Sharon Sala - Race Against Time

The auction block.

Dread shot through Starla like a bullet ripping through flesh. Less than twelve hours later, they moved the girls in the dark, and when they stopped they were taken out blindfolded and led into another building.

An hour later they were forced to strip and, under the watchful eye of three armed men, were sent to a communal shower not unlike the ones in the gym at Starla’s school.

The humiliation of undressing in front of strange men was only the first in a long line of horrors to come. The girls scrubbed their bodies and then their hair, then went straight from the shower to another room full of young girls and women in the same state. They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t speak. They sat on the floor, hunched up to cover their nudity from each other, waiting to be called. Starla’s hair slowly dried, as did her skin, then soon beaded with sweat again. When Starla’s name was called she stood up. The shame she felt was less about her nudity than the lies that had gotten her here. She had to face a hard truth. Her last hopes were gone.

The room they took her to was air-conditioned, an accommodation to the nearly fifty men there, but it was thick with smoke from their cigarettes and cigars.

The open bar was manned by two young naked men, who moved among the crowd with shots of whiskey and tequila, and longneck bottles of beer.

Starla walked in with her head held high, past the humiliation of being nude, locked into the fear of what would happen next.

Her hair was dry now and hanging halfway to her waist, and beneath the bright overhead lights, her pale blond hair almost looked white.

A guard marched her up the steps to a small round stage in the middle of the room before he untied her. Then he grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked.

“Look up,” he growled.

So she did, and when it was announced that she was a virgin, the crowd, as a whole, moved closer. She began to pray again, but this time not to be rescued. She was asking for something easier—asking God to strike her dead.

The first bid started at a thousand and flew up to ten, and then fifteen thousand, and the bidders were thinning out. She wouldn’t look at them and was trying not to cry. Her survival instinct was already guiding her, telling her not to let them see her fear, and so she stared at a spot above their heads.

But then the bidding suddenly came to a stop and the room went quiet. When she realized the crowd was beginning to part, her heart started to pound. Something was happening, and she had to look, because it was going to happen to her.

A fortysomething man was coming toward the stage as if he owned it. Their gazes locked. His eyes narrowed as hers widened.

He was someone important. That much she guessed. He was dressed fit to kill, but she didn’t know that he was also willing to do it to get what he wanted.

“The bidding stops now. She is no longer for sale. She is mine,” the man said.

The silence in the room was sudden—almost as if men were afraid to breathe, and then the auctioneer slammed the gavel down on the dais.

“The girl known as Star is no longer for sale.”

Starla blinked at the name change. She was lost—so lost—and now she no longer existed.

“Take the girl down now,” the man said.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Baba. Right away.”

Baba snapped his fingers. A man came running behind him carrying a long white robe. When Star was led down the steps, Mr. Baba held it out for her to put on and then turned her around to face him and tied the ties himself. The gesture was not lost on her. For all intents and purposes, she was now tied to him.

* * *

The first plane ride of her life was in a private jet in the middle of the night. It landed in a city emblazoned with lights. It would be a week before she would know it was Las Vegas.

Her first night in his bed was a learning experience in how much pain she could bear before he would climax. Every time she cried out, he rammed her harder. It was as effective a reminder to shut up as the gag in her mouth had been to keep her silent.

In the daylight he was a consummate gentleman, calling her his shining princess and shining star, saying she was going to bring him good luck. So she set about learning everything she could about how to please him, how to make his climax happen sooner and with more intensity. She made herself indispensable to him in the sex department, but always with an eye on one day making her escape, until the night Anton sat her down and showed her a video. He called it insurance against her urge to run. She called it carnage. Just thinking about her family innocently opening a door to that fate gave her nightmares. In that moment, she gave up plotting for a better future in the hopes that she would be keeping the people she loved safe and alive.

And so one year followed another and then another, when one day, to her horror, after one of their vacation trips to his Mexican villa, she found herself pregnant.

* * *

Star missed her period. The shock and the implications were staggering. Women in Anton’s houses were not allowed to keep babies. Abortions were SOP—standard operating procedure. While the thought of being tied to him for life by the birth of his child was abhorrent, the idea of aborting her own baby was worse, and she kept silent, still waiting for a way to make a break. And then a week later, the nausea began. She hid it for a while by waiting to get up until after he had left their bed. Then one morning he came back to get his watch and heard her throwing up.

When he rushed into the bathroom, she was on her knees in front of the commode, trembling in every muscle, praying that was the last wave of nausea when he walked in.

“Star! What’s happening?”

Startled by the sound of his voice, she rocked back on her heels and started to cry.

He pulled her to her feet, then got a wet cloth and began wiping her face.

“You are sick. I will call a doctor.”

If he did, he would know the truth, and someone else would be telling him. If she stood a chance at all, it had to come from her.

“I’m not sick. I’m pregnant. I don’t know how it happened. I take my birth control pills as you request. I never miss. I never forget. But...remember the night I got food poisoning when we were in Mexico? I threw up all night and most of the next day. I took my pill as always, but it must have come up before it had time to get into my system.”

She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around his legs.

“Please forgive me, Anton. I would never mean to displease you. I live to make you happy.”

Anton was in shock. The idea of becoming a father had never entered his mind. But this girl he’d taken from an auction block had turned into a woman over the past five years, and in doing so had become entrenched in his life.

He put a hand on the top of her head and then lifted her to her feet.

Star was in desperation mode, and the only thing she could think to do was feed his ego. Make him believe she adored him as much as she pretended to do.

“Please don’t make me kill our baby. Please, Anton, don’t make me kill a part of you.”

Anton believed what she’d said. She worshipped him. She was a beautiful woman who was carrying his child. What if it was a boy? In two years he would be fifty. What would happen to his fortune of flesh when he died? Maybe it was time to think about an heir.

“Don’t cry, my shining Star. We will keep this baby. You will give me a son. I will have an heir.”

She shuddered.

“What if it’s a girl?”

He frowned.

“I do not sire girls. It will be a boy.”

He helped her up, had his secretary make an appointment for her at an obstetrician’s office and then had the chef bring her something to calm her stomach.