Page 20 of Under His Heel

“Yeah. Me and Nick. We ate out of the trash for a few weeks, until Nick figured out he could beg money off people. And sometimes we’d beat money out of people. Whatever worked. And we got good at both.”

They’d figured out to grab kids or old people who couldn’t fight back all that well. It had taken almost a year, but they managed to earn enough to rent a small room and keep themselves fed. Clothing they usually grabbed from the people they mugged.

“Interesting. And how long did you two do that?”

“Like two years, and then some local gang leader got mad at us for encroaching on her territory. We got lucky ‘cus she didn’t know there were two of us. So we skipped to another station, and...” Alex shrugged. “Started all over again.”

They’d been scared that they’d been followed, but it turned out nobody cared that much about two sixteen year old station brats.

Tracht hmm’ed. “Surely you didn’t continue in that vein the entire time.”

“No. Nick got good at sweet-talking people, and I got good at beating up anybody who had problems with getting scammed by Nick. Their own fault for being dumb enough to fall for Nick’s lies anyway.”

For some reason that made Tracht laugh. Alex pulled away and glared. “What?”

“Alex– your brother was scamming you the entire time too.”

“What? No. We were looking out for each other.”

Tracht patted Alex’s shoulder condescendingly. “Of course you were. And that’s why you had to take all the hits, why you ended up with the large debt, why you took on the bond. I did notice that your brother had a much handsomer face than yours. Clean nose and cheeks.” He traced Alex’s scar with a single finger.

“No. No. You’re wrong. You’re lying.” Alex shook his head. That was impossible. Yeah, he usually ended up hurt more, but Nick would help him afterwards. Usually. Mostly. Not so much with the tooth, that had gone badly all around, but...

Tracht’s hand on his shoulder dipped a bit lower, towards the burn marks. The burns Alex got stepping in to protect Nick from their mom’s cigarettes. That was what he did. He protected Nick. As long as Nick was okay, Alex would be okay too. Nick had been kind of weak as a kid, and had cried when there was danger, so Alex took it upon himself to keep him safe.

But Nick was pretty good at crying on command. He’d used it a lot on the strangers they’d mugged in the early days.

Alex shook his head. No. This was Tracht trying to get into his head. Nick had left Alex behind because there was no other choice for him. He’d said that.

“I like this look on you too,” Tracht murmured straight into his ear, and Alex didn’t resist when he got pulled into a kiss this time. Tracht’s tongue plunged into his mouth, exploring all over, while Alex just kept himself slack.

He hadn’t been manipulated all his life. That couldn’t be true.

Eventually Tracht pulled away, looking satisfied with himself. “Oh Alex. I almost feel bad for you.”

Not this pity shit again. Alex got enough of himself together to glare. “Fuck off. We can’t all be born rich like you.”

“We really all can’t. I would hardly expect anybody else to be lucky enough to have a sister who married into the Lysander Corporation’s CEO’s family. I might have been a regular merchant captain scrambling for contracts if not for that fortuitous connection.” Tracht extracted himself and stood up. “No, I feel bad that you were too dumb to see through your brother. But I find myself glad for it, because I am enjoying your body very much.”

He looked at his wrist watch. “And now I must definitely get to work. I’ve left the tablet on the table. If you can find a way to operate it without the use of your hands, feel free to enjoy the entertainment videos on it. I’ll pick you up in the afternoon to take you to the gym. As much as I enjoy keeping you here, I absolutely can’t have your muscles atrophying completely. They’re the only thing of value you have.”

Alex was still seething about that comment long after Tracht had left.

[Chapter 8]

If not for the cock cage, Alex would have tried to make the tablet work with his dick, just out of spite.

He tried to use his feet, but that required him to bend too awkwardly. In the end, he made it work through a combination of his elbows and nose.

The entertainment vids consisted of hardcore porn. None of them featured women, and Alex had no desire to watch some twink getting brutally gang banged. Plus watching porn while his hands were mittened and his cock was caged would have been cruel torture no matter what the subject matter. Fucking Tracht.

He almost kicked the tablet and the coffee table across the room, only he had a feeling Tracht wouldn’t like coming back to that.

The gym had actually sounded good. Alex liked working out, and there wasn’t anything wrong with that. It didn’t make him dumb.

If he ended up doing what Tracht said, was that the same as always doing what Nick said?

No. Nick was... Nick was family. Nick wasn’t like Tracht. Nick wouldn’t deliberately hurt Alex. The whole bond-servitude thing, that was Nick getting ahead of himself. It wasn’t on purpose.

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