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DORIN

I’ve been driving for two hours straight.

It’s well past midnight.

By now, Lavinia is probably standing on the podium in the auction room while sleazy, stuck-up, arrogant men bid on her, wanting to get their filthy hands on her.

Rex makes a low whine from the backseat as I speed and hit a pothole in the gravelly mountain road, making the car bounce.

“Sorry,” I mutter, reluctantly slowing down.

I don’t care about myself at this point, but I don’t want to kill Rex.

I have no idea why I even brought him or where we’re going.

Maybe part of me needed to bring him in case I decided not to return.

It doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

The thought of going back there and knowing she’s gone is unbearable.

Maybe I should just disappear deep into the mountains with Rex, build a small cabin, and stay there.

He’d enjoy going hunting with me, and I might enjoy the solitude.

The thought swirls in my mind for another half hour, seeming more and more like a good idea.

When Rex starts whimpering and tapping his paw at the window, I pull the car over at a wide place in the road and let him out to pee.

Leaning against the car while waiting, I tap my fingers against my phone in my jeans.

I’m itching to take it out and check the transaction logs to see if a sale on Lavinia has gone through, but I keep myself in check, knowing it will only make everything worse to see she’s been sold.

“Good boy,” I tell Rex when he returns from within the trees, bouncing with joy.

I scratch him behind the ear, enjoying the way he leans into me.

This is all I need , I tell myself.

But as I let him into the back of the car and get into the driver’s seat myself, I know it’s not true.

I need more.

Leaning my head back into the seat, I close my eyes and conjure images of stringing a girl up and whipping her until she screams.

But it’s still not enough.

The thought is nowhere near as satisfying as it used to be.

The image morphs.

The unspecific girl takes shape.

Blonde locks that fall in soft waves down her back.

Long scars crisscross her milky skin.

Old burn marks rise in uneven patches.

Eyes as blue as a summer lake appear before my inner eye, watching me with trust and vulnerable surrender.

I open and close my fist.

What I wouldn’t give to crash my palm onto the soft mounds of her ass, holding her close and soothing away the pain as she cries out.

Comforting her and telling her everything will get better as the tears start falling.

I imagine bringing her upstairs, tucking her into my bed, and getting in behind her.

Letting Rex join us and curl up next to her.

Her petting his fur and me stroking her hair.

I breathe a deep sigh, finding a moment of contentment as I get lost in the idea.

But then time passes in my vision, just like when I thought about this earlier, and she comes to want more.

She realizes what a monster I am, begs me to stop hurting other women, hating me because I won’t—can’t—change.

With a grunt, I open my eyes and turn the key to start the engine.

It’s a fantasy.

It will never work in real life.

I’m about to pull off the side of the road, but I stop just as I’m about to hit the gas.

Without thinking, I grab the phone from my pocket and log in to our system.

Needing to know what’ll happen to her, I check the latest sales.

Whatever I find there won’t change a thing, but I need to know.

I scroll down the list of sales for this week, almost not expecting to see her name since the sales probably won’t have been finalized yet.

But there she is.

Her number appears at the bottom of the list.

Unit: 248101

Defeat settles heavily in my stomach.

It’s done.

Now, she belongs to someone else, and soon, she’ll be gone, out of my reach.

I press the side button on my phone to put it back in my pocket, but just as the screen shuts off, I catch a glimpse of the buyer’s name.

Urgency rattles through me, stirring chaos into the acceptance and making my rage flare back alive with a vengeance.

It can’t be.

Barely breathing, I turn on the screen again, and there it is, the one name I shouldn’t see.

The one name I need to see—the only one that will get me out of this ridiculous powerlessness, accepting her sale.

Buyer: Zoltan Stepanov.

I have been doing lots of research on this man during the last few weeks, planning and fantasizing about how to take him out, but postponing because I couldn't leave Lavinia. Now he’s there. When I’m gone.

My blood curdles as horror infiltrates my brain.

Tossing my phone aside, I push down on the gas and pull the wheel hard, dragging up a cloud of dust as I make a hazardous turn.

“Sorry, Rex,” I say as I speed down the bumpy road. “I need to get back. Fast.”