Page 8 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

HER

I screamed. I didn’t care who heard.

The bedposts were carved with women and griffins, the women’s hands held up in surrender as the griffins’ teeth sank into their flesh.

Over my head, an ornate gold mirror was mounted, in which was reflected a beautiful girl, hair tumbling down her back, head bent as if in prayer, eyes cast down. A perfect submissive posture.

This wasn’t part of the plan.

I jerked my left arm away from its cuff, then the right one, testing how tight it held, only succeeding in painfully scraping the inside of my wrist. The metal pinched something awful, a constant irritation that grated no matter which way I twisted.

I stopped. I lay back, gulping for air, panting from panic and exertion.

Breathe, dammit, said another, blessedly familiar voice. Don’t die before you’re killed.

But he wasn’t here, and neither was anyone else. It was just me, alone, fucking up as usual. I wasn’t sure I wanted him here to see that. He’d seen it.

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” I whispered to the hot, silent, stifling room.

Of course, if I were smart—if I were him —I’d come up with a new plan. But I wasn’t, and I couldn’t, so all I could do was cry, the injury of rivulets running down my cheeks. The insult of being unable to swipe them away. Helplessness and humiliation. A slave’s insult.

I’d seen the scars on his wrists, but I never fully understood them until now. I’d never understood a thing.

HIM

“What the fuck, bruh?” Felix exclaimed, prompting me to practically jump out of the driver’s seat, nearly lose my grip on the steering wheel, and narrowly miss crashing the Porsche head-on into a light pole. Well, so far so good. “Arlo says Langer isn’t even here?”

I looked over at Corey’s—the real Corey’s—doppelganger.

Felix didn’t look much like Corey—he was shorter, fairer-skinned, and lighter-haired—but he had the exact same supercilious sneer that privilege seemed to beget.

His colleague Arlo—taller, more flashily suited and accessorized, with dark brown skin and black hair—seemed slightly less odious, though since he’d arrived, he hadn’t taken his eyes and/or ears off his phone for more than a few seconds.

“Max sends his regards,” I said, once again shouting over the noise of the wind and the engine as I guided the Porsche away from the airport and onto the freeway, toward downtown, grateful to be putting distance between us and Langer’s headquarters.

“But he had this big meeting with a couple of legislators he helped get elected. After all,” I added in a conspiratorial tone, “how else are they going to know which laws need to be changed in our favor?”

Arlo and Felix just looked at each other blankly.

Nice going, dumbfuck.

They burst out laughing.

“This guy.” Arlo nodded, jabbing at me with his thumb.

I exhaled. Perverting the course of democracy, huh? I’d have to remember that topic the next time I ran out of quips.

However, Felix still didn’t look happy about Langer’s absence, and I noted it as yet another thing I’d have to keep an eye on.

In the meantime, I was dying to pry them for more, but I couldn’t.

And here, if anything, was the plan’s fatal flaw: How was I supposed to find out anything when the real Corey already knew everything?

Somehow, I helpfully reminded myself.

“So what did you guys have in mind for tonight?” I said. “You know, besides…” Doing unspeakable things to innocent girls?

The two visitors looked at each other again.

“I thought we were headed to your headquarters,” said Arlo. “It’s brand-new. I figured Langer would want to show it off.”

I shook my head vehemently. “Trust me, I spend all day there. There’s nothing worth seeing.” Except for a bunch of people who, nice as they were, would rat me out instantly.

“Well, if Langer isn’t even there, I guess it doesn’t matter much,” said Felix.

I sighed in relief.

“That’s not why we’re here anyway,” Felix added, looking at Arlo, who nodded.

“Oh, one hundred percent,” I agreed, noting that nothing they’d said so far had disabused me of my suspicions of what they had planned, which was great, since the other thing I’d been afraid of was that they would show up and actually want to talk about marketing.

“Anyway, I’m starving,” said Felix. “I had to rush out to the airport after a meeting and haven’t had a bite all day.”

“Don’t you want to check into your hotel?” I asked. I’d been hoping for at least a little downtime to research just what the fuck to do with these guys.

He looked at his colleague.

“Nah,” said Arlo. “We can leave the bags in your trunk, right, Corey? What do you think?”

What I thought was that I’d never eaten in a restaurant in my entire life, and I couldn’t think of a worse possible time to start. But what I said was, “Sure. Where?”

Felix gave me a funny look. “How should I know? It’s my first time in this town. You’re supposed to know all the hotspots.”

Fuuuuuck. Thank God I now had instant access to all the same information free people did.

If only I’d spent more time in the past week poring over restaurant listings instead of reading three different research papers about the new subatomic particles they’d discovered at the Large Hadron Collider.

And if only I weren’t driving, and if only one of my hands wasn’t mostly useless and radiating searing pain to every other part of my body.

I was already driving mostly one-handed, which in a manual was no small feat.

“Oh, yeah, no, sure, of course. There’s this fantastic place downtown,” I bullshitted. “You’ll love it. Best fish tacos I’ve ever had.”

“Fine, just as long as I can get them gluten-free,” Felix said boredly.

“Since when are you gluten-free, man?” asked Arlo. “Is it some kind of medical thing?”

“Nah,” Felix replied. “I just don’t like the way it bloats me. I won’t have any energy for the gym all week. But I say it’s a medical condition. It’s the only way you can get these idiot slaves at these places to get your order right.”

I groaned inwardly. I’d fully expected to end up praying for death at some point during this excursion, but I didn’t expect it to be quite this early. “Let me check if they’re open tonight.”

I fumbled in my pocket for my phone, one-handedly punched in “fish tacos,” “gluten-free” and—for good measure—“hotspot” into the search field and frantically clicked the first thing that popped up: the brand-new top-floor restaurant of a high-rise building downtown, not far from Langer’s condo.

I’d probably even passed it once or twice.

“Hey, bruh, is your hand okay?” asked Arlo curiously. “It looks like?—”

“It’s fine,” I cut him off, a little too quickly. “I just kind of busted it up, uh, lifting weights. Doctor says I just need to rest it.”

Arlo raised his eyebrows and turned to survey the view on the other side of the car. “If you say so.”

It took us another fifteen minutes to pull into the building’s circular drive, and only an additional ten seconds for me to realize that the guy in the vest standing in the circle with his hand outstretched wanted to park my car for me.

I glanced at Arlo and Felix, who made no sign that they’d noticed anything amiss. Yet.

At sunset, the rooftop restaurant was at both its most stunning and its most crowded, with hanging lanterns and low tables draped in gauzy curtains to cordon off lounge spaces for the chicest patrons. Who were no less chic than I was, thanks to Lemaya, though they were a hell of a lot more relaxed.

Who were decidedly not relaxed were the slaves, whom I spotted immediately in dark heavy-looking uniforms—as usual, running food, washing dishes, cleaning toilets, and doing whatever other unpleasant kitchen chores none of the paid staff wanted to do.

With a start, I realized that Felix—who’d been making bored observations about the desert scenery on the drive over—was now following my gaze suspiciously.

Shit. By noticing the slaves at all, I’d made my first mistake. To Corey and his ilk, slaves were beneath notice. Until they dared open their mouths, anyway.

The hostess—a free girl, as per usual for a front-facing role—approached.

“Table for three,” I said. “Your best table,” I corrected myself, eyes flitting to Felix, who—while Arlo tapped his phone—just stood there with his arms folded, waiting for me to fuck up again.

Yeah? I’ll fuck you up, asshole. It made me feel a little better, at least. Good enough to pull out my brand-new Italian leather wallet and hand the hostess a one-hundred-dollar bill, and I could almost feel the girl’s—and Felix’s—eyes widen. “Immediately.”

HER

Well, twenty minutes had come and gone. Ten times over.

There was only one high window, with nothing outside, but enough to know that the sun was gone. The room, the entire house, was silent.

The girls must be free by now. I had to believe they were, anyway. That this would be worth something. That my life would be worth something.

You’re not the princess here, princess, and Daddy’s not the king.

For Obadiah, this was Mecca. His old master’s daughter lay chained on the bed, at his mercy.

Payback, not only for himself, but for all the slaves.

For years of pain, humiliation, and cruelty.

And who’s to say I didn’t owe it to them?

If not for anything I’d done personally, then for all the wrong I’d seen and done nothing about; for being a daughter of privilege and plenty in a cruel, broken world built on their backs.

You didn’t have a choice, any more than I did.

Well. There was one, at least, who thought my soul unblemished. My boy had had every chance to condemn me, and had not. Had weighed me in the balance and found me unwanting.

You have your whole life to do good in the world. You’ve already started.

I made a promise, then and there. If I ever got out of this room, I would do nothing but good for the rest of my life. Wherever I found to do it, whether I owed it or not.