Bidder
Layla Valentine
Contents
1. Terri
2. Terri
3. Terri
4. Logan
5. Terri
6. Logan
7. Terri
8. Terri
9. Logan
10. Terri
11. Logan
12. Terri
13. Terri
14. Logan
15. Terri
16. Logan
17. Terri
18. Logan
19. Terri
20. Logan
21. Terri
22. Terri
23. Logan
24. Terri
25. Logan
26. Terri
27. Logan
Epilogue
Also by Layla Valentine
Copyright 2020 by Layla Valentine
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.
All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Terri
“Finally.” Dropping her drawstring bag onto the floor, Terri collapsed on her bed for the night and closed her eyes.
Outside the window, Ho Chi Minh City hummed with the sounds of nightfall. Cars honking. People calling. Inside the building, it was quiet.
She’d lucked out. So far, she was the only guest at the females-only hostel. It was likely that luck wouldn’t last long, but she’d enjoy it while she could. In three months of traveling around Europe and Asia, she’d had nothing remotely close to such privacy.
Opening her eyes, she took her phone from the bag and looked for an internet connection. The hostel had advertised Wi-Fi, but she didn’t have her hopes up. Half the places she’d stayed in had had spotty internet, at best.
Not that she ever complained. She was lucky to be doing something she’d only dreamed about for years. Her whole life, ever since she was a little girl in small-town Illinois, she’d wanted to travel the world. So what if she couldn’t post pics to social media or video chat with friends every day? She was still having the time of her life.
Luckily, tonight, she struck gold. The internet worked.
Logging into her email, Terri found a message from her older brother. Just seeing Charlie’s name made her smile. It had been over twelve weeks since she’d seen him or any of her friends and family. Even though she was having the time of her life, some days did get lonely.
She scanned the message, which was mostly about how he’d been working extra hours (no surprise there), and how he’d recently gotten a potted plant. That part made her chuckle.
A district attorney in Chicago, Charlie didn’t do pets. Or… much else, really. He dated some, and he had friends, but his devotion to his job had always made it hard for him to forge deep intimacies.
Terri typed a quick response back, telling him that her first day in Vietnam had been awesome and that she would send pictures tomorrow. Putting her phone away, she trudged to the bathroom down the hall and brushed her teeth.
A shower would have done her good, but she doubted her ability to stand up in one. She was exhausted. After getting in that morning from Bangkok, she’d checked into the hostel and headed right out to explore the city.
This was the last stop on her great exploration around the world, and she didn’t intend to waste even a minute of time. And then, home. Back to Chicago.
The thought made her stomach curdle a little. She missed home, but she still didn’t know what came next in life, and that scared her more than a tad.
Sinking back into the twin bed, she tucked her hands under her cheek. In no time at all, it became impossible to keep her eyes open.
A loud banging made her jerk. Gasping, she sat up in bed. For a moment, she thought only a few minutes had gone by. It was fully dark, though, with only street lights shining through the cracks in the curtains.
Another banging, this one on the door a couple feet from her head, made her jump from bed. The door flew open, and a dark figure entered the room.
Terri took a step back, her calves smacking against the bed frame. The man reached for her, and she darted out of his way. There was nowhere to go, though. A second man had entered the room.
The poor lighting revealed masks on their faces, and a baseball bat in one of their hands. Terri’s breath froze in her throat. The first man grabbed her wrist, and adrenaline jumped in.
She yanked her arm toward herself, drawing the man close, and kneed him right in the groin. He made a noise of pain and loosened his hold enough for her to break free.
Stepping around him, she darted for the door. The other man, though, dropped his baseball bat and grabbed her. Terri screamed. A hand went over her mouth, but she kept on screaming.
The man picked her up, and she kicked back, trying to connect her foot with his knee. A cloth bag went over her head, and the men said something to each other in Vietnamese.
Where was the hostel manager? Where was anyone?
The men were dragging Terri out the room and down the hall, and no one came to help. She yelled and yelled, even when she was thrown into the back of a van and heard the door close behind her.
This couldn’t be happening. It was like some bad true crime reenactment you saw on TV. Terri wasn’t the kind of woman who would be kidnapped. Traveling alone made her even more careful about where she went and who she was around.
And yet these men had broken right into her hostel room and taken her like the act was nothing more than an errand.
She tried to regulate her breathing, but once the hyperventilating started, it became hard to make it stop.
“What do you want with me?” she demanded. “The American government doesn’t pay ransom. Do you understand me? You won’t get any money for me.”
Either they didn’t understand, or they chose not to respond. The car turned too many times for her to count. The smooth roads gave way to bumpy ones. They were entering a rougher part of the city.
Terri’s heartbeat clanged in her ears. The men had bound her wrists behind her back. Combine that with the bag completely obstructing her vision and her chances of successfully making a run for it were nil.
She’d have to talk her way out of this. First, though, she’d need to find someone who spoke English, seeing as her Vietnamese was limited to “Hello, I’m bad at Vietnamese” and “How much for tea?”
The vehicle slowed down and came to a stop. Terri stiffened against the van’s cold metal. The time for planning was up.
The door screeched open, and a rough hand grabbed her forearm. She stumbled from the van, and would have fallen flat on the ground if it weren’t for the jerk holding her up.
“Walk,” the man said.
Okay. So he did know at least a little English.
“What do you want?” She hated how much her voice shook. Weakness was the last thing she wanted to show them.
“Walk,” he repeated.
She did as she was told. The noise of traffic was further off here, and she didn’t hear anyone talking. It was definitely a part of the city she hadn’t visited.
There was the sound of
a door opening, and warm, sticky air hit her face as they entered a building. The man’s hold tightened on her arm. She winced but didn’t pull away. Best to be as agreeable as possible.
They walked a few yards, then her captor pushed her to the right, and they kept walking. She stumbled over her feet every few steps.
Best-case scenario, this was exactly what it looked like: a desperate kidnapping in order to make some cash. Okay. That could be dealt with.
The American government wouldn’t pay for her release, but her district attorney brother would do anything to get her back. She knew that for sure.
And if it wasn’t the typical kidnapping for ransom? What if these men had more nefarious plans for her? Like they wanted to keep her for their own?
A terrible shiver went through Terri.
No. She couldn’t think that way. She needed to stay positive and strong, or she would lose her mind.
They stopped walking, and all of a sudden her blindfold came off.
They were in what looked like a dressing room. Racks of gowns lined the walls, and a powder table with a big mirror sat in the middle of the room. Two older Vietnamese women shuffled around the space, one fiddling with a box of makeup and the other one hand steaming a bright red dress.
What the hell was this?
The man who’d brought Terri into the room barked something in Vietnamese to the women. One of the ladies nodded glumly.
“You.” The man pointed at Terri, pointed at the door, then pointed at the automatic rifle in his hand.
She opened her mouth, but only a gurgle escaped. She nodded instead.
With that, the man left the room, slamming the door behind him. No doubt, he didn’t go far. He’d be out there, completely willing to pump her full of bullets if she tried to escape.
One of the women grunted and pointed at the makeup chair.
Terri didn’t move. “Do you speak English? I need help. These men kidnapped me.”
Neither of the women looked her in the face.
Terri stepped right in front of the woman steaming the dress, knocking her arm to the side in the process.
“They took me,” she hissed, tapping on her own chest.
The woman sighed, shook her head, said something to the other woman, and moved on to the next dress.
The makeup woman patted the chair and shot Terri an irritated look.
Terri’s blood ran cold. And just like that, she understood. Of course they knew she’d been kidnapped. They were in on this. They worked for these terrible men.
As far as Terri could comprehend, there was only one reason why she needed to be dolled up in makeup. They planned on selling her.
This was a human trafficking ring.
She darted her gaze around the room, looking for a way out. Maybe she could distract the women, slip through a window when they weren’t looking.
But there was no window. No door other than the one she’d come in through. She was trapped.
Her heart sinking to the bottom of her stomach, she took the seat in the chair. The makeup woman grabbed a hairbrush and went to work on Terri’s chin-length, black waves.
Trapped for now, she reminded herself.
Because she would find a way out of this mess and break free. That, or die trying.
Chapter 2
Terri
In addition to a full face of makeup that made her look like a porcelain doll, the women put hair extensions on Terri that went almost to her waist. After putting her in a puffy royal blue dress and tucking a tiara into the crown of her hair, one of them knocked on the door.
Terri edged a little closer to the door, her breath lingering in her throat. Could this be her chance?
Wherever this building was, if she could only get out of it, she could escape. She knew it.
But the man with the gun stood outside of the door. Soon as she caught sight of him, he gestured for her to follow him.
She shot one last glance at the two women, but both of them had gone back to busying themselves with clothes and hair pins. To them, she no longer existed.
The man’s eyebrows pinched together. “Now.”
After taking a step and tripping over her skirt, she had to lift it up to walk safely. The women had put her in strappy heels a size too small. Not that they should have bothered—no one could see her feet under the dress, anyway.
Speaking of seeing… If her suspicions were right, she’d been dressed up like this in order to be handed over to someone else. Like a bought horse.
Nausea rose from her belly. Only hours ago, she’d been a normal thirty-year-old single American living it up by traveling to all her dream spots. After years of grinding through school and then paralegal work, she’d finally realized she didn’t actually know what she wanted, other than to be free.
This trip around the world was supposed to be exactly that: her breaking free.
How ironic that she was now in captivity.
The man took her down a hallway, toward a set of double doors. Sweat slicked her palms, and her heart raced. How many hours before her brother or parents became suspicious about her not checking in with them? Twelve? Twenty-four?
Even if Charlie called the authorities in Ho Chi Minh city, would it matter? The hostel manager hadn’t stepped in when Terri was taken. For all she knew, the manager had been in on this. Maybe even gotten a cut.
The man pushed one of the doors open, and Terri suddenly forgot how to breathe. Whatever came next, it wouldn’t be good. Another car? Another man? One ready to cart her off to who-knew-where to do God-knew-what to her?
Her hands curled into fists. She would fight to the death before she let anyone use her.
What she found, however, were green curtains, like the kind on a stage. A man’s voice boomed from the other side of them, his words fast and strange.
The guy with the gun urged Terri down along the green curtains. Rounding the end of them, she discovered a stage. The man, who was dressed in a suit and wasn’t one of the two that had kidnapped her, stopped talking and extended his hand.
“Go.” The bully next to Terri poked her in the back with his gun.
A handful of steps led up to the stage. As she touched her high heel to the first one, she looked across the space and realized she was in a small warehouse.
A dozen folding chairs had been set out, and they were all occupied by men. Men in suits. Men smoking cigars and cigarettes. Men eyeing her like she was a cut of meat.
Only one man stood. Back in the shadows behind everyone else, his face was obscured.
The man onstage grabbed Terri’s elbow and pulled her to center stage. His voice rose in excitement, and he waved his hand at her figure while talking to the audience in Vietnamese.
She was being pitched to the group.
Advertised? Drummed up?
It didn’t matter how you worded it. One thing was sure: she still wouldn’t go down without a fight.
Terri clutched her dress’ full skirt and surveyed the group in front of her. Whoever ended up buying her would be an unlucky man. Even if he killed her in the end, she’d make sure to get a few good bites in first.
An old Asian man wearing a red tie raised his hand and said a few short words that rang a bell from the Learn Vietnamese book she had studied for a short afternoon last week. Numbers. He’d named a price.
The man onstage nodded eagerly, and the old man started to stand. Before he made it all the way up, however, the figure in the back emerged from the shadows and revealed himself to be a tall, blond man.
Under other circumstances, Terri’s jaw would have dropped at his clean, sharp features and strong physique. Right then, though, she was in survival mode—ready to claw out somebody’s eyes, no matter if they were the most beautiful pair of peepers ever.
The blond man said something in Vietnamese, and the warehouse stilled. Hands in his pockets, he walked up to the stage. Bright blue eyes inspected her.
There was something about his gaze. It felt like a physi
cal touch, but not in the gross, demanding way the other men’s gazes did. This man’s look was more like a gentle shoulder squeeze. He didn’t rake his eyes up and down her body. Instead, he remained focused on her face.
His eyes flicked to the auctioneer, and he named a price. The Asian man in the red tie threw up his hands in exasperation.
Next thing Terri knew, she was being ushered off the stage and through another door.
“Where am I going?” she demanded of the man with the gun. Predictably, he stayed quiet.
A short, dark hallway that she hadn’t been down yet led to another door. A small piece of glass in it revealed a gray sky.
Terri bit her bottom lip. This could be her chance. All she needed was somewhere to run to. The second she was outside, she would bolt like a jackrabbit.
Stepping through the door, she drew a deep breath and glanced in every direction.
The last few minutes before sunrise revealed a street lined with warehouses in both directions. The road seemed to go on and on, with the city’s towering skyscrapers in the distance. In front of her, a black SUV waited, engine purring.
She faltered.
If she chose to run, she wouldn’t get far. Even if she darted between two warehouses, what next? In her ridiculous heels, she’d be caught in a matter of seconds. That, or gunned down.
One of the SUV’s back doors opened, and the blond man stepped out. Terri’s mouth went dry.
Closing the distance between her, he extended his hand.
“Well,” he said, in an American accent. “Shall we?”
Bidder - An Auctioned to the Billionaire Romance (Criminal Passions Book 2) Page 1
