Harry steps up to the stage, and as he does, I glance up. But not at Harry. No. At the man in the front row. He’s sitting there, legs spread wide, arms crossed over his chest. Wearing a suit, like the others, but he looks like a cross between a businessman and a male model. Dark hair, with just a hint of wave to it. Dark, intense eyes. His suit is impeccable and clearly expensive. He’s totally polished, except for the dark stubble along his jawline. Somehow, that makes him even more devastating.
His eyes are on me. Calculating, intense. I force myself to tear my gaze away from him, but I swear I can still feel him watching me.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” Harry says. “You are my esteemed guests, and I’m pleased to welcome you to tonight’s auction. Highest bidder for each girl gets a week with her. No questions asked.”
I shoot him a panicked look.
“My girls are worth it,” Harry says. “They can live for months off of one good auction should one of them get chosen now,” he adds, meeting my eyes, raising his eyebrows as if to say “shut up and take what you can get.”
I do.
This was never part of the plan. Dance a little. Probably get groped. But this? A week at the beck and call of a man I’ve never met?
I’m about to protest when Harry speaks again, addressing the men.
“We’ll start the auction with Gracie over there. Starting bid, one hundred thousand.”
My jaw snaps shut, and any thoughts of trying to get out of this float away. A hundred grand would save my father. Not completely, and not forever, maybe, but it’d be a hell of a good start.
I watch the other dancers get auctioned off. One goes for a quarter of a million. One for just over a hundred thousand.
The entire time, the intense, gorgeous man in the front row is looking at me.
Not him. Let one of those other men buy me instead. They look like lawyers or doctors or something. Benign. Something in him, his intensity, the way he watches me, makes me feel like he’d turn my life upside down in about a minute flat. Anyone else. Anyone else.
Just not him.
“Which brings us to Samantha,” Harry says, and I take a deep breath.
“I want different terms,” the man from the front row says, and his voice is a deep rumble, rough, almost hoarse.
“We don’t usually—”
“One month. One month, at my command. You get your hundred K.”
“A month is a long time,” Harry argues.
“She’s gonna be the one doing the hard labor. It’s up to her,” the man says.
I force myself to meet his dark gaze. “I need a million dollars for a month. Up front,” I make myself say.
“That’s a lot of money, even for a sweet little thing like you.”
“You said it was up to me. That’s what I need.”
His gaze holds mine, and I’m sure he’s about to say no. Laugh at me.
One million dollars would get my dad totally in the clear. We could start over. I could go back to school. And if he ever gets involved with the goddamn Mafia again, I’ll kill him myself.
The man is still looking at me, unblinking, still with that calculating, hard look in his eyes.
“Everybody out for a minute,” he says in a quiet voice that makes it clear he expects to be obeyed.
And he is. Everyone—the dancers, the suits, even Harry—file out without a complaint. Harry closes the door behind him, and then it’s just him and me.
“Samantha, huh?” he asks.
“Yes.”