Chapter 10
10
HIM
I ’d waited two years and traveled 5,000 miles for the night I’d finally encounter Max Langer face-to-face, and now that it had arrived, all I could think about was what dress a girl would be wearing when she appeared at the top of the stairs.
Yeah, there might be a problem.
I had not planned this. Really. Sure, I’d gutted the downstairs security camera, but I’d done that weeks ago simply as a best-practices thing, long before I ever imagined I’d be fingering my master’s daughter to orgasm in a stark, fluorescent-lit hallway with an old woman’s voice screeching at us over an intercom. Nor had I had any idea that Louisa—through no fault of her own—would leave me unable to go upstairs until I’d finished myself off, back against the wall, stroking my dick to the memory of the way her lips had formed that perfect shape when I found the spot I’d been searching for, and every single other shape I imagined them making, every other shape I imagined between them. Yeah, I’d told her I was fine, and I was. Now.
As shocking as it was to me, I was glad we’d stopped there. Not just because there was no time or that she’d hesitated at touching my healing wounds, or that the atmosphere sucked—and the fact that I even cared about that was weird enough—but because I didn’t know how far she wanted to go, or could go, or had gone. Slave girls let me call the shots. I couldn’t play Louisa that way. In fact, I couldn’t remember a time when I’d been so genuinely concerned about someone else’s pleasure. Of course, as a slave, that was all I was supposed to care about. But as me ? Well.
Still, I tried not to look too smug when I finally went upstairs to face an assault by one of the housekeeper’s mixer blades and two massive cabinets full of unsorted silverware that I spent the rest of the afternoon on my knees polishing, only interrupted when she broke down and slipped me one of her vanilla meringues. I smiled up at her, amused by what she’d think if she knew what I’d really been up to earlier.
But the real problem was that Louisa, for all she’d done to help me find Maeve, still had no idea that the man coming to dinner—the man who was supposedly about to save her family from ruin—had my sister. And for now, it had to stay that way. After all, how could I possibly explain that to her as she was dashing up the stairs wearing that impish, rosy, well-kissed grin, so self-conscious that she didn’t realize I was looking at her like some floppy-eared puppy?
Oh, and then there was the gardener. Earlier, I had scanned the entire terrace, including the outdoor dining and pool areas, just to make sure the gross toothless bastard a. wasn’t skulking around and b. hadn’t left any incriminating evidence, like the printed map to Langer’s warehouse he’d swiped. I’d found nothing and no sign of him, but it didn’t make me feel any better because I needed to warn Louisa, and I couldn’t without explaining everything. And everything would include what else I’d been doing in her room during our tutoring sessions—other than mentally undressing her, which was probably no longer much of a secret.
Yes, Maeve was right. Louisa had risked a lot to get me that phone. She cared , and that was terrifying enough. She shouldn’t have done it, and I shouldn’t have accepted it, but it happened, and there was no going back. But if the time came to choose between me and her family—especially after she learned I had not, to put it lightly, been entirely truthful—I knew the choice, for her, would still be an easy one.
So yeah, there was a lot I couldn’t tell her, and worst of all, it was all stuff she deserved to know. But after a lifetime spent aware that one carelessly dropped fact could earn you a flogging, a caning, or some other random method of unspeakable torture, lying wasn’t an easy habit to break. So maybe she’d cut me some slack?
Yeah, right.
With all her gold stars and high expectations, even as she grew and changed before my eyes, this desert princess would—despite knowing everything I’d been through—expect me to be better, too. After all, she was used to the best.
And that’s why my first priority—besides brainstorming places to take her next time besides a dusty alcove full of broken furniture—should have been finding a solution to this problem. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to choose my priorities. So instead, I dutifully took up my post by the door in an all-black uniform I’d been given to wear. I’d been given a few dress shirts to wear in my time and generally found them too tight in the shoulders, but to my surprise, this one fit me as perfectly as if the housekeeper had worked some kind of magic on it.
The maid stood next to me in a black skirted outfit, holding a tray of champagne flutes, which she was efficiently offering to the arriving guests before directing them to the sprawling terrace, where more cocktails would be served before dinner. My only job during this part of the evening was to stand there like a marble pillar and take coats, bags, and anything else people wanted to dump on me, and to ensure the guests knew immediately that despite what they’d heard, Keith Wainwright-Phillips wasn’t so broke that he couldn’t afford a brand-new, good-looking slave.
In fact, I felt one guest’s obliging eyes on me before I even saw her: the thirtysomething redhead in the corner, champagne flute twirling in her hand, was already checking me out like I was on the menu. I knew the type—rich, bored, undersexed, and always leering at slave boys like we were streaming entertainment. Still, up until recently, I would have played along, but tonight? The way she looked at me—hungry, expectant—just made my skin crawl.
Whatever. It was what it was. Better to be a piece of meat here than chained and half-naked at a public auction.
Actually, given that it was October in the desert, none of the guests—which so far seemed to be mostly Wainwright-Phillips’s friends, business associates, and their spouses, but no Langer—wore a whole lot of extra layers, which meant that so far, I hadn’t done much of anything. Which gave me a lot of extra time to covertly scan the top of the stairs. That would have been fine if it weren’t for the next guest noticing it immediately.
“What are you looking at, slave?” The Big Douche on Campus, who’d just arrived with his parents, wore a light leather jacket reeking of menthol cigarettes, which he made a point of aggressively chucking at me like he’d somehow known ahead of time I’d get assigned to do this.
There was no torture quite like coming up with a million of the wittiest, most scathing retorts you’ve ever heard and then not being allowed to use them, but it was one I was all too familiar with. But with all the guests around—and Langer on his way—there was too much at stake to waste them, even on someone as loathsome as Corey Killeen. All I could do was bite down hard on my lip and direct my eyes back to the floor where every person there—except maybe one—thought they belonged.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Good. Fucking keep it that way.”
Tonight was going to be rough.
773541N0
Abee jo, ? 1 Brudderh?erz, ? 2 are you there?
773496S6
I’m here, Maeve
Here meaning the wine cellar, desperately trying to tap out a message before the housekeeper burst in and demanded to know why I wasn’t back yet with that extra bottle of Marsala I’d lied and told her we were out of. Personally, I just wanted to know why I was such an idiot. This goddamn phone would have gotten me killed twice already if it weren’t for the grace of the girl in the backless dress, and yet here I was still carrying it around instead of stashing it in the empty birdhouse next to the garden shed that would have made a damn good hiding place had I bothered to actually use it.
Too late.
773496S6
What is it? Did you find something?
773541N0
You were right, about the research
They’re doing experiments
On our microchips
773496S6
What do you mean?
Who?
What kind of experiments?
773541N0
I don’t know, but Resi said that’s why they needed me
Because my chip is still transmitting, but no one is looking for me
Same with the other girls
That would make sense, actually. You couldn’t experiment on a chip that had been disabled, but a runaway slave with a working chip would be tracked immediately. That must have been why they went after Maeve, after her owners abandoned her.
773541N0
Resi was helping with the research but they went too far, she said
Now she wants out
But we have to be smart about what we’re doing, or they’ll catch on
773496S6
Who’ll catch on? Max Langer?
But Maeve didn’t answer right away, almost like she knew something but for whatever reason was afraid to tell me.
Fuck. I never should have gotten her involved in this, let alone anyone else. I kept my circle small for a damn good reason. Maeve, on the other hand, was always doing stupid shit like opening up and trusting people. When would she learn?
773496S6
Maeve? I want you to stop whatever you’re doing
And stop talking to anyone
773541N0
But you told me to
773496S6
I don’t care, it’s too dangerous
Leave it to me from now on
I’m coming for you, I promise
I’m going to get you out of there
773541N0
But Resi’s going to free us
She just needs more time
Our next two messages got sent nearly simultaneously.
773496S6
Free you?
How long is that going to take?
And what if someone catches on?
773541N0
Nondikass
Someone’s coming, I have to go
But she didn’t go. Instead, more dots appeared, then disappeared, like she was trying to tap out an answer to my questions as fast as she could before she got caught. Someone’s coming, Maeve. Hide the phone, for fuck’s sake. Had someone…? Was she…? I could only stand there in the dark, frozen to the spot, heart racing, watching those goddamn dots, waiting for them to stop, waiting for a message, anything. But they just kept pulsing. My pulse hammered in my throat. Say something, Maeve. Please.
Suddenly, the dots disappeared. Then, one final message appeared:
773541N0
He’s here
HER
Upstairs, I opened my textbook.
Sure, it seemed ridiculous to return to alkenes and alkynes now, but he’d never let me hear the end of it if he found out I hadn’t studied. But I might as well have been back to square one. The formulas on the page just swam. All I could see, all I could hear, all I could feel , was the gardener’s sneer, that sickly light, that awful tablet clutched in his grubby hands.
He’d given me until midnight. Even offered me a deal, of sorts. A nauseating, horrific, impossible, unthinkable deal. One I could never make in a million years, which I’d told him before sprinting upstairs and straight into a long, scalding-hot shower that I hated to have to take because it washed all the good stuff off with the bad.
But as bad as the deal was, the alternative was worse. For me, it meant ruin. For the slave boy? Death.
And I knew that if I didn’t go to the gardener tonight to give him my decision, he would come for me. And as repulsive as that was, it was also my only saving grace. That he was so blinded by four years’ worth of lechery that he was going to try to hold out instead of going straight to Daddy and losing his only bargaining chip.
It gave me time to think of a plan to destroy him.
Because if I couldn’t, he would expose us. It was only a matter of time. But how should I do it? Should I go to Daddy and try to?—
No, no, no. Every single choice was wrong. Catastrophically wrong. Maybe it was too late to do anything . And plus, what if he didn’t hold out? Maybe he’d been to Daddy already . But no. The gardener got banished to the far reaches of the property at parties, so maybe he wouldn’t be able to reach Daddy. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to reach me . But I couldn’t count on that.
And what about my boy? I had to tell him, and I had a way to tell him, now, I thought, staring at my phone. Didn’t I?
Or maybe, I should first try to figure out what the gardener meant by keep his word . Was it possible that?—
No. It was impossible. When it came down to believing a disgusting old pervert versus the magic boy who got me loving chemistry and who had kissed my forehead as gently as a prayer, it wasn’t really much of a competition.
Right?
So heart pounding in my ears, I swiped open the messaging app and selected “Albert Einstein” from my contacts. Took a deep breath and started typing.
The gardener saw
Deleted.
Someone knows
Deleted.
We need to talk
Deleted.
I need to talk to you
Deleted.
Find me at the party. It’s important
Deleted. I turned my phone over and pushed it away. I needed to think more about what to say, but I also knew there was a good chance he’d hidden his phone and wouldn’t see it, in time or at all, and we were both fucked either way.
And now, shit. According to the clock, it was time to pick out something to wear.
But strangely, it made me feel better. Hey, I grew up in Scottsdale, okay?
It felt like a form of meditation as I started cataloging all 700 or so clothing pieces in my closet, focusing on how well they checked off my boy’s two hopeful requests—short and showing my back. But even then, I couldn’t shake the dread curling in my stomach. I had to tell him. But what would he do if and when I did? What could he do, other than run away screaming from the girl who seemed destined to get him thrown in a mine no matter how smart and careful he was?
I had no answers, of course. But at least I’d find out in a minute how I did with the dress. Oops, less than a minute because I was at the top of the marble staircase now, and he was at the bottom. My heart was thudding almost audibly, not just from the excitement of seeing him, but from sheer terror. How was I supposed to act normal? What even was normal, now?
Surprisingly—and by “surprisingly,” I mean “not surprisingly at all”—he was indeed devastatingly handsome in the black uniform, a step up from the cast-off and borrowed T-shirts and shorts he normally wore, not that he had any choice in it. He’d also done something to his hair—I wasn’t sure what—and the thick, sun-bleached strands, often flipped chaotically over to one side to hang in his face, looked more … polished, somehow. I’d have to be careful not to stare at him. Okay, fine, I’d already failed at that. I’d have to be sure not to stare at him for more than fifty percent of the night. I didn’t like my chances much there, either.
For his part, he didn’t seem to be looking directly at me, but I knew that didn’t mean anything. Under that forelock of hair, beneath those long lashes, behind that submissive bow of his head, he was drinking me up from top to bottom.
He was that good.
The question was, though, could he read in my face that something was wrong? Probably. And if he could, how could I tell him the truth? Conversely, how could I not ? Head swimming, I continued down the stairs, each tap of my black open-toed heels on the parquet bringing me closer to him, closer to the moment where I’d have to decide if I could keep up the act or crumble.
And as much as I wanted to make eye contact—to somehow coax out that bright, curious gaze and beautiful smile, just for a second, just for me—I knew that even trying risked getting him in trouble, and I would never ask it of him.
Instead, I was supposed to just walk by him as if he were a living coat rack, as if he weren’t even there, as if all the bones in my body, and plenty of other parts, too, weren’t so acutely aware of him that they could all jump out of my skin at any time.
The maid was standing there, holding a tray of champagne flutes, and as much as I hated interacting with her—and as much as I knew alcohol wouldn’t help anything—I was dying to grab one of the glasses and down it while slinking out to the terrace and awaiting my fate. Realistically, though, the easiest option would be to ignore both of them, much as it made my heart ache. And either way, I couldn’t stand on the stairs any longer. So I had to start moving my legs, little of which were concealed by the sleeveless black butt-grazing cocktail dress I’d chosen.
And wouldn’t he choose that moment to raise his head under the guise of shaking some hair from his eyes. But what happened next was a total surprise.
The coats still draped over his arm, he grabbed one of the flutes from the maid’s tray, and I could only watch in slow motion as yes, that stupid fucking idiot was on his way toward me, so what choice did I have but to cut the distance and walk toward him ? And reach out to let him place the glass gently in my trembling hand as if we were the only two people in the room. And if his finger happened to brush mine, well. A hazard of the job.
“Thank you,” I said, hoping I could somehow imbue the two words I could say with everything I wanted to say.
“You’re welcome, miss,” he replied, his golden eyes averted respectfully, while the part of me screaming please look at me and the part of me screaming don’t risk it punched each other out in a full-on battle royale.
Had he seen the message? It didn’t matter. Now or never. I had to tell him. It would shatter us both to pieces, but I had to. I cleared my throat. “I?—“
“Just look at this, Loulou.”
But it was the glass that almost shattered—in my hand—as Daddy appeared to obliviously kill the moment. To my surprise, though, he was smiling, and for the first time since I’d left the basement, I actually breathed.
Daddy doesn’t know. The gardener didn’t tell him—well, show him.
Yet.
That meant there was still a little time. Time to figure something out. Luckily, I now knew someone very well—well, better than I had that morning, anyway—who was good at figuring things out. If only he knew that there was anything to figure out.
“What did I tell you? Does he clean up or what?” Daddy jerked the slave boy toward him by the arm with enthusiasm and turned his chin, admiring him as if he were an expensive oil painting he’d just hung over the mantelpiece. Meanwhile, the maid’s customary pout didn’t change, but I could swear that smug little minx was silently sniggering at us.
Sometimes I wondered about Daddy.
Then again, maybe he was just in a good mood. A deal with Max Langer was apparently a big deal, enough to get him to shave and put on one of his expensive tailored suits for the first time in a year, befitting the multimillionaire CEO he at one point had been and hoped to be again. And as much as I resented him for tearing us away from that moment, I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t refreshing to see him like this.
I was considerably less enthusiastic about Langer. Corey had said he didn’t deal in slaves, but Corey couldn’t exactly be trusted to be objective about the boss who was offering him a six-figure salary fresh out of school. But maybe that didn’t matter. If they were working on a deal that was supposed to save my family’s fortune, I had to be happy about it. Right?
Because it wasn’t only my own fate in the balance. It was my boy’s, too.
But then what? What kind of future did we have even then? Call me naive, but I knew damn well how the world worked, and that even if Langer somehow transformed my over-the-hill father into a tech billionaire, my boy was still legally as much Daddy’s property as the coffee table or the TV. Daddy could still sell him anytime, and I’d have to shut up and watch him go. And even in the unlikely event we could come up with a plan to foil the gardener—being able to talk to each other might help—it was probably only a matter of time before Corey, or the maid, or some other foe we didn’t even know about yet, picked up on the flux of pure sex hormones I was certain we were both giving off pretty much around the clock and decide to ruin both of our lives out of jealousy, vengeance, spite, or all three.
Well, that sure killed the party mood.
I stood in an unblinking daze as the last few guests filed in and Corey, in a cloud of menthol—when the hell had he taken up smoking?—returned to glom onto me, directing me imperiously toward the back of the house.
Helplessly, I followed him. As much as it killed me, I hated even more what it would do to my boy, despite his earlier unconvincing denials of jealousy.
But, oh. The maid had returned to the kitchen, and everyone else had dispersed from the foyer. The jackass walking next to me was caught up in his usual self-absorbed bullshit. There was only one person left by the door, but he’d be gone soon, too. And I wasn’t powerless, at least not in every way.
My long, thick curls still hung down over the back of my dress, and as I walked away, I flipped the curtain of hair up over my shoulder to give him an exclusive glimpse of my nude back, framed in two delicate panels of black lace.
I couldn’t turn back to see his expression, of course. But I could feel it. And that was almost as good.
And then, while I was sure I had his attention—though still without turning back—I held up my phone and tapped the screen.
Which meant I’d better send a goddamn message.
HIM
Yeah, grabbing the flute had been a stupid thing to do, and no, it hadn’t been planned. But then again, was any of this planned? She’d just looked so hot and so brave and so scared all at once, standing there on the stairs, trembling in the dress she’d chosen just for me. And since I couldn’t envelop her in my arms, couldn’t caress that luscious, peachy back, or tell her what I really thought—that I could live a million years and never get over the fact that a girl like her would give a damn about my fantasies, let alone fulfill them—a glass of champagne and the brush of a finger would have to be enough.
Enough to airbrush out the slimeball walking next to her when she flipped her hair. Enough to armor us for whatever the night held.
And enough to cushion the shock when I finally put the coats in the closet and arrived at the terrace, only to find that Max Langer—billionaire, tech wizard, homicidal maniac?—apparently was too important to bother with front doors.
He had, the entire time, been standing there, amid the complicated terra cotta stonework, prickly pears, and lava rocks. And there was no other way into the property except through the large circular driveway, which meant he must have driven in, gotten out of his car, and gone around the side of the house. That was unsettling enough on its own. And all of this was even before I got a good look at the guy I’d only glimpsed while furtively scrolling through search results in a German science lab 5,000 miles away.
The icy blue lights of the swimming pool behind him, combined with his blue eyes and sharp cerulean blue suit, made him look like a glacier. He was good-looking in the way of a slab of granite not yet quite sculpted, with a lean, muscular frame, pale skin, full lips, and thick waves of dark hair that seemed to almost defy gravity. And when he spoke, he had the trace of an accent that sounded more than a bit familiar.
“If you look at anyone successful these days,” he was telling Wainwright-Phillips and some of his colleagues, who were gathered around him like worshippers at an altar, “odds are they didn’t get there on brains or talent; they got there by shouting louder than the other guy. By selling, and the product is themselves. It’s why I prefer scientists and engineers. Of course working with them is like going out with a girl looking for true love. No matter how hot they are, you’ll inevitably let them down, and then not only do they walk out on you, they take your entire computer system down with them when they go.”
Louisa wasn’t in that group, much to my relief. She was a few feet farther away in her tiny little black dress and killer heels, near another arrangement of wicker lounge chairs, chatting easily with a man and woman closer to her age.
I was familiar enough with her adorkable side by now that I’d almost forgotten she was a girl of society, schooled in the social graces, just as I’d been schooled, fairly unsuccessfully, in subservience and submission. That was my girl.
Mine. And how was that for irony?
But I also knew, by the way her eyes darted warily around the room as she giggled and cooed and spoke of everything light and pleasant and tried to ignore me, that something was wrong.
Really wrong.
Like an idiot, I patted my pocket. Slaves didn’t carry phones or wallets or car keys or money, so it would look weird. I’d put the phone on silent, of course, but I shouldn’t have brought it at all. And despite her gesture, I hadn’t felt a vibration. Still, I had to?—
“Well, don’t just stand there.”
I turned around with a start, but it was just the housekeeper, passing by on her way to the kitchen with her customary thump on my arm and no indication that she’d noticed anything except that I was slacking off. I noticed the maid was already trotting around with trays of stuffed poblano peppers and chili-lime shrimp cups.
“Make yourself useful.”
With a frustrated sigh and without risking another glance back at Louisa, I turned back to the only thing I was supposed to be worrying about, right now or at all: serving. If only food, and its assembly and distribution, had ever made even a fraction as much sense to me as chemistry or calculus. The housekeeper was well aware of that, but she’d also made it clear earlier that I’d be expected to do something more useful during the party than clear the table, so I’d made the mistake of telling her I knew something about drinks. I thought that would mean I’d be put in charge of the wine cellar—which I could probably handle, thanks to my years with the professor—but the ancient valet was doing that, and the housekeeper had neglected to mention that the guests, and Langer in particular, liked tequila. So to my dismay, I soon found myself at the outdoor bar with bottles of silvers and golds and reposados and exquisite little arrays of herbs, twists, and bitters, desperately trying to make any of it make sense to my European soul.
A minute later, some sort of drink was in Langer’s hand, complete with a carefully placed sprig of rosemary at the top that I thought might fool someone into thinking I knew what I was doing. I turned to go back to the bar area, hoping to catch a break somehow and either talk to Louisa or get my phone, even if it meant pulling some kind of con that would let me, and then her, leave for a minute or two. And through it all, I kept watching the tech mogul out of the corner of my eye.
Langer took a sip of the drink, made a face, and put it down on the edge of the firepit behind him. “Hey. Kid.”
Instinctively, I braced myself, waiting to be scolded.
“What’s your name?” Langer asked.
Wainwright-Phillips overheard and gave me an odd look. “Come on, Max, you know they don’t have names.”
To probably everyone’s surprise, Langer laughed throatily, like this was some funny notion to him, like he and Wainwright-Phillips hadn’t been living in the same world for the past forty years. “And why shouldn’t they?” he said. “I mean, what are we trying to do here? Disrupt slavery, yeah? You were in the corporate world too long, that’s your problem. You don’t question things anymore. Disruption, like almost everything, comes down to science. It starts with a hypothesis. A question. Why is this the way it is, and can our product make it better?”
Make what better? The process of dismembering and killing slave girls? Clearly a million-dollar piece of IP, right there.
My master, though he’d gone quiet, seemed to be pondering this seriously. “Well, I?—“
“And I’ll tell you right now, Keith,” Langer continued, “if you don’t ask it, your competitors will, and they’ll have cornered the market before you even know the market exists.”
I stood rooted to the spot, looking from one man to the other, not sure if I was yet permitted to walk away. And not having expected to suddenly become the center of attention. It’s not that I was opposed to it—even if it was only for serving Langer a piece of shit beverage—but this also had the potential to go south very quickly and rob me of any chance to figure out what was going on with Louisa.
“Well—“ Wainwright-Phillips paused, clearly racking his brain. “We’re using him as a tutor for Louisa. How’s that for thinking outside the box?”
Langer’s senses seemed to sharpen. “Is that right? Which subject?”
He seemed to be asking Wainwright-Phillips, but he was looking straight at me. Once again, I didn’t dare respond. Of the millions of things a slave should never, ever do, making your master look bad in front of his guests was pretty damn close to the top, and getting smacked across the face right in front of Max Langer wasn’t even close to what I’d had in mind for our first encounter.
“Well, she’s pre-med, and—“ Wainwright-Phillips began.
“Hey, is he deaf or mute?” Langer interrupted. “You’re not, are you, kid?”
“No, sir.”
“Then let him answer.”
I was stunned at how fast my master shut his mouth. Well, then. Let’s go. “Organic chemistry, sir.”
Langer grimaced. “They’re still making pre-meds learn that?”
“Unfortunately, sir,” I replied. “And slaves, too.”
Langer laughed, a sound that, while not unpleasant, definitely insisted on making its presence known all over the room.
I could already see that if Langer had hurt Maeve or anyone else, how easily he might have done it, or ensured that it was done. He was everything Wainwright-Phillips perhaps had once been and wanted to be again: young, rich, smart, handsome, charming, and ideally positioned to get away with anything , including the worst things you could possibly imagine. “How old are you, and where are you from? I detect an accent.”
“Nearly twenty, sir.” Under my hair, I glanced up. Where was Louisa? I needed to know where she was now , for her sake and mine. “And Luxembourg.”
“Beautiful country. I partly grew up with my mother in Germany, but I used to go to Luxembourg on business. Last time, I shipped back an entire case of that Cassero liqueur they make. I’ll bring over a bottle sometime for you.”
He made it clear that the “you” meant me and no one else. Like he could just stop by the house one day and start boozing it up with me like two old buddies. Was this man completely and utterly delusional? Yeah, like a fox.
“I expect that’s more up your alley than tequila—which, pro tip, next time, use the silver,” he continued. “The name’s Max, by the way. My dad made me call him ‘sir,’ and that’s the last thing I want to be known by, considering I hated everything about the bastard, except for the million or so worth of startup capital he left me when he died. Also, just so you know, it freaks me out to have you looking at the floor when you talk to me. Makes me think my cosmetic surgeon isn’t worth what I paid him for that eye lift. Anyway, good to know you.”
Look, it wasn’t as if free people always treated slaves with contempt and scorn. At various times, I had been fawned over and indulged by lonely women; sympathized with by the occasional closet abolitionist; and all too often, just ignored. But I’d never encountered anyone who quite simply refused to acknowledge that I wasn’t free.
Max Langer acted as if the rules didn’t apply to him. That made him dangerous.
I raised my eyes. Whatever the rest of them thought, I’d have to be an idiot to pass up this free opportunity to look this motherfucker full in the face.
Langer held out his hand.
I stared at it.
For me, it was a rare offer, but I knew that in the world of free men, having a firm grip said a hell of a lot about you. What kind of man you were. Whether you could be trusted. Whether you could be reckoned with.
Control the center, control the game, boy .
If he wanted disruption, I’d give him disruption.
So with my master standing right there, I shook the hand of the man I’d been hunting for a year and looked him straight in his frigid blue eyes. I hoped my message was clear.
I’m not buying what you’re selling, asshole. And if you touch my sister, it’ll be more than your limbs the coyotes will be chewing on.
Wainwright-Phillips, to his credit, seemed to notice none of this. He just nodded cluelessly at the eccentric behavior of those richer than him and wandered off to greet some more guests. But Max Langer remained, his smooth, firm hand still gripping mine. And as he leaned in close, the phone in my back pocket took that exact moment to start buzzing audibly.
Fuck.
I went rigid, and I know Langer felt it. Of course I’d been too stressed out and distracted to get the volume settings right. In horror, I looked up at Langer again—right in the one place a slave was never supposed to look.
But he didn’t even blink. He just quirked an eyebrow and leaned in closer. “You might want to answer that, kid,” he whispered, his breath cold in my ear, “and let her know she shouldn’t dig too deep—or she might get exposed.”
The phone stopped buzzing, thank fuck, but it still took about fifteen more minutes and the housekeeper handing me a garbage bag—full of about fifty empty liquor bottles and a broken lamp thanks to Louisa’s mom—to give me my chance to finally look at it. And as soon as I had the bag, I hurled it into the garbage bin and ducked behind the bin, out of the way of the security camera I knew was situated on the eaves, frantic to see what Maeve had written.
But the first message wasn’t from Maeve.
Marie Curie
It’s the gardener, he has evidence
About us
Motherfucker.
She was goddamn right we had to figure out something to do: kill him. What else was there to do?
Okay. I took a deep breath. When I’d left the terrace mere minutes ago, Louisa had been by the pool, talking to some of her parents’ friends seemingly without a care. She was safe, for now.
But if he had evidence, that didn’t matter. He could throw it all in the middle of the goddamn dinner table if he wanted. Hell, he could nestle it lovingly in a bed of romaine lettuce right on Louisa’s dad’s plate. Or he could?—
Marie Curie
But I’ll take care of it
I dropped the phone on the lava rocks with a crunch. Not for the first time that night, horror crashed over me like a rogue wave.
She was wrong. The gardener didn’t want to expose us. He didn’t give a fuck. If he did, he would have done it already. But I knew exactly what he did want.
Oh, I got a mind to do a lot more than see.
And after he did that , he’d expose us anyway, just for shits and giggles.
Why, why, why had I ever let Louisa out of my sight?
I knew she cared. Too much. She’d proved it by risking her own neck for me, and to keep me out of the mines, I knew she’d do it again.
But I couldn’t let her. Because the price he’d ask wouldn’t be her neck. It would be a price too high for her to pay. For anyone to pay.
I knew because my mother had paid it.
And of all the fucking awful memories shoved into the far recesses of my brain, it was that I was reliving as I stood there, watching the phone as it buzzed angrily in the rocks. Another message was coming in.
This one was from Maeve. But the timestamp was hours ago, as if some tech glitch had prevented it from reaching me until now.
773541N0
You asked how long it would take Resi’s people to free us
Forget about Resi. Forget about her people. She’d said he’s here , and it was he I wanted to know about. I didn’t expect Maeve to reply right away, but I sent her a message anyway.
773496S6
I don’t care
I’m coming for you
But to my shock, she did reply.
773541N0
No, you don’t get it
We can’t stop now
773496S6
Why not?! Yes, you can
You have to
You literally told me today that Max Langer knows what you’re doing
773541N0
We can’t
Because we have to stop Max
And because we’re not just freeing me and the other girls anymore
“Boy, is that you in there?”
The housekeeper, pounding ever closer. “Stop dawdling, for heaven’s sake! Mr. Langer’s asking for another cocktail. I’m busy plating these entrees, and if it’s not poured in the next thirty seconds, it’s my head!”
It was only eight-thirty, but she sounded about ready to collapse, and I didn’t blame her. Yes, she was a serious thorn in my side tonight, but she was also carrying this entire goddamn party on her creaky, overburdened middle-aged shoulders, and I sure wasn’t pulling my weight to help. But that didn’t mean I wanted her to find out why.
As fast as I could, I murmured a voice message in Luxembourgish: “Not just freeing you? What are you talking about? Who are you freeing?!”
“Who on Earth are you talking to in here?” the housekeeper demanded as she flung open the door.
“Myself,” I blurted out. “Sometimes a guy just misses hearing his native tongue, you know?”
Her eyes narrowed, but I knew she was too softhearted to condemn a poor homesick boy. Mostly, I was hoping she didn’t notice how my head was swimming. Because Maeve had replied immediately, and before I slipped the phone back in my pocket, I had just enough time to read her answer to who are you freeing?
773541N0
Every slave on Earth
1 ? Hi.
2 ? Literally, “brother heart,” an endearment.