Page 60 of Never Bound

“About anything!” I growled through my mental fog. “You don’t have to give me a bedroom. You don’t have to give me any of the shit you offered. I turned down the deal. Remember? I’m only here as a slave, so just fucking treat me like one. It’ll probably make both of our lives a lot easier.” The irony of trying to order someone to treat me like a slave wasn’t lost on me, but it didn’t matter at this point. My body was bone-tired, my brain fuzzy from the opioids, and both were firmly refusing to play any more of Langer’s bullshit mind games. Being ordered to scrub the floor might be a relief. At least menial chores never pretended to be anything other than what they were.

“Hey. Kid. Come inside, sit the fuck down—on the sofa, not the floor because apparently, we need to specify that now—and listen to me.”

I obeyed, and as zoned-out as I was, I couldn’t help but inhale a little as I stepped for the first time out of the alcove and into the massive two-story living room, which was mostly air, its floor-to-ceiling glass windows gazing imperiously down at the entire valley sprawled like a carpet in front of them, with those mountains, ever-unreachable, still winking on the horizon in a rosy haze. I collapsed onto the leather sofa, apathetically accepting that I wouldn’t be able to get out of it ever again. I wouldn’t look Langer in the eyes.

“When I told you I didn’t want or need a slave, I meant it, and nothing has happened in the past week to change my mind. Everything I offered still stands. I know you think I’m a lying, cheating, amoral scumbag, and you’re mostly right, but on this, I’m keeping my word. Are we clear?” he asked.

I nodded because what else could I do? If Langer was or wasn’t keeping his word, I’d find out soon enough.

After that, he showed me to my bedroom suite, which, besides featuring the same stunning floor-to-ceiling view, was of a size equaling spaces I’d only ever shared with ten other people. Through it all,Need to look for Maeve,kept running through my brain. But so far, all I’d been able to determine was that she wasn’t hidden in the shower, which was my next stop before I slept like a corpse in the bed for the next twelve hours, woke up with a start to face a flame-colored sunset hitting me in the face, took some more meds to quell the pain going off in my shoulder like an alarm, and, when I emerged from the bedroom, found a pile of packages deposited in the alcove. I got the suspicious feeling they were for me. In the kitchen, I found that Langer’s personal chef had arrived—the only personal chef in town, or probably the country, who wasn’t a slave—and was asking me what I wanted to eat.

“Uh.” I’d been too tired to even think about food for hours and hours, and I stared vacantly at the guy for a minute and a half before answering with the first thing that popped into my head, something I’d barely known about a few days ago. “Tacos?”

And that’s what I got.

A little later, Langer himself emerged from the bar area with a highball glass in his hand. “Well, that’s a little better, but you still look like a fucking bear attacked you,” he remarked, looking at me—still dazed, blinking, now well-fed but still wearing my torn-up and bloodied T-shirt and shorts—up and down. “I want you in the office at some point, and you can’t show up like that. I’ll send you shopping later, but for now, I took the liberty of having my personal shopper send over some stuff.”

“What? Like clothes?”

“What, would you rather it be a leash and collar? Yes, like clothes,” Langer said with an eye roll before making his way toward the door I assumed led to his study. Langer had a “personal” everything, it seemed, which allowed him to handle nothing himself while still orchestrating everything precisely. Oh, to be able to live like that. “In the meantime, I’ll be finishing up some work. But the girls are on their way.”

“The girls?”

He just smiled and disappeared.

Look around, a stupid voice in the back of my head told me. What the fuck was that going to accomplish? It wasn’t like I was going to find my sister tied up and gagged under Langer’s bed or something. Still, I managed to open up a few doors and poke around anyway. I’d need to know the layout of the place for the future, and it was something to do until I was lucid enough to figure out a more intelligent plan. Plus, I was curious.

It was also that curiosity that prompted me to cautiously approach the younger girl, who called herself Lemaya, in the kitchen as she cheerfully poured us drinks in the outdoor bar—bourbon for me (I’d never tried it before, but fuck, that stuff was good), champagne and raspberry liqueur for her. She explained that, for the time being, she worked for Langer’s research and development division.

Wait. Lemaya? I knew that name. Had Maeve mentioned it? Shit, I thought for the hundredth time, if only I still had her messages to refer to. Because my brain sure wasn’t any help right now.

“But I’m going to school to become a vet tech,” she was saying meanwhile. “For now, I’m helping Resi out with her research. They gave me a place to live and pay all my expenses, and once that pays off, the company is going to pay all my tuition, everything.”

“Oh yeah? What research? Drinking champagne in a rooftop penthouse?” I asked, trying to put her at ease with a smile. Thank God even on the meds, I could still do that. “If only that could be in all our job descriptions.”

She melted a little, giggling, and slapped me flirtatiously on the arm. “Well, it’s a perk, no doubt. She invites some of us here sometimes to hang out, and of course, for such a rich guy, Max is pretty chill. I like his vibes.” She shrugged as if to ask,any more questions?

Yes, one. “Resi?” Another name I’d been hoping to hear.

“She’s Max’s head of R and D,” she said. “We’re helping disrupt slavery. They need my help because—” She caught her tongue as if she were afraid she’d told me too much.

Good. That meant there was something to tell. And that sheknewthere was something to tell.

And all at once I knew who she was: the slave girl who had been teaching Maeve English. The one who had suddenly disappeared.

I looked her up and down as she swallowed, raising her chin a little defiantly as if daring me to say something. There were always signs for those of us who knew what to look for: scarring, lack of eye contact, referring to people as “sir” who clearly didn’t deserve it. She had the scars, at least. Of course, she hadn’t done any of the rest, but maybe she’d been told not to. Maybe she’d been living like a free person for a while. Maybe she was like Maeve and her owners didn’t want her but hadn’t freed her, and that was why Max was using her for the chip experiments. But if so, what was she doinghere?Max clearly wasn’t doing any research in this penthouse tonight, other than maybe an experimental bikini probe.

Before I could decide whether to risk blowing my cover and asking her more, the door to Langer’s study opened, and Lemaya’s hair whipped around dramatically as she returned to the hot tub with her drink, as if she were passing the torch to him.

I just stood near the bar, which was silent but for the ice popping in my glass. Fuck the pills. Without them, I could have figured out a way to ask her about Maeve without getting either of us in trouble. But maybe I could ask the blonde when the time was right.

“Your sister isn’t here,” said Langer.

I wished I were as good at sneaking up on people as this guy was. I turned. He was dressed for the hot tub, with a towel over his arm. Rapidly, I looked back toward where Lemaya had disappeared, sorry she hadn’t stuck around long enough to let me see the expression on her face when Max mentioned Maeve.

“What?”

“She isn’t here,” he repeated. “With Resi, I mean. I showed Resi her picture after you told me about her.”

---