Page 104 of Never Lost

“Nice catch,” I muttered, watching Keith accept the papers and sign.

So that was it, then. I had my answer. I was going back. To be sold, almost certainly. Keith desperately needed the money, after all. Maybe not to a mine—he didn’t seem to hate methatmuch anymore. After all, he could have just left me to rot. But somewhere quiet and out of the way. An office? Maybe somewhere I could still do science, if I kept on being lucky and good. In other words, back to business as usual. Before my mission to find Maeve. Before?—

“Stop,” Louisa said.

Keith did, pen poised melodramatically in the air.

“I want an answer now, Daddy.Hewants an answer.” She met my eyes. “So give it to him. What happens after this?”

“I—” Keith sputtered as if he hadn’t known this was coming.

“You already lost Ethan, Daddy,” she said softly. “Don’t lose me. And you will if you don’t do the right thing.”

Keith took a huge breath, and the pen dropped out of his hand. “If things were different—” he began.

“If things were different, what?” Louisa prompted, not unkindly. “What would you tell him, Daddy?”

A long pause.

And then, to my utter disbelief, he answered.

“I’d—I’d look him in the eye and tell him to stand up,” he said.

We all gaped. And Keith was gasping, perspiring, like he was struggling to breathe. A religious epiphany could do that to someone, I’d heard. And if I were being honest, the moment was doing something similar to me.

“I’d tell them to take those chains off him once and for all. And—and I’d tell him that he never has to bow his head to anyone, ever again.”

The room went silent.

Even the handler looked stunned.

“Do it,” Wheatley commanded Tarrant.

Tarrant hesitated. But with me no longer in his custody, he had no choice.

Dazed, I held out my hands—for the last time?—as he went to work on no fewer than three different padlocks. One by one, they clattered to the cold concrete.

I rose from my knees, my joints screaming after being frozen like that for an hour.

And then, before I had time to process it, Louisa crossed the floor in a stride.

I watched as Keith shakily capped the pen and closed his eyes, like the scene before him was physically painful to watch. And for him, it probably was—Louisa’s silky hand gently entwined with mine, her curves yielding to a body encased in the plain gray clothing of servitude. And then, as if things weren’t bad enough for Keith, I kissed his only daughter, and it wasnota chaste kiss. After all this time? Oh, fuck, no. I gave her my open mouth with two weeks—make that twenty years—of deep, insatiable, pent-up need, and she returned it like the starving warrior she was.

“It’s okay, don’t mind us,” Wheatley remarked, arms folded.

“So then—” Louisa prompted, flushed and out of breath, her grip still firm and solid in mine, waiting for her father to regain his voice and sanity.

“I can’t afford it,” said Keith. “I’m sorry.”

I felt my body crumple along with hers, our shared swoop of hope crushed like a snowdrop under a truck tire.

Keith swallowed again, looking stricken. “Loulou, the debts haven’t gone anywhere. The legal costs from the White Cedar investigation only piled onto them. His sale price was considerable, as you know, and there are administrative fees on top of that. I can’t just make the money appear. Quite honestly, I can’t afford to keep him now and still keep the house, too. I—I’m going to have to sell him.”

Yup, there it was.

“The bracelet needs to be replaced within thirty days,” said Tarrant, who seemed weirdly gleeful now that things were no longer deviating from the routine. “And you’ll need to make an appointment at the regional slavery bureau to have him re-chipped. We don’t handle that here.”

In my arms, I felt Louisa’s shoulders start to rack. I just squeezed her, as weak asIfelt. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, I thought, all while mentally beating the fuck out of myself for ever daring to hope itwouldn’t.