Me.
That money would go a long way, and I had to stick to the plan.
The fear, the disgust of selling myself in a way that felt very much like high-priced prostitution and self-degradation, was nothing compared to what I’d already lived through. Most importantly, it would give me what I wanted more than anything.
A way out.
The exhaustion, the endless hours of running, looking over my shoulder, and the infinite worry for the one soul who mattered more than any other would end tomorrow night.
One more day.
I skimmed over the rest of the highlights in the enormous contract. Basically, I was signing my life away for three years. I would no longer be Faith Marino, daughter to beloved father, Robert Marino, who’d lost his young wife to a drug overdose, leaving me, my father, and my younger sister behind. Instead, I’d be a trophy wife to the highest bidder.
Thinking of my father broke my heart in half. The man I adored and put on the highest pedestal would hate what I was about to do, while still being kind enough to understand and give his unending support.
Hopefully whoever chose me, if I was chosen, would allow me regular contact with my family. These men were vetted as intensely as every candidate being put up for auction. And the best part? My secret would never be discovered, as no record of it existed. I’d ensured that fact by losing a part of my soul. A part I never wanted back.
As long as I could catch the eye of a willing bidder, I had the power to generate a minimum of one million dollars per year. A deposit of $250,000 would be delivered in good faith the night of the auction. And if the bidding went higher than three million, I and those I cherished most would be set for the rest of our lives—with enough money to disappear .
Somewhere the devil himself wouldn’t be able to find us.
I looked down at the last signature line and signed it with a flourish and strength I hadn’t felt until that very moment. I was the master of my destiny now.
For the first time in a long time…I smiled.
Tomorrow night I would stand on a stage with several other hopefuls. Each with their own reason for selling their bodies and souls to the highest bidder at what the clandestine company that hosted the event called…The Marriage Auction.
Episode 2
Taking Out the Trash
RUBY
“Ruby, girl, you ain’t ever gonna amount to jack shit. It’s best you take that job on the pole as your stepdaddy suggests and earn your keep ’round here!” Momma’s scathing tone rattled around my head as I rubbed my eyes, tired from the endless paperwork.
I thought ho’ing myself out to Richie Rich would be a quick wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am type of situation. Apparently, people with money liked their hundred-dollar words a whole lot. Heck, half of the damn words in the Bible-sized contract I didn’t understand. And I’d been going through this detailed process of paperwork all week.
Taking a gander at Madam Alana sitting at her glass desk with her fancy clothes, pretty red nails that matched her outfit, and those heels that cost more than six months’ rent back home at the Sunnyside Trailer Park, I figured she might not look kindly at me asking for a dictionary or a phone that had Internet. My phone was a burner. Prepaid with exactly nineteen dollars and fifteen cents left on it, only used to call my baby sister to check in. Certainly not one of those thousand-dollar mini-computers people carried around pressed to their ears while the world passed them by.
Me, I didn’t care what the world had to offer. Nothin’ good had ever happened to me. Nothin’ good ever would. I grew up dirt poor, sucking back Pepsi instead of milk from a bottle, and with a druggie whore for a mother. It’s a wonder my teeth never rotted outta my head with the lack of real nutrition in my diet. Momma claimed she tried her best. If you called a roof over your head and a meal in your belly every other day taking care of your kids, she did do that. Kind of.
What she didn’t do was protect me or my sister from the horde of “stepdaddies” she rotated through the creaky, rusted door of our two-bedroom trailer. When the door to me and my sister’s room opened in the dead of night, I’d get up and shoo my sister into the tiny closet and out of sight. When he finally left me alone, I’d cry into her hair holding on to her until we both fell asleep.
For years I suffered so that my sister wouldn’t.
Then at sixteen I got a job. I made sure my sister, Opal, was never in the house alone with Momma. I walked Opal to the library every day on my way to work and picked her up on the way home. I gave all my earnings to Momma and told her if she didn’t stop allowing the abuse, I’d go to the cops. She took my money and left me and my sister alone. Mostly we were roommates with my mother and her parade of twisted men who could give her what she wanted most—her next fix.