Page 45 of Heartless Prince

12

Elias

After the briefflight back home, I drove down to my father’s main business headquarters in Fairfield and breezed past the frantic blonde assistant stationed outside his office. I stalked in without knocking, my brows knitted in a mixture of anger and puzzlement.

The room was set up to look like an old-fashioned study: antique desk with small framed photos, paintings adorning the walls, stacked bookshelves and soft carpet along with a roaring hearth on one side. Only the executive chair and computer made it clear it was an office.

My father was sitting at his desk, sipping at a two-thousand dollar bottle of scotch and staring at something on his computer monitor.

“We need to talk,” I said, by way of announcing myself.

“Remind me to fire Brenda later,” he muttered, glancing up from his screen. “What is it?”

I crossed my arms. “I was at the Finishing School with Tatum earlier.”

He blinked. “And?”

“She started crying hysterically and saying she didn’t sign anything, and that she has no idea what’s going on. She said her parents sold her to the society and that you showed her the contracts to prove it. Is there any truth to that?” I asked.

Before Tatum’s arrival, I’d been pissed at the idea of having some sort of begrudging consent from the girl. But now, knowing that there was a possibility that I genuinely didn’t have her consent, I felt differently about the situation. Something about it felt all sorts of wrong, deep in my marrow. Even to someone like me.

The traumatized look on her face, the haunted expression in her eyes, the raw note of pain in her voice… I thought I would love it. I knew I would. And yet, when it was right there in front of me, I wound up hating it.

I wanted her to fight, I wanted her to detest me, I wanted her to struggle and feel pain. But I didn’t want some broken girl in front of me, weeping and falling apart at all times. Not to mention how much fucking trouble the society would be in if we were somehow found to be holding an unwilling subject.

The deal was meant to be: virgin girls sold themselves to our society as subservient sex slaves for varying lengths of time, depending on their personal preference and how much money they wanted. During that time, they would become our property. They couldn’t leave, couldn’t argue. Their rights would no longer exist, and they would be branded with our mark and endure strict lessons at the Finishing School, which was essentially a training facility for all kinds of sexual proclivities. The wilder the better.

Afterwards, while they were in our service at the Lodge—a high-class luxury playground owned by Crown and Dagger and designed to offer any carnal delights a man could dream of—their families would receive the payment for them. Because we didn’t want any watchdog organizations finding out about what we did (as it was technically illegal) the money had to be paid out very carefully, often funneled through family businesses over months to appear as income from that, or laundered in other ways.

Some girls signed two year contracts to earn just enough to pay for college, and others did five year stints, desperate to pay off their family’s entire mortgage or other such debts.

It worked out well for everyone. In return for giving their virginity to us and providing every possible sexual service that the second and third-level men of Crown and Dagger might crave, varying from light vanilla to dark as sin, they received more money than they could’ve possibly dreamed about in the past. It was a symbiotic relationship.

When their contracts finished they were finally free to go, after signing heavy non-disclosure agreements (their families also had to sign these, for obvious reasons).

Tatum’s contract was unorthodox in that there was actually no time limit on it. She would belong to Crown and Dagger until whichever master she was assigned to finally grew tired of her. It could be a year, it could be ten years. Or longer.

She’d been rewarded heavily for such a sacrifice, though. She and her family had a free house to live in for the rest of their lives, all their debts paid, and several hundred thousand dollars given to them upfront as spending money. It could’ve been a million, or possibly even more, but apparently Tatum hadn’t bothered negotiating when she went through the process with my father.

Ifshe even did that.

After this evening’s incident, I couldn’t be sure, and that was troubling, to say the least. Prostitution was already illegal, so if we were ever caught by the feds, we’d be in a lot of shit already… but if they found a girl with us who claimed to be an unwilling, abused hostage, we’d be fucked beyond repair. We might be the richest people in this country, but that didn’t mean we could kidnap a girl, keep her and hurt her without any consent. No, she needed to understand and sign that damn contract, whether we liked it or not.

Dad smiled at my pissed expression. For him, that was rare. “Oh, Elias. I didn’t think you’d fall for that so easily.”

My forehead creased with confusion. “Huh?”

He didn’t answer me right away. Instead, he stood and headed over to a filing cabinet on the other side of the office, humming as he went. He rifled through a drawer, then returned to his desk with a thin folder. “The original contracts are stored in my office at the Lodge, but I keep copies of them here,” he said, handing the folder to me. “Go on. Read it.”

I frowned and opened the folder, leafing through the paperwork. It was a contract, signed by Tatum in multiple places.

“Look at page three,” Dad said. “About halfway down the page.”

I did as he said, my brows immediately shooting up.

“See?” Dad went on. “I put that clause in. As part of the deal—and for an extra fifty grand for her family—she has to pretend to have no idea what’s going on at first and try to fight her new master on the issue whenever she can. I knew you weren’t too happy at the thought of having her consent, given that she gave herself to our group, so I thought it would be a nice touch.” He chuckled. “You’re just like me. You like it when they fight. Or am I wrong about that?”

He wasn’t wrong. I nodded slowly. “I see. I should’ve realized.”

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