He stared at me for a moment. "Of course I would. But hold that thought." He raised his pointer finger in front of his face. His brow creased, eyes swiveled to the side in thought.
"What is it?" I asked. "Should I be worried?" I suspected the answer to that was a resounding 'hell yeah.'
"I was remembering something," he said, scratching the side of his nose. "A couple of years ago, some women were taken and sold at auction."
I let his words sink in. A growing sensation of horror rose in my chest. I was right, I should have been worried.
"You think they're going to auction Savannah?" I blinked a couple of times. "You think they wanted to auctionme?"The idea of people bidding on me, wanting to own me? I couldn't get my head around it.
I was sold off to the highest bidder once before. Granted, that was without an auction, but it amounted to the same thing. I was little more than a toy. A pawn in other people's games. A token exchanged between my parents and Wolfgang.
"It's possible," Leif said. "You know what they're going to want to do, right?" He jerked his head toward the dining table where Forrest and Woody sat, their heads close together, talking in low voices. Whatever it was they were discussing, it looked intense.
"I'll do it," I said loud enough for all of them to hear.
"We don't know if that's what's happening," Leif said, placing his hand on my arm before I could stand from the piano stool.
"But you think it is, don't you?"
We had Forrest and Woody's attention now.
"It makes sense," Leif said reluctantly. "Savannah was a high-profile woman. So are you. A status symbol with men like that. Anyone can snatch a homeless person off the streets. It takes a special kind of balls to pull off something like this."
"I'm going to start pulling off balls," Woody growled.
"Me too," Leif agreed. "These 'men,' and I use the term loosely, are sick fucks. They have so much money, it doesn't matter anymore. This is more important to them. Winning at things other people couldn't possibly imagine. Owning things no one else could own."
"Getting away with things no one else gets away with," Forrest added, his expression as dark as Leif’s and Woody’s. "Exactly the kind of people the law won't touch; they're too powerful."
"People like you?" Leif asked, a hint of accusation in his tone.
"People like me, but I choose not to exploit other people," Forrest said. "Unless they deserve to be exploited."
"It's a good thing he's on our side," Leif whispered loudly. "We'd be absolutely fucked if we had to work against someone like the great Judge Forrest Cross."
"Yeah," I said absently.
He was right. Men like Forrest and Wolfgang, they had different boundaries than regular humans. Money talked, and what it said was ugly at times.
Imagine having so much money you could end world hunger, but instead you buy people, fuck with them, break them, then celebrate the victory with good champagne and caviar. Wake up in the morning and do it all over again.
I wanted to grab a fork and ram it into their eyeballs. Was that something people did? Whatever, it sounded good to me.
"How do we do this?" I asked.
I couldn't exactly take out a double-page ad in the newspaper offering myself up for auction. I mean I could, but that would be weird. Not to mention people who moved in the shadows weren't going to answer an ad like that. Right?
"I'll talk to a few people," Leif said. "If this is what's going down, they'll know where and when." He didn't seem to like the idea very much. Of course he didn't. Neither did I. This whole thing was twisted as fuck.
"Once we find out if it's happening, we can plan," Leif added.
In spite of himself, he seemed to have things worked out in his head. He didn't look any happier about it though. If anything, he looked more reluctant.
This wasn't a random attempt to snatch me and send me somewhere my men wouldn't find me. This was potentially much worse. Carefully planned, meticulously executed.
That begged the question, who would plan something like this?
Now I was imagining a party planner with a sick twist. Someone with a clipboard of items ready to tick them off.