15. Wallace #3
So at night, when Wallace would have otherwise been having steamy phone calls with his Daddy or wandered over to Prism to see his favorite person, he was instead hunched over his computer in his empty apartment.
He’d been overjoyed when, three nights later, one of the night managers, Kira Mickelson, broke into the maintenance room, packaged up the sexbot, and had it shipped to a residential address.
She’d set off several alerts doing it, but Wallace had quashed them all.
The address, he found out from a hastily hired private investigation team, belonged to someone named Evan Llwyd.
It took very minimal hunting after that to learn that Evan was the human who’d been brutalized by the Human Firsters in the “Quincy” a.k.a.
CNS trashbot trial that had been on the news a few months ago.
When all the pieces started to slot together, Wallace felt even worse.
He could reconstruct the chain now. Ben had asked Maxamillion to divert traffic that day in an attempt to save Quincy from a perilous abduction.
He’d hacked into the hospital records to check on Evan’s wellbeing after a vicious assault.
All of that was obvious once Wallace knew who the key players were. It must have been the reason that the department of transportation and the hospital had been so quick to drop their charges. Hell, Maxamillion was almost a hero, even if he’d gone about it by unorthodox means.
But why hadn’t Maxamillion told him?
Maybe because you were an asshole to him in every interaction? Wallace’s tired brain supplied.
God. If Max was alive, he wanted to talk to him. To apologize. To offer to pay for anything he needed.
But he knew that Ben’s salary was pretty ample. And there wasn’t any programming that Wallace could do that Ben the genius couldn’t do better.
What would he even say?
His phone rang, barely interrupting his self-recriminations.
“Hello?” he answered, feeling a little boost when he saw Daddy’s picture come up on his phone.
“Somebody’s in trouble,” Daddy told him in that sinfully teasing voice. “You were supposed to call me twenty minutes ago to say goodnight.”
“Sorry, Daddy. I lost track of time.”
“I don’t like you working so much.”
“Me either,” Wallace agreed. Though he’d hardly been working at all. He couldn’t, when all he could think about was Maxamillion. But he’d been using it as an excuse.
“Did you shower yet? Brush your teeth?”
He shook his head, then realized he needed to speak out loud. “No, Daddy.”
Going to bed was almost worse than sitting at the computer. With his laptop, he could actually do something useful. In his bed, he just tossed and turned all night.
“Does my naughty boy need a spanking?” Daddy growled.
“No, Daddy,” he made himself say.
Not because he didn’t want it—oh, what he wouldn’t give to have Daddy’s firm hands on his ass, making him lose himself in pain until only pleasure remained—but because he didn’t deserve it.
There was no forgiveness that Daddy or anyone else could grant him that would absolve him of what he’d done.
His only wish was to know that Kira’s stolen sexbot somehow held Max’s consciousness. It had to, right? Otherwise what would she be doing, bringing it to the same location that made all of the dots connect together?
“Then get in the shower, princess.” Daddy’s voice interrupted his spinning thoughts. “That was our agreement. So unless you’re calling red, I expect you to get a move on right now. And you’ll call me the minute that you’re done with your nightly routine.”
Wallace nearly cried at Daddy’s gruff care. He didn’t deserve this stern reminder of Daddy’s unwavering commitment to his health and wellbeing.
He didn’t deserve Daddy at all.
But he couldn’t bring himself to call red and end it all either. “Yes, Daddy,” he made himself say.
Then, because he needed something to cling to, he followed Daddy’s instructions to the letter.
When he got out of the shower, his phone was blinking. The second he saw that the message was from Parker, the lead on the private investigation team he’d hired to discreetly trail Ben, Evan, Quincy, and Kira, he swiped it open.
There was a short description and two photos. Evan and Quincy were visiting Ben’s apartment, with smiles on their faces and covered dishes of food in their hands.
That was good enough to prove all of his theories. The sexbot from the storage room had to be Maxamillion. There was no other reason for it to be in Evan and Quincy’s apartment.
Which meant that with Maxamillion off Orbit’s campus and free of any restrictions that might have been placed there, he would be able to recover.
The knowledge, well, android now, might need some rehabilitation and time to repair—which Wallace was absolutely going to fund if it seemed necessary—but he believed that this would work out.
He also had a text from Daddy, but he called back instead of replying. “Hi, Daddy,” he said, a little breathlessly.
“Hey, creampuff, feeling any better?”
Yes, but mostly because of the good news. “Yes, Daddy,” he answered sweetly.
Volt let out a sigh of relief. “Truly, baby? You’ve had me worried to bits. I was about ready to storm out of here and come after you.”
Wallace laughed. He wasn’t feeling all the way better, and he wouldn’t until he got more news about Maxamillion, but for now he had hope. “You don’t need to, Daddy.”
“Does that mean that I’ll see you bright and early on Saturday morning?”
“Yes, Daddy.” It was easier to promise now. He’d done everything that he could, and he would know as soon as any news emerged.
“Good boy. Though I think we’ll need to begin with a spanking. Just to make sure you understand what happens when you worry your Daddy.”
Wallace shivered in anticipation. “Okay, Daddy. I’m sorry I made you worry.” He truly was. It hadn’t been his intention, but he legally wasn’t allowed to share anything, and his guilt had been eating him alive.
Now that he knew that Max was where he belonged, he was feeling good enough to focus on Volt.
“I don’t like that your job stresses you out so much,” Daddy warned him.
Wallace sighed. “I don’t either. I’m thinking I might need a change.” He never would have said that a few months ago. He would barely have dared to think it.
Even when he dreaded going into work each morning, when he was drowning in anxiety and cringed at every interaction with his father and brother, he’d never permitted himself to consider stepping down.
Now he just… didn’t care.
He already had more money than he knew what to do with, and his shares of Orbit Industries would earn him money for the rest of his life, even if he never lifted another finger.
He liked programming—when he got to do it on his own time—but he hated management, and he was pretty shitty at the people parts of it.
Not to mention all of the assholes he had to work with on the board. All those other white men—because it was always white men—who’d voted to apply all six of those restrictions on Maxamillion at the same time, despite the danger.
The same men who had, year after year, decided that Orbit should have no political investment in spark rights, even when their company manufactured the majority of the robots that would one day become sparks, and their largest competitor, Axis Robotics, clearly wasn’t suffering from showing their support.
And he knew what his family would say about him dating a sexbot. Let alone a male sexbot.
It was fucked up, and Maxamillion’s situation had made it all so perfectly clear.
Why was Wallace still there anyway? Who was he trying to prove himself to? Who was he trying to protect?
It seemed like a no brainer to just… leave.
Or at least move to another role in the department and let somebody with more competence and less nepotism fill his shoes.
He didn’t really know what it would look like yet, and he wasn’t looking forward to the fallout. But he knew that something had to change.
“What if I stopped working at Orbit?” he asked out loud.
“Oh, I’m so proud of you, darling.” The excitement and yes, pride, came through in Daddy’s voice. “Please quit. Quit today. You deserve so much better, and I want to support you however I can.”
“Yeah, uh, thank you, Daddy.” He could feel himself flushing with excitement. With the thrill of Daddy’s unwavering support. With the delirious possibility of never having to interact with his family again. He could be free. “Any, uh, ideas about what I should do next?”
Volt laughed, filled with joy. “Hmmm… Theater manager? Art critic? Maybe uh… I’m not sure what the job is called, but the person who…
ah, you could be a literary agent or a publishing director?
The people who choose what books get published.
Although, I guess you’re rich enough to start your own publishing company, right?
Or your own theater? Though there’s advice on the web to take off a month or two after quitting a career path, if you can afford it, to think it through.
I’m in favor of anything that makes you happy, sweetheart. ”