The Mafia Lords Auctioned Wife

My husband, the tech billionaire I adored, sent his men to take me to an undisclosed location.

When we arrived, I found our sixteen-year-old daughter, Julianne, on a stage, being auctioned off like a piece of art to a crowd of sick elites.

My husband, Everett, used this to blackmail me into resigning from my career. But after Julianne's subsequent suicide attempt, he let his mistress—an unqualified researcher—perform the surgery, leaving our daughter in a permanent vegetative state.

He publicly humiliated me, claiming our marriage was a lie and that I was a stalker.

He forced me to kneel and beg for my daughter's life, only to let his mistress shatter my surgeon's hand with a trophy.

After they pulled the plug on Julianne, they tricked my mother and me into drinking her ashes.

They left my mother for dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs. As I knelt over her broken body, my grief finally turned into a cold, hard resolve.

When Everett texted, demanding my presence at his celebration party, I replied with two words.

"I'll be there."

Chapter 1

Charlotte Rosa was pushed into the back of the car. The door slammed shut, the sound echoing in the silent, temperature-controlled garage. Two of her husband' s men got in the front, their faces like stone. They didn't speak to her.

"Where are we going?" she asked, her voice tight.

The man in the passenger seat just looked at her in the rearview mirror. His eyes were empty.

"Everett didn't tell you?" he asked, his tone flat.

"No. He just said to be ready."

The man grunted. The car pulled out of the mansion' s sprawling driveway and onto the dark, private road. They were driving away from the city lights, deeper into the hills. A knot of dread formed in Charlotte' s stomach. This wasn't right. For the past few months, nothing had been right.

Everett Spears, her husband of three years, the tech billionaire she had loved with every piece of her soul, had become a stranger.

It started subtly. A new assistant, then a new research scientist he was funding. Kaylynn Cline. The name tasted like poison in her mouth now.

The car stopped in front of a massive, isolated estate, its iron gates swinging open without a sound. Lights blazed from every window, but the grounds were strangely quiet, the sound muffled by the thick walls.

One of the men opened her door. "Mr. Spears is waiting for you inside."

Her heels clicked on the marble floor of the grand foyer. The air was thick with the smell of expensive perfume and something else, something cloying and sick. Then she saw it.

In the center of the main ballroom, on a raised platform, stood her daughter, Julianne.

She was sixteen. A brilliant, gentle artist who was supposed to be at a friend' s house tonight. Instead, she stood there, wearing only a thin, white slip. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with terror, fixed on Charlotte. Her body was a canvas, splashed with streaks of gold and silver paint, her limbs arranged in a grotesque pose.

A crowd of wealthy, elegantly dressed people surrounded the platform. They held champagne flutes and murmured to each other, their faces alight with a kind of sick excitement. They weren't looking at a person. They were looking at an object. An art piece.

The sound of their voices, the soft clinking of glasses, was a roar in Charlotte's ears. It was a nightmare. This couldn't be real.

An auctioneer, slick and smiling, stood beside Julianne. "And now, for our final, most exclusive piece of the evening. A living sculpture. A work of art in its purest form. Bidding will start at one million dollars."

Someone in the crowd laughed, a high, tinkling sound.

Charlotte tried to scream, to run to her daughter, but her body was frozen. The men who brought her stood on either side, their hands gripping her arms. Their touch was like iron.

"Let me go!" she hissed, struggling against them. "Julianne!"

Her daughter' s eyes filled with tears, a single drop tracing a path through the metallic paint on her cheek.

Then she saw him. Everett. He was standing near the platform, not looking at her, but at Kaylynn Cline. The ambitious research scientist was clinging to his arm, whispering something in his ear. Everett smiled down at her, a gentle, indulgent smile that Charlotte hadn't seen in months. He gently patted Kaylynn' s hand, a gesture of comfort.

It was a punch to the gut. He was comforting the architect of this horror while their daughter was being sold like a piece of furniture.

The bidding started. The numbers climbed higher and higher, the voices of the elite a sickening chorus.