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“Is the girl situated?” Glancing up from his phone, Anthony caught the flush in Marcus' cheeks. It was either arousal or simple exertion — he’d always had trouble telling the two apart — but it didn't matter. He didn’t care what his brother was feeling or not feeling.

“Yeah, she's in there.”

“Secured?” he asked, and Marcus shoved his hand through his hair, gripping it at the back where it was just long enough to do so. The silence between them lingered. “Was that a complicated question?”

“Fuck off,” Marcus snapped, stomping away from the bedroom, and Anthony sighed. Short-tempered and shortsighted, his little brother clearly needed to be coddled again.

His least favorite activity.

Following at a leisurely pace, he finished his email reply and then tucked the phone away in his pocket. Marcus was already pouring a glass of whiskey when he found him in the office.

So weak. So pathetic.

But… he had his uses.

“Was there an issue acquiring her that I should be aware of?” Anthony waited as Marcus knocked back the whiskey and poured another.

“Of course not, I knew where to get her. It was simple.”

“Then would you care to answer my question?” Anthony sighed when Marcus muttered obscenities under his breath. “If you need me to secure her because you did not, tell me now so I can go handle it.”

“She's tied down, collar on, but I’m telling you my method is better. If you’d just fucking let me, I could make her like it.” Another grumbled curse as Marcus licked the whiskey from his bottom lip, an irritated sigh escaping. “You won't even have a chance to talk to her when she wakes up terrified. She'll just start screaming.”

“Oh, I know she will.” A smile tugged at the edge of his lips, and he couldn't ignore the buzz in his blood that the idea inspired. The only highs in his life came from those screams and the crying and the begging that would follow.

Everything in-between those brief moments of suffering was just so much... white noise.

“How can you expect to train her when she won't even listen to you?”

“They always listen to pain, Marcus.” Tilting his head, he met his brother's eyes. “Eventually.”

“Pleasure works faster.”

“And did you pleasure this new one?” The mockery in his tone was unavoidable.

Marcus' greatest weakness was his lust. Lust for physical intimacy, lust for gaining positive responses from the slaves, and mostly his lust to finally come out on top and be better than him at something.

Unlikely.

Anthony had been taking and training slaves for years, and bringing in his brother had simply been good business. The man had an eye for natural submissives, which made the process somewhat easier. He was loyal, and he was an excellent delivery boy. But it would be better for business if Marcus would stop thinking with his prick and viewing the slaves as anything other than commodities.

There was an odd look on his brother's face as they watched each other, some mixture of irritation with him and hunger for the girl. Not like it fazed him either way. But it promised an argument that Anthony did not want to entertain.

After all, the girl could wake up at any moment and he wanted to watch her panic. To listen to those first desperate sounds, her first screams.

“You know you're not supposed to fuck them when you take them.” Anthony pressed his buttons, and Marcus slammed his glass down as if on cue.

“I didn't fuck her! I caught her, drugged her, and brought her here.” Thrusting his hand in the vague direction of the bedroom, he continued, “And then I secured her for you.”

“Good. Then you can get back to whatever you had planned.” Anthony pulled out his phone again, wanting the cameras on in time for the wake up.

The customers liked the first screams too.

“We just sold the last one, Anthony, we could have waited another week.” He shook his head, swallowing another mouthful of alcohol as if it could make him not feel whatever odd emotions he harbored.

Fortunately, Anthony had never had to deal with trivial things like guilt or pity. They had simply never been a part of him, and why should they be?

Emotions were distractions.

Flaws.

Especially when there were so many things he could do to their new product. So many ways to make her scream, to break her down. Options unrolled in front of him like a luxurious, blood red carpet, diverting his attention from Marcus' clear disquiet.

He needed to end this discussion so he could be there when she awoke and her confusion slowly turned to fear.

It would be exquisite.

“I'm still trying to get the house set up, we didn't need to grab Beth yet.” Marcus' fingers twitched against the edge of the glass, an old tell that telegraphed his needs even better than the wobble of his voice when he spoke her name.

Pathetic.

Ignoring his sibling’s inconstant emotions, Anthony flicked on the cameras from his control panel and watched as the feminine shape appeared against the darker sheets.

Marcus kept talking as if he hadn’t heard him. “Her name is Beth. Elizabeth Doherty.”

“Do you have any useful information that I didn't already find in my research?” He tapped away on his phone, sending out the alerts that a new event was live. "Anything relevant, or are you stalling so you can continue to chug my Van Winkle’s Reserve 20-year bourbon like an animal?"

Marcus sighed heavily. “She's strong willed, fought the drugs longer than I expected. Everything else you already know.”

Anthony made a sound at the back of his throat, but otherwise didn't acknowledge the unintentional compliment. Flipping back to the camera screen he saw her stretched out and vulnerable against the bedding. Already so much different from her smiling driver's license photo. In time he would erase that person completely. “You can go now,” Anthony dismissed him as he turned out of the office to walk towards the bedroom.

“Why don't you let me have her first? I can get her to understand her situation. Accept it.” The grating sound of Marcus' voice followed him as he watched the girl twitch in her sleep.

She would wake up soon.

“Don't you have a house to set up? Another girl to track? It was your idea to start running two operations.” And at least then Marcus' whining would be a state away.

“I thought I should be here to—”

“Your assistance is unnecessary.” Pulling his eyes from the screen, he saw the tension in his brother's jaw, a muscle ticking as he avoided eye contact. “What is it, Marcus? Do you think I'm going to hurt her?”

As soon as he smiled, Marcus growled and flipped him off, turning back towards the front of the house. “I know exactly what you're going to do.”