Chapter One
The first sign that things were not going well was when Lisbet’s mother asked her to go through her clothes to clear some space in her closet. Lisbet had not thought anything of it. Dutifully, she went through her dresses and made a pile of the ones that didn’t really fit her, were likely to malfunction, were less-than-ideal gifts, and weren’t that flattering to begin with. She thought there was something magical on the horizon, like a vacation or a project that would require her to get new clothes and that was the reason she needed more closet space.
No event came.
Instead, one of Lisbet’s friends was goofing off on the internet looking for vintage clothing and found all of Lisbet’s old clothing up for auction.
As her friend scrolled through the options, Lisbet noticed one of her dresses and said, “I used to have a dress exactly like that.”
Her friend scrolled to the next picture.
“Hey, I had one like that too,” she chortled.
On the third picture, Lisbet clued in that something was wrong and wisely stayed silent as her friend scrolled through pages of the clothes she’d given to her mother. Her friend didn’t say anything about it. It was one of the signs that her family’s money had dried up. Lisbet’s mother was trying to sell a five thousand dollar dress for forty thousand. The friend closed the auction window and when Lisbet left her house, she was never invited back.
People who didn’t have their own money were parasites.
It wasn’t personal.
Lisbet knew it wasn’t. She’d seen friends lose all their money before. She’d behaved exactly the same way. She couldn’t afford to give one of her friends the same lifestyle she enjoyed.
She held her head high and hoped that it was merely a phase.
It was merely a phase when her mother stopped asking if she could auction off her clothes and started taking them without her permission. It was merely a phase when all her jewelry went missing. Lisbet knew her mother had already auctioned off all her own pieces. It was merely a phase when Lisbet’s younger sisters had their closets and jewelry boxes ransacked too.
But it was no longer a phase when Lisbet’s father had her meet with a coordinator from Sleeping Beauty Inc.
A million thoughts raced through Lisbet’s mind. Should she run away from home? She was twenty-six. It wasn’t running away from home when you were twenty-six. Besides, where could she go?
If Lisbet ran away, she couldn’t run away to her friends. They had all deserted her when they sniffed which way the wind was blowing.
Lovers? She’d had none. Her father had heavily discouraged her from having boyfriends, scolding her that the men she dated were not good enough for her. That meant that no man with a decent amount of money to his name had tried to date Lisbet. She had dumped them all according to her father’s instructions. People who didn’t have their own money were parasites.
She had a university degree in physics, but such a thing was only useful as a profession if accompanied by more schooling. As it was, she didn’t have enough education for any job she knew of. She blamed her father. It had been his idea for her to take a degree without an immediate practical application.
The tables had turned.
She was a parasite.
Lisbet scratched her nose and looked at the agreement the coordinator from Sleeping Beauty Inc. had brought with her. The coordinator was a woman in her late fifties named Quincy. In her prime, she would have been far prettier than Lisbet. If she was a coordinator, that probably meant that no one wanted her anymore. However, Quincy was good at her job and fawned over Lisbet and her beauty to gain her favor as she looked over the contract.
It didn’t really work. Lisbet knew what she was and what she wasn’t. She also knew that the most remarkable thing about her was fake.
Lisbet had violet eyes. Not naturally, but she had needed eye surgery to correct her nearsightedness. The surgery would insert a contact lens under the membrane of her eye. It was an opportunity to choose a different eye color. Lisbet’s eyes had been hazel, a color so muddy that she had always wished to have blue eyes like her sisters. However, when given the choice, Lisbet chose violet and got a whole new look. Now it was her defining trait. Otherwise, her hair was black with a tangle of curls trailing down her back. Her skin was not creamy until after she did her makeup. Her figure was fine, but greatly improved by the right dress. She was a solid seven out of ten, which disappointed her because her sisters were like their mother and managed to score nines and tens depending on the occasion.
However, Quincy thought Lisbet had a lot to offer and praised her for her beauty and spoke repeatedly about how her degree in physics must mean that she was unusually bright.
The compliments were laid on so thick that Lisbet had to swallow her disbelief, or her vomit, more than once.
Lisbet looked down at the first contract she had been offered. It was a non-disclosure agreement.
She did a double take. If she wanted to have the meeting with the client coordinator she had to promise that their conversation would remain completely secret—whether she signed the final model agreement or not.
Sleeping Beauty Inc. was a company that traded in leasing human resources in temporary contracts. They advertised themselves as renting out personal assistants for full-life makeovers, meaning that models from Sleeping Beauty Inc. were not whores. They were stylists, housekeepers, artists, gardeners, personal assistants, and more. It was just that if a purchaser happened to want to go to bed with their model, everything was above board. There were better places to get cheap sex if that was all a purchaser wanted. A model from Sleeping Beauty Inc. was a classy, inventive person (usually a woman) who would work to improve her master’s life for as long as he owned her.
Lisbet didn’t know if people in her family’s previous wealth bracket hired models from Sleeping Beauty Inc. Her first thought was that it was not respectable enough for someone to want their daughter to do it.
Lisbet didn’t bother to glance at her father for his approval. The meeting had been his idea. She signed the non-disclosure agreement.
Then the truth came out.
“For the last sixty-three years, Sleeping Beauty Inc. has had a special division,” Quincy explained sweetly. “We call it the Gold Edition Models.”
She went on to explain that men from a higher tier of finances were sometimes ill-equipped to procure for themselves a wife. They were rich enough that they could marry anyone, but ‘anyone’ simply wouldn’t do. They needed a woman with a good reputation, who came from a good family, who could never embarrass them with a divorce, who would stand by them publicly, and bring a level of class to their lives that could not be had otherwise.
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All of that made more sense to Lisbet than what the ads said.
“So, I wouldn’t be sold?” Lisbet asked, thinking that marriage was not a sale per se.
Lisbet’s father stayed quiet and let the coordinator answer. “Darling, you are very valuable. Priceless. In your case, your family would receive a fabulous sum of money for you, enough to save your father’s business. But I would be lying if I said you wouldn’t be sold. You would be the property and the wife of your owner.”
Those words rang in her head. You would be the property and the wife of your owner.
“That seems wrong,” Lisbet said, refusing to glance at her father.
“It wouldn’t be. Please remember that money has changed hands in arranged marriages for time out of mind. It was the common practice of royalty. You’re royalty, Lisbet. You’re priceless. Let’s see who wants to marry you.” The coordinator took an elaborate black and gold envelope from the contract package. She gave it to Lisbet with minor hesitation like she wanted to open it herself.
Lisbet opened the envelope. It was stiff in her hands, like the most expensive invitation she had ever touched.
The man was Vantz Bloomburg.
Lisbet covered her mouth.
The coordinator squeaked in sudden excitement. She had known and it had been hard for her to keep such an astonishing secret to herself.
Lisbet’s father looked sober. He had expected it. Obviously, he wouldn’t have agreed to such a thing for someone less fantastic. At least, that was what Lisbet had to believe.
There was no picture in the envelope. No one knew what Vantz Bloomburg looked like. However, he was famous. He had taken over terraforming Mars three years ago and had been in the news every day since then. He kept his face a secret from the public because he said that having a public presence was too much for him. Instead, he made everyone crazy because his work on Mars always ruffled too many feathers.
At the moment, Vantz was causing trouble because of his chosen locations for building the towers that would create a magnetic field. There was no point in putting an atmosphere on a planet with no magnetic field to protect it. It would just get blown into space without it. Two of his locations were in places that were already owned by mining companies and the government of Mars was insisting that the companies step aside and let Vantz have their land, and their buildings, and to do so quietly. The companies were furious. The compensation meant nothing to them. They insisted those locations were unequaled in their excellence. They would not step aside.
Vantz was in the newsreels fighting about it every day.
He was notorious since there was always some new rumor about him. The conspiracy theories about him were head-spinning.
Lisbet dropped the page with his name on it and the personal note he sent asking her to look at his proposal kindly.
“Wait,” Lisbet said slowly. “Did he ask for me? Personally?”
Quincy looked at a few pages included in her files before answering. “Of course. You would not be having this meeting if he wasn’t willing to pay the exorbitant fee your family has requested. Not only has he requested you, but you are the only model he’s asked for. He’s had no rejections.”
If Vantz had known to ask for Lisbet personally then that meant her parents had put her up for auction just like her clothes, just like her jewelry, and what were they saying about her? She was precious? She was priceless? Pathetic!
Lisbet shot her father a disgusted look. He had known it was coming and kept his eyes on the floor.
Lisbet did not look or speak to her father again. Instead, she let Quincy go through the contract. It named the sum of money her father would receive for her and it detailed the position Vantz hoped she would play in his life. He needed someone with a reasonable understanding of science to do some public relations work for him. Basically, he needed a public face to show the people of Mars. He needed a representative to attend functions for him on his behalf, accept awards, and whatnot. He listed what her living space would be like on Mars, giving her a suite of her own in his mansion, clothes, jewelry, respectability, fame, and more.
Lisbet felt sick to her stomach. Everything she was was exactly what Vantz wanted and she felt sick to her stomach. Her parents had raised her that way with intention. Was she just an investment to them? Like livestock to be raised?
She turned to Quincy. “Could you please tell me a little more about Vantz?”
“I hope I can answer,” she said cheerfully. “What’s your question?”
“How old is he?”
Quincy flipped through files on her tablet until she brought up the profile he had to fill out when he signed up with Sleeping Beauty Inc.
Name: Vantz Bloomburg
Age: 32
Eye Color: N/A
Hair Color: N/A
Height: N/A
Weight: N/A
Profession: Head Teratologist on Mars
Previous Marriages: None.
Sexual History: N/A
Sexual Preference: N/A
It went on like that. Anything else they asked him, he submitted ‘not applicable’ (N/A) for his answer.
“Sleeping Beauty Inc. accepted these answers?” Lisbet asked, not letting any of her feelings of disappointment show in how she looked or spoke.
“There’s a note from the intake worker at the bottom. It just says he’s very charismatic when you speak to him over audio communications,” Quincy answered lamely.
“Whatever,” Lisbet said, flourishing her hand and signing the contract. She stood up. “Shall we go, Madam Coordinator? I’m ready now.”
Quincy stood up with an excited, “Eep! I’m so impressed that you were able to make your decision so quickly. You are a really decisive person,” she praised.
Lisbet’s father stood and tried to place a hand on her back.
“Don’t touch me!” she hissed, stepping away from him. “With this last act, I never want to speak to you again.”
“Ah, Pipsqueak,” her father said, trying to pacify her with the name he called her when she was a child.
“Do not talk to me. A horse you raised and sold would not call you on the phone. You asked me to sell my life away and I have done it. Do not ask me for one more thing for the rest of my life.”
The client coordinator gave Lisbet’s father a sympathetic look before she covered Lisbet’s shoulders with her own coat. She led her outside into the snow and into the warm car that was waiting outside.
Lisbet did not turn around. She didn’t look to see if her family was watching her leave or if they knew she was leaving. She had intentionally missed saying goodbye to her mother and her sisters. What on Earth could she say to them when she was leaving under such circumstances?
The only thing Lisbet knew was that if she didn’t sell herself, her family’s finances would plummet even further. More doors would close to her. Maybe all the doors would close. The doors wouldn’t just close for her, but for her parents and her sisters. If she refused Vantz, she was unlikely to get a better offer from a richer man. The offer of purchase from Vantz was the exact thing her father had been praying for.
Inside the car, she closed her eyes and realized with a sickening lurch in her stomach that she hadn’t understood what she needed to do in the years since she became an adult. She had taken a degree in university, but it had taken her longer than the usual four years because she only took a few classes every semester. As far as she knew, there was no rush. She hadn’t realized that she had to find herself a husband or her father would find one for her. If she had brought home a young man of reasonable fortune, her parents would have married her off to him instead. That would have been ideal since at least then he would have been her choice. Marrying her off had always been their plan. She simply hadn’t been aware that she was supposed to be scouting a rich husband.
Why had they never told her?
The sharp sting was because if she had chosen someone herself, she would have gotten her husband’s money herself, and not them. With an arrangement with Sleeping Beauty Inc., her parents got the money instead of her.
She tried to tell herself that her father had always been good to her. She reminded herself of all the times her father had paid for trips, clothes, parties, and more. His diamond business had crumbled and the tables had turned. If his money hadn’t dried up, he would never have sold her.
That was when the bile bubbled in her throat.
She was kidding herself.
He was always going to control her. That was why he had stopped her from dating. He wanted to control her. He gave her what she wanted and then he took what he wanted.
Except, had she ever wanted anything that he hadn’t taught her to want?
It was a paradox and Lisbet wasn’t sure if it mattered if she could unpick it. She was on her way to Mars… and a man like Vantz Bloomburg wanted her. The head teratologist on Mars had chosen her out of all the models available through Sleeping Beauty Inc. Even if he was a goat man, that was still pretty hot.