She made me believe in good rather than recognise the bad.

I danced with my murderer.

I smiled when he corralled me outside.

I tried to soothe while he threatened.

And when his hands went around my throat and strangled me, I still believed I could redeem him.

He killed me on the balcony of the ballroom only metres away from my mother.

And the entire time he did it, I still thought he was the one who needed saving, not me.

“Time’s up. You’d better be ready to go.”

My pencil stopped hacking at my toilet vellum. I needed to write what happened after I fell unconscious into Mr. Kewet’s killer embrace. How he’d brought me back to life in a world I no longer recognised. How everything I’d known and everything that’d made sense was suddenly scrambled and utterly foreign.

But Venetian Mask had returned, crossing his arms over his huge untoned bulk. Even his voice was nondescript with no accent or hint. Without facial features or racial clues, I had no idea where I’d been transported and what country I would belong.

Scrunching up my handful of pencil-scribbled paragraphs, I stuffed the tissue down my pearl-beaded bodice. My fingers trailed up the decorative dress to whisper over my throat. Even now, the shadows of finger-bruises marked me. Being strangled was a painful death. And one that left remnants in both aches and contusions, always there to remind when glimpsed in a mirror.

He’d killed me. I hadn’t been able to stop him.

So why couldn’t he have left me dead?

Why couldn’t this have been over rather than just beginning?

Because you’re worth far more alive.

I straightened my back.

I’d blow-dried my hair and applied the mascara and lipstick provided. I didn’t know why I bothered. However, prettiness might be a curse that could grant me a kinder fate. In my unsettling rationale, I figured the more someone paid for me, the better my overall treatment might be.

Unless that backfires and a psychotic billionaire buys me for marksman practice.

My throat closed as my heart did its best to find a stepladder and climb its way out of my chest. I swallowed it down again. As much as I didn’t want to face this, I needed my heart beating if I stood any chance of surviving.

Clipping over the tiles, I smoothed my white gown as if being presented to the prime minster. The quaint buttons on the back had been secured thanks to the help of the redhead. The satin kissed my body with no underwear to protect the sensitive skin of my nipples and core and whispered over the floor a millimetre from being too long. The measurements were exact, right down to the size five white heels on my feet.

I’d never been a fan of white. I much preferred to wear black—because it gave the image of authority (according to my mother)—or pastels and colours depending on my mood at class.

White was too high maintenance. It got dirty with life stains within moments of putting it on. But it also granted an innocence that I understood why my traffickers had dressed me in it. My hair seemed glossier; my green eyes bigger, my complexion prettier.

The girl gowned in black looked harsh and older while the redhead in grey seemed washed out and already begging for a grave.

If we were about to enter a wolf’s den, I didn’t want to smell of blood before the fight. Keeping my shoulders back, I strode past the guard and fell into step with Lion Mask.

Silently, I followed our shepherds and led the sad train of slaves down the corridor, into the elevators, and down to level two.

There, commotion welcomed with sounds of conversation, masculine laughter, and a softly played piano.

It’d been so long since I’d heard music or felt the warm buffet of bodies that I lost myself. Forgetting my need to remain aloof and untouched, I slammed to a stop. My forgetfulness earned me a swat to the side of my head as Lion Mask shoved me forward.

I stumbled for the first time since I’d answered back during the first beating I’d endured and suffered through the lesson all over again.

Eyes locked onto me from all corners of the room.

Hungry eyes.

Mad eyes.

Lust-filled, terrible eyes.

All peering from behind a treasure trove of paper mache and plaster of paris masks.

A spotlight moved from the glittering silver ball drenching the space with twinkling lights directly on us. The piano stopped playing as the two girls and I made our way to the centre of what used to be a dance floor under the guidance of Venetian and Lion.

Now, it was a market pen. Complete with podium for inspection and auctioneer with his gavel. The two girls I’d showered with sobbed quietly as they were lined up in a procession of other women. Women who’d lived in this hotel with me, but I’d never seen. Women of all ages and ethnicities, all stolen from their rightful place and treated like livestock.

My friends wouldn’t really miss me because they didn’t understand me. I had no boyfriend to mourn me, no father to come search for me. As far as connections and family went, I was lacking.

I supposed it made it easier for me to switch off the desire to love and be loved, knowing I would never feel such a thing again. But it also hurt more because, at least, if I’d had those things, I could say I’d lived briefly; that I hadn’t taken my freedom for granted.

Now, all I would know was captivity.

As a man in a perfectly pressed tux and black executioner’s mask strode around the room holding a microphone to his hidden lips, the atmosphere hushed in expectation.

“Welcome, gentlemen, to the QMB, also known as Quarterly Market of Beauties.” Sweeping his hand down the line of merchandise, he said, “As you can see, we have quite a turn-out for you tonight.”