I Told the Mob Boss I Would Not Be Bought, So He Offered to Be Sold novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Sold to Nobody
A mob boss offers Detty anything she names from the floor of her own estate sale, and she hands back her fiancé's ring, closes the sale and walks out ahead of him.
"Lot forty-one, a rack of hand-carved pintail decoys, signed on the belly by the late Mr. Dupré."
I said it flat and fast, the way my father taught me, and forty buyers shifted on their folding chairs.
"I have two hundred, who'll give me two-fifty, two-fifty, two-fifty, thank you, sir, and now three."
That was when the back door of the barn opened, and the whole room felt it.
Anson Gaillard walked in with two men behind him.
I had seen him on the harbor docks and never once at my sale.
He did not take a chair.
He stood against the back wall in a charcoal suit with no tie, and the two men stood either side of him.
The buyers nearest the door found something else to look at.
"Three, I'm looking at three," I said, and I kept my eyes on my ring man in the aisle.
I sold the decoys at four-ten.
I sold the dead man's skiff, his cast net and his mother's pie safe.
I finished the lot because a good auctioneer finishes the lot, and because I wanted him to watch me do it.
He let me finish.
I tapped the gavel on the last item, and the room started to breathe again and scrape its chairs.
"Miss Marchant."
He didn't raise his voice.
He didn't need to.
I looked down from the block at a tall, lean man with dark hair going grey over the ears and pale blue eyes that gave away nothing.
"Mr. Gaillard," I said.
"Your late father's firm holds a lot I want."
My ring men stopped folding the sale bills.
My clerk, at the ledger table below me, put down her pen.
Forty buyers who had been about to leave sat back down.
"Marchant and Daughter holds a lot of things," I said. "Be specific."
"I'll pay whatever you name."
He said it to me and to the whole barn.
"Name what you want. The Pelham engagement ended. The firm's note cleared. The house yours, free and clear. I'll give you what you desire."
He paused just long enough.
"In return, you give me what I want."
In the third row, Lawson stood up.
My fiancé, Lawson Pelham, in his navy blazer, had the face of a man who had just heard his own name used as a price.
I had worn his ring for five months because his father promised to take care of the bank, and because my father was fourteen months dead and I was tired.
I looked at the ring on my left hand.
Then I looked at Anson Gaillard, and I did what I have done since I was sixteen when a man puts a number on something that isn't his to price.
I went flat.
"Mr. Gaillard, I don't take offers from the floor."
The barn went very quiet.
"If you want my signature, you can put it on the rail with your paddle number, like everyone else."
Somebody in the back row laughed, one short bark, and then the whole barn did.
My oldest ring man put his hand over his mouth.
Anson Gaillard did not laugh.
His jaw did not move at all.
He took one step down the center aisle, and the buyers on either side leaned out of his way.
"Then I'll bid," he said.
"You'll register first," I said.
I pulled the gold ring off my finger.
It stuck at the knuckle, and I worked it free while the whole barn watched.
Lawson said, "Detty, don't."
I walked down the three steps from the block to the ledger table and set the ring on the open page, on the line for the last lot.
Anson Gaillard had come up the aisle without my noticing.
He stood across the table from me, close enough that I could smell cedar and cold air on his suit.
His right hand came up slowly and stopped an inch above the ring.
It did not touch it.
I looked at the hand, a big hand, scarred across the first two knuckles and steady as a post.
Then I looked at his face.
"That's the property of the Pelham family," I said. "The sale is closed."
I picked up my gavel and rapped it once on the ledger.
"Sold," I said, "to nobody."
The barn exploded.
I came around the table and walked up the center aisle through forty people, with my back straight and my father's gavel in my hand.
I did not look at Lawson.
I did not look back.
I was out the big door and across the gravel into the March dark before I heard the other footsteps behind me.
They were not hurried.
I stopped beside my truck with my keys out.
He stopped three paces away, with his men standing off at the edge of the light.
"You've just cost yourself a fiancé, a bank and a barn in front of forty witnesses," Anson Gaillard said.
"I've sold a duck rack and a skiff," I said.
"Judge Pelham will have the note called by Monday," he said.
"Probably," I said.
"Get in my car, Miss Marchant, or don't. I won't ask twice."
I looked at the black sedan and then at him.
I knew what the harbor said about him.
I knew nothing at all about what he wanted, and that bothered me more than anything else that night.
I unlocked my own truck and opened the door.
"Follow me," I said.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend