Chapter 1

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.

"Everett!" Charlotte screamed, her voice cracking. "What are you doing? Stop this! This is our daughter!"

He finally turned to look at her. His eyes were cold, bored. As if she were an annoying interruption.

"Charlotte, you're making a scene," he said, his voice carrying easily across the room.

He walked toward her, Kaylynn still attached to his arm. He stopped a few feet away, his expression unreadable.

"This is your fault, you know," he said calmly.

"My fault?" she choked out, disbelief warring with rage. "How is this my fault?" She pulled at the sleeve of her dress, revealing the dark, ugly bruises on her arm from when he' d thrown her against a wall two days ago. "Did I do this to myself, too?"

Everett' s gaze flickered to the bruises and then away, his disinterest a fresh wound.

"You were offered the chief of surgery position at Westhaven," he stated, as if discussing a business deal. "Kaylynn needs that position to go to her preferred candidate. It' s tied to a grant she' s applying for. A very important grant."

He paused, letting the words sink in. "I asked you to resign. You refused."

"You asked me to throw away my entire career!"

"And now, you're seeing the consequences," he said, his voice dropping to a low, menacing tone. "Resign. Now. And I'll stop the auction."

"Please, Everett," she begged, the fight draining out of her. She looked at Julianne, who was trembling on the platform. "Please, don't do this to her. She's just a child."

"Don't do what?" Kaylynn chimed in, her voice dripping with false concern. "Everett is just trying to help you make the right choice, Charlotte. But Julianne is getting cold. We should probably speed this up."

Charlotte stared at the woman, then back at the man she had married. The man who had once sworn to protect her and Julianne from the world.

"You promised," she whispered, the words catching in her throat. "You promised you would always protect us."

The memory hit her like a physical blow. Three and a half years ago. He was a patient in her ER, a John Doe with amnesia after a car crash. She had cared for him, defended him, fallen in love with the kind, gentle man with no memory of his immense power and wealth.

I don' t care who you were, she had told him. I love who you are now.

When his memory returned, he was Everett Spears, the tech mogul. But he hadn't changed. He' d swept her off her feet, ignoring his family' s objections to marry a simple surgeon. He' d adopted Julianne, treating her like his own flesh and blood.

This hand, he' d said once, holding her hand so carefully. This hand saves lives. I will never let anything happen to it. I will protect you and Julianne with everything I have.

The words were a bitter echo in the opulent, depraved ballroom. The man who said them was gone. In his place stood a monster.

Kaylynn whispered something to Everett, a coy smile on her face. He nodded, his eyes glinting. He turned back to the auctioneer.

"Let' s end this. The final bid goes to Mr. Petrov. And as a bonus," Everett announced, his voice booming with false magnanimity, "he and his friends can have a private viewing."

Charlotte' s blood ran cold. She knew what that meant.

"No! Everett, no!"

She finally broke free from the guards, lunging toward the stage, but it was too late.

The auctioneer' s gavel came down. "Sold!"

The sound sealed their fate. The crowd applauded politely.

Charlotte' s world went dark at the edges. The room spun. The only thing she could focus on was Julianne' s terrified face.

"I' ll do it!" she shouted, her voice raw with desperation. "I'll resign! I'll give up the position. Just call it off! Please!"

Everett looked at her, a flicker of something-annoyance? satisfaction?-in his eyes. He raised a hand, and the auctioneer fell silent.

He walked over to her, grabbing her chin and forcing her to look at him.

"You should have agreed the first time, Charlotte," he murmured, his breath cold against her skin. "It would have saved us all this drama."

He released her and turned to leave, disappearing into the crowd with Kaylynn. The guards pulled Charlotte out of the ballroom, her pleas swallowed by the renewed chatter of the party.