THE TRANSACTION

“Stand still, Bianca. You move as though you want me to see you as a servant and not as the daughter of this house.”

Valentina Greco’s voice was velvet stretched over steel, the kind of voice that commanded obedience without needing to raise in volume. She hovered behind Bianca, one jeweled hand pressing the girl’s shoulder back as a maid tightened the corset.

Bianca caught her reflection in the gilt mirror. Her breath hitched as the silk gown clung to her figure pearl-white, embroidered with gold threads that glimmered in the candlelight. She looked regal, older than her twenty-one years, her dark hair twisted into an elaborate knot that exposed the line of her neck. Yet, there was a hollowness in her own eyes she could not ignore.

“This is too much,” Bianca whispered, fingers brushing the jeweled bodice as if it belonged to someone else. “Why would we dress this way for a simple gala?”

Valentina’s painted lips curved into a smile too sharp to be tender. Her beauty was the kind that had hardened with time. cheekbones too high, eyes too bright, and a body that moved like a queen who’d clawed her way to a throne no one offered her.

“Men do not give you crowns for being simple, my dear,” she murmured, fastening a string of pearls around Bianca’s throat. “They worship what they cannot afford. Tonight, you will be priceless.”

Bianca frowned. The words sat wrong in her stomach, a stone she couldn’t swallow. The house, usually loud with guards and staff, felt like a cathedral after prayer. Silent and emptied. Too silent.

She turned her head, scanning the open doorway. “Where are the men?”

Valentina’s grip on the pearls tightened briefly, almost choking her. “Curiosity is unbecoming. Keep your eyes lowered, your mouth shut, and perhaps you will learn why silence is more valuable than questions.”

Bianca froze. That tone clipped, impatient was Valentina’s way of saying the conversation was over. Still, her pulse refused to calm.

The maid stepped back, muttering something about perfection but Bianca hardly heard her. The gown weighed heavy on her skin, as though spun from chains rather than silk. Her stepmother’s perfume amber and smoke hung thick in the air, cloying.

When Valentina finally swept from the room, her heels clicking like the tick of a clock, two men entered. Not the usual guards, these were strangers. Their suits fit, but poorly. Their shoulders too stiff, their gazes too cold.

“Escort her,” Valentina ordered without looking back.

Bianca’s stomach sank. She tried to step away, but the strangers closed in, one at each side. Their hands hovered just close enough to remind her she was not free to run.

“This isn’t the driver I know,” Bianca said carefully, her voice breaking the hush of the hallway as they led her forward.

Neither man answered.

She turned to the taller of the two men, searching his face for something familiar but Nothing. His jaw was scarred, his eyes a shade of gray that reminded her of winter seas unforgiving, endless.

“Where is the gala?”

Still silence.

Her throat tightened as she descended the marble staircase. The house stretched behind her, every shadow unfamiliar, every silence screaming. The chandeliers glittered above, mocking her with their beauty.

The black car waiting outside gleamed under the moonlight. The men ushered her in, shutting the door behind her with a click that sounded far too final.

Inside, the air was colder. The windows tinted. Manhattan’s skyline blurred past, but they were driving away from the familiar districts away from where she expected music, laughter, flashing cameras.

Bianca pressed her palms to her lap, willing her hands to stop trembling. She tried to remember her father’s voice, soft and deep, reminding her of strength when she was a child. But he was long gone, buried beneath Valentina’s ambition and the silence of this too-grand house.

Minutes stretched into an hour. The car veered into unfamiliar streets, darker, narrower. No red carpets. No glittering hotels.

When it stopped, the taller guard opened her door. The night air tasted damp, heavy with the smell of stone and earth.

“This isn’t a gala,” Bianca whispered.

The guard only gestured for her to walk.

They descended a narrow stair hidden behind a warehouse façade, lanterns glowing dimly along stone walls. Bianca’s heels clicked on each step, her breath shallow. A melody of violins drifted upward, eerie in its beauty.

The stairs opened into a cavernous hall an underground ballroom carved from old stone, gilded with chandeliers dripping with crystal. The walls shimmered with candlelight, shadows dancing as if mocking the light.

And the people dozens of them sat in silence on velvet chairs, all facing the center stage. Men in tailored suits, women glittering with jewels. All eyes waiting.

At the front, a dais and Chains, a platform where something or someone was meant to stand.

Bianca stopped cold. Her heart hammered, her mouth gone dry.

She wasn’t here as a guest.

The strangers flanked her again, steering her toward the stage.

“No,” she hissed, twisting her arm. But their grip tightened.

Valentina appeared from the shadows, her smile dazzling and cruel.

“Walk, Bianca. Tonight, you’ll learn your worth.”

Bianca’s knees nearly gave way. She tried to scream, but the violins swelled louder, drowning her voice in their haunting song.

The chandeliers gleamed above her head as she was guided beneath them, each light a false star in a sky that promised no freedom.

The crowd leaned forward, murmurs rising. Hungry eyes followed her every step, stripping her of dignity faster than the hands that had dressed her.

The gown she wore was not a crown. It was a cage. A cage dressed in silk.

She stumbled onto the stage, her chest rising and falling in frantic bursts. The chains gleamed at her feet, waiting.

Bianca understood then, with an icy clarity that clawed through her panic. She was not meant to dance at a gala; but was meant to be sold.

The violins swelled, a sinister symphony that seemed to scrape against Bianca’s nerves. She stood on the raised platform, every candle and jeweled gaze fixed on her as though she were an artifact pulled from a tomb. The pearl gown clung to her body, suddenly obscene beneath the greedy eyes drinking her in.

The auctioneer’s voice rang out, smooth and perfumed with menace.

“Shall we begin? A rare beauty, untouched by the filth of the streets, bred from one of New York’s proudest bloodlines…”

Bianca’s breath hitched. Her hands curled into fists, the pearls at her throat biting into her skin like shackles.

“Fifty thousand,” a man called from the left.

Laughter rippled. Another voice, sharp, eager: “Sixty!”

The numbers climbed eighty, a hundred, one-fifty. Each declaration made her blood crawl, each syllable peeling away her humanity. She felt stripped already, though her body was wrapped in silk.

Bianca tried to look away from the crowd, but the faces blurred into a nightmare of hungry eyes and parted lips. Each man saw her not as Bianca Ricci, but as currency.

Her throat tightened. Rage flared hot and poisonous, warring against the fear pressing down on her chest.

And then, silence.

It cut through the murmurs like a blade. The air seemed to shift, dense and charged, as though the very walls bowed to the weight of a presence entering the room.

Bianca felt it before she saw him.

Matteo Romano.

He rose from the shadowed corner, towering, broad-shouldered, his black suit tailored with the precision of a king in exile. His face was carved in lines of command: sharp jaw, straight nose, lips that could give orders like death sentences. But it was his eyes that froze the blood in her veins. obsidian, fathomless and unreadable. Il Re di Ferro. The Blood King.

Whispers rippled through the hall like wind through dry leaves. No one expected him here. No one dared to speak his name too loudly.

He had come to watch, not to buy. That much was clear until his gaze collided with hers.

Bianca’s knees nearly buckled. She tried to mask the tremor that ran through her body, but her chest rose too sharply, her lips parted too quickly. His stare pinned her to the stage, dissecting her, claiming pieces of her soul she had not consented to give.

Then, with the ease of a man ordering wine, his voice sliced through the silence:

“One million.”

The ballroom gasped.

The auctioneer stammered, his composure cracking. “O-one million… the bid is at one million…”

No one countered. None dared. Matteo’s word was law in this underworld. To outbid him was to sign one’s own death warrant.

Bianca’s skin prickled with humiliation, fury, and terror. She wanted to scream, to claw the gown from her body, to break free of the stage but the chains glimmering at her feet were not needed. His bid was a chain stronger than iron.

The gavel struck.

“Sold!”

The violins ceased, leaving the air thick and suffocating.

Bianca could barely breathe as the crowd began to disperse, shadows pulling away into the corners of the hall. She didn’t notice the strangers who had dragged her here. She saw only him Matteo approaching with measured, unhurried steps, the predator who never needed to rush for his prey.

When he stopped before her, he did not smile in triumph. He simply looked at her, his gaze heavy as a hand pressed against her throat.

Bianca forced her voice to rise, trembling though it was.

“Why? Why would you do this?”

For a moment, his expression didn’t change. Then his lips curved, a smile as sharp as broken glass.

“You weren’t saved, Bianca.” His voice was soft, lethal. “You were claimed.”

The words coiled around her like a serpent, leaving her breathless.

She had been purchased not for mercy, but for possession.

The Blood King had marked her.

And now, there is no escape.