“This is outrageous!” he continued, his face turning purple as Manny whipped out the cuffs, which we both knew were for show. Not like I wouldn’t fuckingloveto see this asshole chained up as much asheloved chaining up slaves. “He hasn’t even paid for her. She’s stillmymerchandise, merchandise I paid good money for, and I refuse to be strong-armed by some jumped-up Eurotrash…”
“You want to say that again, maybe?”
The dealer’s words died in his throat as I stepped into his space. It seemed to spark in the slightly built dealer a realization that he was at the mercy of two larger, younger, fitter guys, one of whom had his hand resting on what was probably a gun. For good measure, I grabbed the lapel of the dealer’s crested jacket. Not gonna lie, it felt good, as manhandling these spineless, bullying sons of bitches always did. I tried not to revel too much in it, though. I’d seen where that led.
“I thought not. I’ll tell you what, Monsieur Flamm. We’ll let you off with a warning this time,” I said, feeling the weight of Manny’s gaze over my shoulder.I’ve got your back, man, as always. Just don’t fuck it up.“If you give me the girl. No charge. Consider it fair compensation for the distress and inconvenience you’ve caused me tonight.”
Flamm gaped at me, eyes bulging. “You can’t be serious! She’s worth?—”
“I’m dead serious. The girl stays here. You avoid federal charges,” I said, even though nobody deserved federal chargesmorethan this scumbag. “That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
The remaining color drained from Flamm’s too-tan face as he realized I wasn’t bluffing. His gaze darted over our shoulders, where he found only a handful of other guests sipping mint juleps and happily enjoying his squirming.
After another long moment, Flamm slumped where he stood, sweat rolling in waves off his forehead. “Fine,” he ground out between clenched teeth. The genteel mask had dropped to the ground, revealing him for the violent thug he really was. That theyallreally were. “Take the little bitch. She’s more trouble than she’s worth, anyway.”
The handler, fed up, shoved the whipped, chained, tearful, incredulous girl forward into her new life, her shoulders still shaking. But when I—after a satisfied down-low fist bump withManny—rested one rough, scarred hand comfortingly on her shoulder, she relaxed into it. And I allowed myself a small smile and a sigh.
But Flamm wasn’t finished. “Expect to hear from my attorney,” he said as he turned back to his vehicle, pausing to stare me down with a mix of hatred and bafflement. “This isn’t over, Mr.—well, whoever the fuck you really are.”
But I wasn’t entirely sure myself.
“Man, why do you keep doing this? You know we can’t free her,” Manny told me later that evening, unwinding over pints in a cool, dimly lit, wood-paneled pub in Arlington called O’Winsbury’s, highly frequented by the feds and the handful of slave consultants working with them. Since one of those former consultants now owned the establishment, it wasn’t hard to put in place an unspoken agreement that we were allowed to socialize normally as long as we remained discreet about our status in public.
A year ago, I would have laughed to imagine the very government responsible for having instituted slavery and keeping it running all these years might be willing to throw out their entire rulebook for someone like me—someone who’dbrokenthe rules more consistently and enthusiastically than just about anyone else I knew. But when it came to the government, I’d been surprised to discover, virtually every single page of that book was highly negotiable, as long as you were providing them with something they wanted. And in return, they’d provide you with somethingyouwanted. As a result, I had all the European streaming TV, takeout tacos, and moderately priced bourbon I could consume.
Of course, what Ireallywanted was something they couldn’t provide.
What I really wanted was not to be tortured every goddamn minute of every goddamn night, agonizing over everything I was missing.
Over whether anyone was standing there beside her in the place I wanted to be, justwatchingher—watching her smart, watch her be moral, watch her be brave. Not, for once, because she had to be but because shewas. And whether this same faceless replacement douchebag’s hand was currently lost in perpetual curls, manicured fingers claiming timeless curves my own rough ones had claimed first, whether some disembodied magic dick was plunging into her, causing her to joyfully vibrate as the amorphously repugnant asshole it was attached to taught her all the filthy and divine things I’d dreamed of teaching her, of teaching both of us, but had never had either the time or the permission to do it. Whether she’d found someone who could actually make her feelsafeto finally let go, to breathe, to open her eyes and say,hey, life and love don’t have to be twenty-four seven torture!Someone to make her feel as safe as she deserved to feel, the kind of safety I’d never, not once, been able to give her. And someone who could actually spendtimewith her in something other than secrecy and fear, and remind her of the bliss she could haveright nowinstead of yet another dose of endless, excruciating waiting for someone who’d have nothing to offer her even if by some miracle shedidwait.
Someone who’d given her permissionnotto wait. Because as much as I couldn’t, I couldn’t not.
But if I paused too long to think about everything I really wanted, I was certain I’d snap the blinds of my apartment shut and either collapse onto the sofa in grief or start kicking doors off their hinges with rage. And then my chances of ever getting any of it would go from slim to none.
On the bright side, the electronic ankle monitor they’d strapped on me—which gave me nearly a 100-mile radius, far enough to drive through the night most weekends in the disgustingly sensible but decently fast Ford sedan they’d given me, chasing the sunrise over the long bridge over Chesapeake Bay and walking for hours in the cold flume of the Delaware coast—was a hell of a lot more comfortable to walk in than shackles. And was concealed fairly well by a pair of jeans or one of the more practical suits I wore when I wasn’t playing Sébastien Pomerleau, suits my stipend had just barely enabled me to afford. And that I’d had to pick outmyself, not that I minded.
That aside, the best thing about the monitor was that it wasn’t a metal bracelet or a microchip.
Which was the only reason I hadn’t ripped it off.
Yet.
Besides, I’d been assured I wouldn’t be given either a chip or a bracelet, as long as I behaved myself. Which was getting harder and harder, especially as the monitor’s clunky dead weight constantly reminded me that I: A) was still a slave and B) that, providing Ididbehave myself, I had exactly two years, four months, and three days to go before I was free. And that there was no guarantee that anything, or anyone, would be waiting for me when I was.
IfI was. Because even though they’d promised it, I also had perfect faith in my ability to find ways to fuck it up. Hell, I’d already found some. And after the discovery I’d made on the Delaware corporate registry, I was about to find more.
It kept me awake at night, but even before that, I hadn’t been sleeping much. That’s why I spent my nights driving. At home, it was all thattimeto fill—no sinks full of dishes to wash or blazing-hot fields to hoe, no hours to be counted down until my body was too exhausted to fight sleep—and my dim, silent,sterile, empty apartment, and the nightmares, and the pain, even though the agency was sending me to physical therapy so my body could actually function in the field, and giving me effective meds so my brain could function, too.
I tried not to complain. I really did, even though there were so many better places I could be. But there were so many worse ones, too. In this job, I saw them all the time.
Manny tapped his pint glass against mine, a sharpclinksnapping me out of my thoughts. “You gonna answer me, or just sit there brooding into your beer all night?”
I smirked. “Idolove a good brood.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” He took a sip, watching me. “But seriously. This is what, the third one you’ve saved this year?”
“The fourth,” I corrected him.
