Auctioned for a Dollar, Claimed by the Billionaire Chapter 03

I was still staring at the word “again” when an unknown number called.

I knew before I answered.

“You think Damien Cross actually wants you?” Ryan’s voice was sharp and mocking. “Wake up, Ava. Men like him don’t look at women like you. He’s playing with his food.”

I stepped into the back of my town car and shut the door. “You found a burner phone just to tell me that? That’s dedication.”

“I’m doing you a favor.” He laughed, ugly and low. “Do you know why I stayed with you after your father died? Because the board wanted a Sterling at the table, and you were the only one left. You were my seat. That’s all.”

Outside the window, Manhattan rolled by in a gray blur.

I thought about the night he drove me to Montauk at three a.m. because I said I wanted to see the ocean. I thought about the weekend he spent learning my late mother’s lemon cake recipe, burning four of them before he got it right, flour on his nose, making me laugh for the first time in months.

All of it was a performance.

And I remembered the night before I left for Paris. A party at his place. Sloane Whitmore had picked up his phone, scrolled to an old photo of me, and giggled, “Didn’t know you were into whales, Ryan.” Everyone laughed. Ryan’s face went tight. I thought he was angry for me.

He wasn’t. He was ashamed of me.

The calls got shorter after that. Then the texts. Then nothing.

“You want the truth?” Ryan said. “I’ve been with Sloane for eight months. She’s real. She’s what a man in my position deserves. You were charity, Ava. And tomorrow, I’m finally putting charity where it belongs. On an auction block.”

So there it was. The mask, finally on the floor.

I waited for the pain. It didn’t come. Something colder settled into the space where it used to live.

“Are you finished?” I asked.

“Too harsh? Good. Grow up.” He was enjoying himself now. “Tomorrow, Sloane is on my arm all night. You’ll waddle onto that scale, the room will laugh, Cross will sign my merger, and you’ll finally be useful. Wear black. It’s slimming.”

“I really hope you’re still laughing tomorrow night, Ryan.”

“Oh, I will be.”

I hung up.

Then I opened the black square and typed:

[Don’t burn it down, Mr. Cross. I want to walk in.]

The reply came in under three seconds.

Damien Cross: [Then walk in. I’ll be the one holding the paddle.]

Damien Cross: [And Ava, nobody touches you tomorrow. Not him. Not anyone.]

My heart did something strange in my chest. I didn’t know this man. Everyone in New York knew of him. Self-made billionaire at twenty-six. Owner of half the skyline. A man who walked out of negotiations if someone so much as raised their voice. Ryan had spent a year begging him for a merger meeting.

So why was he protecting me?

I didn’t have time to wonder.

My phone buzzed with an Instagram notification. Sloane Whitmore had posted a new photo.

She was standing in Ryan’s penthouse in a red silk robe, holding a glass of champagne. Around her neck hung a teardrop sapphire on a delicate platinum chain.

My breath stopped.

I knew every facet of that stone. I had held it the night my mother died, when I was nine. Dad had fastened it around my neck at her funeral and said, “She’s still with you, sweetheart.”

Before I left for Paris, I had locked it in Ryan’s safe so nothing would happen to it.

The caption read:

[Ryan says it finally has the right neck. ? See everyone at the gala, and good luck, Lot 13!]

I stared at the screen until the letters blurred.

He hadn’t just sold me.

He had given my dead mother’s necklace to his mistress.

My hands stopped shaking.

Tomorrow night, I wasn’t going to that gala to survive.

I was going to take back everything they stole.