Page 64 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

It was rare to get a message like this from him.

Our regular Sunday calls were chatty but not particularly enlightening: the weather, his golf game, the dismal state of the real estate market, and whatever business tome or espionage thriller he’d just read.

I still wasn’t great at feigning interest in any of it, but still, I treasured these calls, having never expected to be in a good enough place with my father to even have them.

He knew and approved of my job at Café Jennet and had only commented, when I’d confessed to volunteering at the slave clinic, that it would be “tremendously valuable career experience.”

Idly, I wondered whether the message meant the house had finally sold, sending a little jolt of anxiety through me. I felt unmoored already at the thought of losing my home of ten years. Then again, I’d recently reevaluated my concept of “home” quite a bit.

If it weren’t so busy right now, I might have just called. But a familiar grumbling emanated from the customers bunched near the pickup counter, so I just tapped out a quick reply?—

K love you

—and dropped the phone back in my apron pocket. Turning to the next order, I grabbed a cup. Focus. Only three hours to go. Then:

“His Highness happens to be a total thirst trap, in case you’re curious.”

I rolled my eyes. “Are we seriously still talking about this dude?”

“Tall, expensive clothes, regal presence, looks like he’s packing some serious heat.”

“What, a gun?”

“Yeah, maybe that, too.” Malin poked her tongue out lasciviously.

“Look, Malin, I’m so happy for you that you’re finally experiencing life with its rich tapestry of dicks, but I have to actually finish making this drink, pass this class, and avoid being shipped back home in disgrace.

Wherever home may be by then,” I added warily, sliding the drink I had been working on across the counter.

Instead of grabbing it, Malin leaned in closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Wait. I haven’t told you about his accent yet.”

I cocked my head. “What kind of accent?”

Malin tapped a finger against her chin. “Imagine if a Frenchman and a German woman moved to California and had a baby. And that baby swallowed a frog.”

I laughed. “All right. So maybe this guy is a wandering princeling.” I snapped the portafilter into place carefully.

“Or maybe—hear me out—he’s just some Eurotrash nepo baby who thinks he’s saving humanity by paying an extra dollar for a latte that wasn’t made by a slave.

” But for some reason—even as I spoke—I risked another peek around the side of the machine.

And, once again, saw nothing unusual, just some wannabe radical with a lip piercing tapping on a ridiculously expensive phone and a business-suited woman as thin as her penciled-in eyebrows, who eyed the slaves in front of her resentfully, apparently not keen that here, everyone was entitled to use the same line.

I shook my head, scolding myself. What, precisely, was I expecting to see? This was just another one of Malin’s sex-crazed delusions. Taking a deep breath, I squared my shoulders as I glanced at the next order, reaching for an oversized handmade cappuccino cup from the shelf.

“And then of course there’s his name.”

For the third time, her voice cut through my concentration. Ignore it.

“It’s awfully unusual. Exotic, even.”

“Mmhmm.” I barely looked up, hands moving on autopilot as I measured out the ingredients.

“Shy,” Malin said, drawing out the vowel sound. “Isn’t that interesting?”

I furrowed my brow. “Shy? I thought you said he was confident.”

Malin giggled. “No, that’s his name. S-H-A ?—”

I never even heard the I. The cup slipped from my grasp, hit the counter, and shattered into a zillion pieces. Hot liquid splattered everywhere, dripping down the counter and scalding my arms and hands, probably, even though I didn’t feel a goddamn thing.

Malin froze, understandably stunned by the sight of me standing helpless, arms raised halfway, eyes fixed unseeingly on the scene. “What happened? Are you okay?”

Stupid, stupid, STUPID fucking girl. Like there aren’t thousands of them out there. Millions. Well, maybe not millions, but you can’t possibly be stupid enough to think that ? —

“Honey, you’re shaking,” said Basia as she, Rebekah, and Laken dashed out of the back office, startled by the noise. Basia drew her arms around me tightly. “Malin, grab a towel, honey.”

Malin blinked and nodded, ducking under the counter.

Rebekah turned on the faucet at the same second Malin reappeared with a clean rag.

“And you’re scalded,” Basia exclaimed, grabbing my arm and holding it under the running water. “We need to get?—”

“It’s fine,” I cut her off. “I’m fine. I’m sorry, Basia.

I’m so sorry. I’ll clean this up, I promise.

I’ll—I’ll—I’ll—” But I was stuck, stammering, trembling, helpless.

All I could do was take it in: the smithereens of earthenware, the exploded cappuccino, the foamy mess trailing down the machine and the floor.

And the blurry reflection in the refrigerator, a splash of molten gold across gunmetal gray.

“Oh, shit. Lou. I’m sorry! Are you okay?”

The heads of all five people behind the counter spun around instantly.

And there, of course, was Malin’s prince.

The prince I had last seen in a rough gray slave uniform, standing amid the chains he had shed.

And who had now exchanged those for a luxe wool peacoat, a cashmere scarf, and chunky gold rings on his scarred hands, which he was currently running through his snow-dusted golden hair in chagrin as he leaned far, far over to rest his elbows on the glass bakery case.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that,” Shai said to Basia. “I’ll pay for it, don’t worry.”

But Basia didn’t move, and neither did Rebekah or Laken or Malin, and neither did I, though the tap was still running, raining water down on my scalded arm.

I couldn’t. Nothing about what was happening right now made sense, unless I’d either fallen into a time warp where three years had gone by already, or there was a phalanx of armed federal agents outside ready to smash in the windows.

“I really fucked this up, yeah?” Shai said with a sheepish little laugh. “You look so scared , Lou. I promise, it’s okay. You’re okay. It’s just me. Come.” He beckoned me forward.

But I didn’t move, so to set me in motion, my boss lightly swatted me on the bottom, which she could get away with because she was Basia and she once let a slave girl give birth in her freezer and then hid the baby.

Well. I couldn’t feel my body as I floated incorporeally over to the bakery case, my eyes fixed on the hands and the wrists underneath those rich wool sleeves with their brass buttons.

“He is a prince, right?” I vaguely heard Malin remarking to no one in particular. “Definitely a prince. I totally called it.”

“Lou. Listen.” As I stared, those same hands traced nervous star shapes on the glass case, and—though they were just inches away from my own—went no farther.

“I did rehearse an elaborate speech, I promise, but I forgot it all a second ago, so here’s the gist of it: your dad patented the microchip formula on my behalf. With Erica’s help.”

When I didn’t move or respond, he took a deep breath and forged ahead.

“They found some decent engineers, developed a prototype, and pitched it to some venture capitalists who only invest in paid-labor startups. Behind my back, of course, but he was banned from contacting me, so I can’t be too angry about it, and now we’ve got seed funding in the high seven figures and we?—”

“Wait.” I’d only heard about half of what he’d said and understood even less. “We?”

“Well, yeah.” He blinked. “I own fifty-one percent of the company.”

“But—” I shook my head. This wasn’t helping, and none of it would unless he explained just how in the fucking hell he was here .

“Just let me finish, yeah?” He was half-smiling. A good sign, and also, confirmation that nobody in tactical gear was about to bust down the door.

Okay. Breathe.

“When the field director called me into his office last week, Manny—Agent Wheatley, that is—was a wreck because he thought they’d caught me trying to break the rules. I was, too. But we were wrong. They never caught me,” he said, and the first twinges of a smile pulled at my lips, too.

“Anyway, the director told me your dad had convinced the VCs that it would be bad optics to have a de facto slave as founder and chairman, so they agreed to let him use part of the seed funding to buy out the rest of my contract with the feds. So I just flew in from Phoenix, where I hired Maeve as our first employee, convened our first corporate board meeting, and appointed your dad CEO to handle the day-to-day, in consultation with me.”

Still half-smiling, he paused to take a deep breath and blow some hair out of his face. “And as for the board, Erica was the first member appointed, so needless to say, we won’t be getting away with anything .”

If I’d been shaking before, I was vibrating now. Now it was becoming clear. “You’re?—”

“That’s right.” He swallowed. Nodded. “The F-word. The good one.”

“Foamy espresso?” But I was already laughing, watching his slow smile spread, and then he was laughing, and it was done. My tears were flowing already, replacing the shock. “One hundred percent?”

“One hundred percent. Forever. Rest of my life.”

My heart pounded in my ears with a rhythm I knew already—from my dreams. Because this was a dream.

I’d dreamed it a hundred times, in different settings, different circumstances, different words, but always spent the entire next day in that strange liminal space between the dream’s perfect happiness and the sadness that it wasn’t real.

But in none of them had it ever actually gotten far enough to?—

“Can I kiss you?” I blurted out. “Here? Without anybody being beaten, electrocuted, or thrown in a cage?”

He laughed. “Even if you couldn’t, would it stop you?”