I Thee Take: To Have and To Hold Duet Book Two by Knight, Natasha (books to read in your 20s txt) 📕

the girls sniffling, no one cries outright, no one screams, no one tries to run.

No one but me. Not the running part, though. My goal is not escape. My goal is damage. Do as much damage as I can to the men and women who allow this. Make as much noise as I can. Do whatever I can to let these girls know someone will fight for them at least.

I doubt it’ll give them hope, though. I think that’s been beaten out of them.

But what happens after tonight?

What happens to them when I’m gone?

What happens to Mara who tried to save me? She has no idea what she’s up against. The man who took her, the men I can now hear on the other side of that door, they’re predators.

And watching their prey, terrorizing their prey, that’s half the fun.

We come to a stop once we reach the door. I can hear the same music from when we first arrived, and the waiter was returning to the kitchen to replenish his tray of drinks. It’s pretty and elegant and doesn’t belong here. Not to these men. Not to this setting. Not to us in our chains.

“Where’s Felix?” I ask the guard who still has my arm. He hasn’t let it go for what feels like hours and I’m sure it’s already black and blue.

He doesn’t answer me.

Hell, he doesn’t even look at me.

“Do you know who I am?” I ask him in Spanish, thinking maybe he doesn’t speak English.

He glances down at me, eyes cold and hard, then shifts his gaze to the door again.

“I’m Scarlett De La Cruz. Manuel De La Cruz’s daughter. I’m Cristiano Grigori’s wife. His fucking wife. And when he finds out what you’re doing to me, he’ll kill you!”

My heart twists because he won’t find out. And he won’t kill anyone.

He’s dead. Felix made sure of that when he gave him Marcus’s location. Was it an ambush? Did he have a fighting chance?

All I get for my effort is a tightening of his grip.

I wince but soon my attention is drawn to the door that opens. Soft light pours into the corridor and a severe looking woman wearing a depressing gray suit looks from her clipboard to us. All the way down the line, she glances at each of the girls, then me. She doesn’t linger on any of us though. Instead, she points to the first girl, checks something off her clipboard and gestures for the girl to be brought after her.

The girl resists but only momentarily because she isn’t given the time to fight. She’s taken through that door and it’s closed. We all stare after her, all of us quiet.

I strain to hear the sounds on the other side of that door but it’s the same. Nothing different. Soft music. Men’s quiet voices.

But after a moment, it changes.

The music is gone, a gong struck, the hum of conversation ended.

A man’s voice then announces the auction is about to begin.

I swallow hard at the thought. It’s not easier or less terrifying even knowing that it doesn’t matter what happens to me anymore. I’m still afraid. And as much as I want to focus on the other girls, there’s a part of me that’s just too scared.

The auction begins. I know from the sound of the man running it. It’s so strange, it could be an auction for a piece of art or for a container on those TV shows or for a freaking cow. Nothing differentiates it from those things. The fact that there’s a human being, a girl out there being held against her will, being sold, it doesn’t matter to these men.

I know that, though, don’t I? Haven’t I lived with monsters all my life?

We’re not human to them. And if we were, we wouldn’t hold any more value than a cow. Maybe less.

The gavel comes down, someone hoots, and there’s the sound of clapping. So civilized.

The door opens and the woman with the clipboard gestures for the soldier to hurry the next girl out. We all shuffle forward.

The girl in front of me pulls back but it doesn’t matter. These men holding us, they’re so much stronger than us and there’s too many of them.

No gong this time but I hear a joint sound of male appreciation.

One of the girls starts to cry and another joins in. The hammer comes down marking the end of the auction and again the door opens, the next girl taken out.

This time, though, the woman returns before the end of the auction followed by another woman, the same one who greeted us in the kitchen. Their drab suits match, I realize, and they both look less than pleased.

“Which one started the crying fest here?” she asks, eyes on the girls.

The guard who is responsible for the guilty one, pushes his charge forward.

The woman steps toward her, cocks her head to look at her then touches her face, wiping away a tear. “Look what you’ve done to your face. Your makeup will have to be fixed. The others too.”

The girl swallows standing suddenly, very straight. I realize why when I see how the woman with the clipboard is holding her chin, nails digging into skin.

“But there’s always one example to be made,” the woman says and gestures to the other woman to step forward. “I’m going to give you a choice. Each of you sobbing will have the same choice to make if you’re still crying like babies when I’m finished with this one.”

The one from the kitchen steps forward and raises her hand to show what she’s holding. It’s a large wooden paddle that I imagine can do real damage.

“We’ll need to make sure our customers understand there’s a reason you’re crying. Six strokes of the paddle will do it. Or.”

She gestures to the other woman again who raises the other hand. This one is gloved and holding a long, bulbous item. It takes me a minute to register.

“We can let them know we’re