Page 11 of Never Bound

“My dad liked the switch and the belt, but he really loved heat the most. The cigarette; the clothes iron; the stove. He was a true artist. A real Michelangelo of pain. You want to see the scars?”

“I’ll take your word for it. Thanks.”

“My mother and I were lucky to get out alive. Oh, and besides putting her in the ER on several occasions, he was fucking around on her constantly, and helovedshitting where he ate, so it was mostly with his own slaves. Finally, she took me back to her family in Germany. That required punishment, of course, so he made sure she got nothing in the divorce, which meant I spent my teen years in the slums of the most piece-of-shit industrial towns on the Rhine, while he remarried and spent winters in Baden-Baden with his new wife. Never got an invite. Meanwhile, my mom got a job supervising a team of cleaning slaves. At least they got free food and housing. She could barely survive on the wages she made.”

“Funny, I hear that a lot from people who have never been slaves.”

“I know. And I’m not saying you didn’t have it worse.”

“Oh,” I said, twisting the stem of the glass between my fingers. “Thanks, I guess?”

“Long story short, my mom died, my dad got sick, and I saved all the wages I made at my box factory job—the less said aboutthat,the better—for a ticket back. I wanted what was left of his estate. Better it actually go toward building something than paying for his third wife’s fifth facelift, so I took on the role of the loyal, grieving son to much critical acclaim. Of course what I really wanted to do was smother the asshole with a pillow, but I had to settle for seeing him waste away to nothing and lose control of his bodily functions. But it paid off when he changed his will and left everything to me. The house, the money, and the slaves. I freed them, including my half-sister whom I didn’t even knowwasmy sister. Now she works for me. I used the inheritance as capital to launch FableFlow. You know the rest.”

Langer met my eyes, trying to gauge my reaction. He was trying to form a rapport, clearly. I wasn’t sure why. Iwassure I had to prevent him from succeeding. So I said nothing.

“As you probably know, my dad sold and bought slaves. Tortured and/or worked to death several football teams’ worth of them. At some point, I decided that wasn’t going to be me. Since I took over his empire, it hasn’t been.”

“Cool story. You’re a true humanitarian. Really. Are we about done here?”

To my surprise, Langer just looked at me and took a long, satisfied sip. Not only did being called out not seem to bother this guy, it actually seemed to be something he got a weirdenjoymentout of. To me, who never called a free person out on anything without first deciding it was worth the grievous bodily harm it would earn me in return, it was a notion as strange as it was impossible to resist.

“Fast forward to this week, whenyou, under threat of a flogging, solved the number one problem of the most valuable company in my portfolio.”

I froze in mid-sip. “I did?”

“I got on a call last week with the board at Orbital Dynamics. They were stunned when I told them the where-the-holes-aren’t theory. They asked how I figured it out, and I told them I didn’t—the slave who served me my cocktail did. They just laughed. They thought I was joking. I haven’t checked the ticker, but their stock price is probably tripling right about now, along with my net worth, given I’m the majority shareholder. If there was any justice, you would be drinking champagne in a hot tub surrounded by bikinis full of perky tits and tight pussy, and instead, here you are toiling away covered in dirt.”

“At least I have my pride.”

Langer chuckled. “Yeah, I have that, too. Plus a ton of other shit.”

He drained his glass and lightly tossed it in a wheelbarrow full of clippings, and I did the same, after pouring out the two-thirds I hadn’t drunk. The last thing I needed was to get buzzed and let this dude start tricking me into thinking he was actually a decent human being.

He stopped and turned to me. “Let’s not mince words, kid,” he said. “Here’s what I’ve been able to find out about you: your owner’s psychopath son raped your mother, impregnated her, and let her die in agony. You gave him exactly what he deserved, and then you did three years in hell for the crime of having the balls to try to defend your family. And you would have died out there in the fields if you hadn’t impressed a chick with your looks and impressed a dude with your brains. In other words, an age-old story: the boy with nothing saves himself using the only tools he has. That’s my favorite story in the world because it’s my story, too.”

“How did you find out?” I asked. The file alone wouldn’t have told him all of that. Phoning Luxembourg, or even Germany, maybe. I shuddered to think of anyone from any of my past lives picking upthatcall.

“You aren’t the only one who knows how to do detective work.”

“What else do you know?”

“Assume everything. We’ll save time that way.”

“Great,” I muttered, slumping against a mesquite.

“Look, the powers that be don’t take kindly to a slave who thinks he should still be treated like a human being,” he went on. “And theyreallydespise the one who’s the smartest guy in the room. If you found the fucking cure for cancer tomorrow, they’d toss it in the incinerator, let millions of people die, and ship you off to dig coal, rather than admit that a slave did what none of them could do. Because admitting that would mean admitting they’re wrong. That their wholesystemis wrong. And then their goddamn pea brains would explode because of the cognitive dissonance of it all.”

Well, yes. Everyone knew it, but no one said it. Evenslavesdidn’t say it. I’d bet that abolitionist professor Louisa was so enamored with had never put it so plainly in one of her academic papers.

But just because Langer actually said it out loud didn’t mean he believed it. It just meant he had enough fuck-you money to get away with it.

“Oh,” he continued. “By the way, I have to hand it to you. Nailing your master’s daughter right under his nose. My profound respect.”

I’d begun to naively hope he’d forgotten what he’d discovered at the party the other night, or at least would pretend he had for my sake. Right now, though, I could only concentrate on not blushing as hard as I was terrified I was. “Look, it’s not—”

“Okay, fine, it’s not.” Langer just chuckled again. “That said, I have quite a few esoteric hobbies, but blackmail isn’t one of them. I don’t give a shit what you’renotdoing in her bedroom while you’re pretending to tutor her. That isn’t the point of this, so relax.”

“Whatisthe point, Max?” I bristled. “This has been just a great male bonding experience and everything. Very cathartic. But those pig holes, as you put it, don’t dig themselves.”

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