach drops. The ground falls away beneath us and suddenly we're rising, tilting forward, and Idaho Falls spreads out below like a circuit board. Lights. Streets. Buildings getting smaller and smaller.