The Flesh Cartel #2: Auction

want to damage the merchandise, remember?”
    Dougie looked up at the rivulets of blood flowing down Mat’s arms from beneath the cuffs. Much too late for that. He only partly meant Mat’s wrists, though.
“Although I certainly do appreciate how well you take to torturing your brother. I don’t think I’ll be able to look at you the same again. I don’t think you’ll be able to look at you the same again. Your brother definitely won’t.”
    He’ll understand , Dougie thought fiercely. I understand. And fuck you for trying to drive a wedge between us.
    “But that’s all part of the growth process, after all. Isn’t that right, ladies and gentlemen? See how well he learns? See how well they learn together ?”
    Together.
He collapsed to his knees in absolute relief even as Mat moaned in abject misery.
Madame turned to her adoring audience, basking in their
    rapt attention. “We’ll start the bidding at three hundred thousand dollars for both, ladies and gentleman.
    Three hundred thousand dollars.”
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nikolai
    ikolai rolled his eyes behind his mask as Madame N stepped between the two brothers—the pretty one on his knees and the fighter, legs gone out, writhing and moaning in his shackles—and said, “We’ll start the bidding at three hundred thousand dollars for both, ladies and gentlemen. Three hundred thousand dollars.” She took hold of the fighter’s hips and spun him around to expose his exquisitely muscled back and cruelly stretched anus to the audience, then gave a little flourish with one arm and bowed to the crowd. Well, she always did have a flair for the dramatic. She certainly deserved her substantial share of every sale that happened here.
    Nikolai pulled his eyes from the tense line of the fighter’s back and cast them to the tablet in his lap. He’d stay out of the bidding for now. No one came to this auction house with tight purse strings—if you wanted cheap stock in Madame’s region, you went to Reno, not San Jose—but two-thirds of them at least would fall away once the bidding broke half a million. They simply didn’t have the reputations to sell a seven-figure product.
Still, hopefully this auction wouldn’t get as out of hand as he feared it might. As they sometimes did with spectacles like this.
    Four hundred thousand. Five. Five fifty. The numbers were climbing unpleasantly quickly. Six ten. Seven. Seven fifty. A moment’s lull. Seven sixty. Seven eighty. Eight ten.
    Only three buyers left. A preemptive bid at a million flat. 62
    The fighter alone shouldn’t have gone for more than a hundred thou, maybe one fifty on the outside. Damn brother.
    Silence. Three . . . two . . . one . . .
Nikolai jumped in at one million fifty thou. The screen of his tablet blinked red as Madame called out,
    “One million fifty-five thousand.” Whoever was still in with him had made a sad little attempt here. Close to their limit? Or testing him? Nikolai was quite certain he could wrangle at least three million from his client for just the right finished product, not even counting the pretty brother—he wouldn’t hit his limit for some time. Perhaps a preempt of his own. He keyed in a million and a quarter.
    This got a gasp from the crowd. It had been at least a year since raw stock had gone for quite so much in this house. Especially raw stock with baggage . The pretty one on his own should have topped out at seven or eight hundred thousand. The fighter should have been the sort you found with a forced heroin addiction, going for less than the price of a fancy car down in that meat market in Reno. But together .
    Green flashing on his screen now. Going once. Going twice. Madame echoed it from her perch on the stage. “Sold!” she announced a moment later with a dazzling smile, and applauded the audience with all the sweet poise of a runway model at the end of a fashion show.
    Congratulations! his screen chirped at him. And then, This is a cash-only auction. Payment must be made immediately and in full. Please fill out the following form carefully. We hope you enjoy your purchase and thank you for your patronage.
    The form that followed was familiar enough. He quickly typed in his payment information and delivery instructions. 63

    Special requests, hmm. He’d have his own men escort them home—Roger had become almost as good at that as he himself was—but he was perfectly content to have Madame oversee their care while he flew back to prepare. Separate them for shipment.