Page 20 of Never Bound

“If I don’t, no one will. I was hoping Erica Muller would help me come up with a plan to do it without getting myself or my sister killed.”

I wasn’t sure which was worse—the deeds he was accusing my father of, or that he was planning to run away forever in an attempt to stop them.

And all he could say was, “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He was right. Hehadwarned me. He’d warned me not to poke, not to prod, not to search, not to get involved. I’d done it anyway. Why? For a lark? To give my life meaning, to get a gold star in compassion? Or because I cared, and never in a million years had ever thought it would blow up in my face likethis?

“How could you think so little of me?” I demanded, not daring to look at him. “You’re literally standing here telling me my dad is a kidnapper and a rapist, or at least helping someone who is. And assuming I’m going todefendhim.”

“I don’t have to assume. Youaredefending him.”

“I’m defending him because he’s innocent!” I cried. “Daddy’s a lot of things, but he isnota rapist.”

For a second, his expression changed, and I knew he was taking in the information. “If Langer is doing what you say he is, I can guarantee you he’s lying to Daddy, too.” My voice teetered on the edge of breaking. “And if you’d only bothered to ask—if you’d only bothered to trust me, instead of going behind my back, I could havetoldyou that. Say what you will about what a complete fucking mess my family is, but nobody in it has ever donethatto a slave. Ever.”

His voice was cold. “Then you’re blind.”

“Howdareyou?” I screamed. “This is myfamily!”

“Yeah, I had a family, too, once,” he said. “Now one of them is dead, and the other is being held captive by a sicko because of people likeyourfamily. And you wonder why I have trust issues? You know, I never realized how easy it must be to forget your family owns slaves,” he continued, “when you have the privilege ofnot being one of them.”

“Oh yeah, ‘privilege.’ I’ve heard that before. What privilege? The ‘privilege’ of having the shittiest, most dysfunctional family of anyone I know? The kind where I spent my entire senior year counting down the days until I could get myself the fuck out of here and then being told I couldn’t go? The kind where I had to stop having friends over because I’m so fucking embarrassed by them?”

“Right, you’re just so embarrassed that you’re stuck in your ten-million-dollar mansion with slaves serving your every whim. Yeah, I feel just really fucking terrible for you. Will you listen to yourself?”

“That is so unfair.” I was crying now, for real. “You of all people should know that what I have—my status—whatever label society gives me—isnotwho I am.”

“Except in this world, it’s all the same in the end, yeah? Because what you forget is that not only do they have power over me, they have power overyou. They can take all this away from you in a second,” he said, waving to the room around us, the refuge in rose gold, where we’d spent so much time exploring and learning and sharing the wonder of our young bond, all going up in smoke now as if someone had taken a match to it. “And then where would you be without your designer clothes and pink furry pillows and brand-new computers and country clubs and pool parties and your overpriced college education that you’d be flunking out of if it weren’t for me, by the way? And meanwhile, you’re feeding me cheesecake and letting me sleep in your bed but only as long as I’m a good boy and do exactly as I’m told because if I don’t and you tell anyone, I’m off to a mine tomorrow. And you know it. Maybe you evenlikeit. Because deep down, you’re all the same.”

I just stood there with my mouth open like a fish. Neither one of us said it, but we both knew who he meant: the free women of his past. The ones who, with one false word, held the power of life and death over him.

I wasn’t controlling; wasn’t dominant; wasn’t cruel. But right now, I was full of the kind of anger and pain that could make even a rational girl do something irrational; something monstrous. The kind that could relate tothem.

“If you want to go?” I said through gritted teeth before a sob tore out of my throat. “Go. See how far you get once I tell Daddy.”

“Oh, I’ll get as far as I need to get, chip or no chip,” he said, stalking toward the door as my vision blurred.

This was happening. He was walking out. In seconds, he’d be gone.

Time. How had it come to this?

Fiercely, I turned my back to stare at the window to keep him from seeing the tears pouring down my face. I yelled over my shoulder, “Well, for your sake, you’d better because I’m telling him everything!”

I regretted it as soon as I’d said it, but it was too late.

“Then youareall the same.”

We went a day and a half without communicating, long enough for me to see my B-plus pop up in the university’s online portal. And when I came home, there was no one to tell—just my empty desk with the wicker chair still pulled up next to mine, the dusky afternoon light swirling around it weakly. I fell asleep on top of my chemistry book, tears running down the pages of the wordy volume I used to hate and that had now become the most cherished one on my shelf because it was the only one with spiky boyish handwriting in the margins and globe mallow petals pressed into the pages.

Really, I just wanted to press the intercom and start all over again. But I wouldn’t be asking for coffee this time.

I had threatened to punish him. But I should punishmyselffor thinking that someone so hurt and abused could ever learn to trust anyone, let alone the daughter of the man who owned him and had the power to destroy him. Even a man innocent of the accusation, as I knew my father was.

Still, in a way, he had been right. Ihadwanted to find a way to keep him with me—let’s face it, forever if I could. It was why I had threatened to call my father and why I stillwantedto, to the point of grabbing my phone every time I was seized by the grief and rage of him turning his back on me. It was an instinct that deep down I was afraid was horrid, that made me fear maybe Iwasthe same as all the rest.

But the fact was, I didn’t really want that. I didn’t want to own him, or command him, or violate him, or punish him. After all, having the rarest, most beautiful bird locked in a cage, no matter how much you petted and adored it, wasn’t like letting it fly. If it had to fly, youhadto let it fly. And let it be enough to know it was somewhere out there, wings spread, a tiny, glimmering flash against the massive sky.

The bird could still choose to stay, of course. But for that to happen, you had to accept that it had to be free to fly away, and the bird, that the cage door would always be open.

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