Hannah ...

When Marcus arrested Roman, it was like watching the whole thing happen in slow motion. I felt like I was in a fog. Ed stepped in front of me, blocking my view of Roman. He called out to me and apologized as I stood rooted to the floor, unable to think. As Marcus led Roman in handcuffs to the door, Ed was no longer blocking my view and I could see the fear in Roman’s blue eyes. I was finally spurred into action. I shoved past Ed and rushed to Marcus, grabbing his arm.

"Stop," I said. "Roman is my husband, you can’t arrest him."

"Don’t worry, ma’am," Marcus said. "We can have your marriage expunged due to coercion."

"Coercion?" I repeated the word. "There was no coercion," I said, moving to stand between Roman and the door of the office. "I married him willingly. My father is the one that needs to be arrested, not my husband."

"Your husband purchased you illegally from an alleged human trafficking hub," Ed said. "That in itself implies the loss of your human right to choose."

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I mean, yes you’re right, but Roman has been kind to me and I chose to marry him. The money he paid to my father was more like a bride price that my father demanded." Neither Marcus nor Ed had moved as they listened to me. Roman was staring at the floor, and his look of defeat was making me heartsick. "Please uncuff him," I begged Marcus. "He didn’t coerce me into marriage. As Roman said, we knew each other prior to the auction, and he wanted to help me. If he hadn’t helped me, then some other man would have bid on me, and I really would have been in trouble." Marcus and Ed exchanged a glance before turning back to me.

"You said your father is responsible for coercing you into the auction?" Ed asked me.

"Yes," I said. "I can tell you exactly where my father is. Please, just let my husband go." Marcus uncuffed Roman and we embraced each other for a moment. "I don’t know what I would have done if they had taken you away, Roman," I whispered in his ear.

"Thank you for speaking up for me, Hannah," Roman whispered back to me.

"I apologize for the stress that caused," Marcus said. "We’re just doing our jobs."

Roman and I broke our embrace, but we kept our arms wrapped around one another as we faced Marcus and Ed. "We want to work with you to take that place down," Roman said to them before meeting my gaze. "We’ll tell you whatever you need to know." I nodded at Roman to confirm his statement.

"Can I get you coffee or water?" Ed asked us. Roman and I asked for water as Marcus invited us back to our seats. Marcus placed an order for coffee, and Ed left the room to grab our drinks.

"I need to know exactly what happened, Mrs. Thaddeus," Marcus said to Hannah. "Are you willing to tell me your side of the story?"

Roman was holding my hand across the small space between our armchairs. "I will tell you what I know," I said. "I want my father to be in prison where he belongs. Please, promise me you won’t arrest my husband again."

"As long as you’re willing to testify that your husband had no premeditated intention to ownership of you," Marcus said, "then your husband has an alibi."

Ed returned to the office, handing me and Roman each a cold bottled water. Ed handed Marcus his coffee and rejoined him on the sofa. He pulled out his pen and notepad. "What did I miss?" Ed asked no one in particular.

"Mrs. Thaddeus agreed to give us her account of the events that occurred at the auction," Marcus told him.

"Go ahead, Mrs. Thaddeus," Ed said, poised to take notes as Marcus sipped his coffee.

I cleared my throat. "You need to know that before my father took me to the auction he didn’t tell me anything about his plans," I began.

"Your father’s name?" Marcus asked. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

"Court Macalester," I said. "Short for Courtney." Ed scribbled in his notebook and I continued. "My father always took me to his client parties to sweet talk the men into working with him, but he never left me alone with any man."

"You were too valuable," Marcus said.

"Yes, I know that now," I said. "He also took me to an impromptu doctor’s appointment that he told me nothing about. I found out later that he wanted the doctor to verify my virginity." Roman squeezed my hand supportively, and I met his gaze. It wasn’t important that I was no longer a virgin, but it was a factor in how I had been presented at the auction.

"Your virginity was important for the amount that he could get for you," Ed said as he wrote on his notepad.

"Yes," I said. "My father did this a couple of days before he took me to The Auction House, which leads me to believe that he planned to sell me several days before he actually did."

"It’s true," Roman confirmed. "Court had met with the club owner and agreed on the information in the contract."

"You met the club owner?" Marcus asked Roman.

"Yes, Jared Fitzgerald," Roman said. "He told me he was the owner and he asked me to sign a contract and give him my bank account information before I could even see Hannah."

"You’re giving us a lot of good info here," Ed said, scribbling in his notebook. "Go on, Mrs. Thaddeus."

"The night my father took me to The Auction House, he told me to dress in my usual attire, something tight and revealing, so I assumed we were going to one of his client parties. When we got there, I didn’t see any sign or anything that said we were going into a club. There were guards at an alley side door, and they had a list that they checked before they let us in."

"Do you know roughly the address?" Marcus asked me.

"I don’t," I said.

Roman pulled out his cell phone and began tapping at the screen. "I can get the exact address for you," Roman said. "Bernard told my driver the address the night we went there." A moment later Roman showed his phone to Ed, who jotted the address down. I took a drink of my water while they were focused on getting the address information.

"Please continue, Mrs. Thaddeus," Marcus said.

"Once we got inside The Auction House," I said, "I didn’t really recognize the men there, because my father pulled me past them and into a back room that looked like an office. He told me that he was broke and that he was going to sell me to make money to pay off his creditors, but I didn’t believe him." The memory of standing in that office with my father played in my mind like a scene from a movie. "I remember that I was going to call someone to tell them what was going on, but my father called a guard to come and get me. The guard grabbed me, and I dropped all of my things."

"It certainly sounds premeditated," Ed said to me. "That one fact is enough to put your father away for five years, especially if there is proof that a document was signed, regardless of the legality of the document. The most important factor to keep in mind is your father’s intent to sell you."

"He certainly made his intentions clear," I said. "After Roman won the bid for me, my father met me backstage and told me how proud he was of me, and that I needed to make Roman want to marry me."

"He said that to you?" Roman asked me and I met his angry blue gaze.

"Yes," I said to Roman. "If I had to guess, he didn’t want to risk you sending me back. Not that he cared about my livelihood, "I said, "but I don’t think he wanted the higher risk of being implicated in human trafficking over a long period of time. He just wanted to get as much money as possible by selling me as a virgin to be married."

"It makes sense," Ed said. "Your father thinks that by only selling you once as a bride, he won’t get into trouble if you don’t show up at The Auction House again."

"Too bad for him," Marcus said. "The fact that he premeditated a plan to sell you once makes him guilty as a party in human trafficking."

"Good," I said before glancing at Roman. He had his hands clasped beneath his chin with his elbows resting on his knees, and he did not look happy.

"Can you tell us if there were any other women there?" Ed asked me. "And if so, where they were kept? How were they treated?"

I took a deep breath and sighed. "The guard took me to the other women backstage," I said, "and some of them were just girls, teenagers. I spoke with two of the women. They told me that some of the same women were sold and re-sold there as mistresses multiple times."

"Do you know if those women were housed inside the same building when the auction was not going on?" Marcus asked me.

I shook my head. "I wasn’t there long enough to find out," I said. Marcus and Ed began a quiet discussion, and I turned my attention to Roman. "Are you OK?" I asked him.

"It’s hard to hear you talk about that disgusting place," Roman said angrily. "Teenagers?" Roman asked me, slamming his fists on his thighs. "I want these guys to raid that place and drag those men out into the light for everyone to see the type of people they are."

I gently touched Roman’s arm. "I know," I said. "We’re taking the first steps." We were in this together now, and there was no turning back.