Page 32 of Never Broken

“And yes, I’m punishing her, too. She’s grounded for three days, except for school. She may be eighteen as she’s quick to point out, but it’s my house, my rules.”

Though my eyes were still trained on the floor, I knew he had risen from his chair, and I half expected him to grab me by my ear and toss me out the door. Instead, when I dared to raise my gaze, I saw a conical paper cup from the water cooler in front of my face. His hand was attached to it.

“Sir?” I asked, still suspicious.

He laughed. “It’s water, boy. You clearly need it.”

I took it and gulped. “Thank you, sir,” I said sincerely, or at least as sincere as I ever got with masters or anyone, really.

“I’ll order the gardener to wait for you at the garden shed in an hour. Best to get it over with, don’t you think?”

“Yes, sir.” I took that as an order to leave.

“By the way,” he continued.

I turned around.

“I want you to continue tutoring my daughter. For an hour every weekday, ideally. I’ll make sure the housekeeper knows this and gives you the time you need. If the improvement continues and she passes her exam at the end of this month, I’ll personally ensure that you’re rewarded.”

I paused suddenly, crushing the paper cup in my hand. To a slave, a reward was a matter of speaking—anything from a morsel of chocolate to better accommodations to relief from more backbreaking duties like gutter cleaning and floor scrubbing. In some rare cases, it could even mean freedom, but that was one thing, in the interests of surviving day to day, I tried to never let myself contemplate, and I didn’t intend to start now. In any case, I didn’t know Wainwright-Phillips well enough yet to know what a reward might mean in this case, and I didn’t dare ask. All I knew was that things had just gotten exponentially more complicated—like they weren’t already.

“Remember,” he said. “I’m putting my trust in you, boy. Don’t let me down.”

“Sir, I?—“

But he had already closed the door.

I knew the routine. The scars on my back testified to it. And while knowing the routine didn’t make it easier, it did make it less surprising. My first master’s old cook used to say there was a wild herb growing in the Grünewald that you could apply an hour before a whipping and you’d hardly feel a thing. I didn’t really believe it was real, but I’d never given up hoping.

“I knew we had a date coming,” said the hulking gardener, spittle gathering in the corners of his mostly tooth-free mouth as he pointed me behind the auxiliary shed, which I had gathered was the de facto punishment ground because it was as far away from the main house as it was possible to get without stepping in horse manure from the pasture next door.

“Youtold the master, didn’t you?”

The sick fuck just laughed, a sound that came out more like a pained, asthmatic wheeze.

I took that as a yes, but how?

The gardener provided no clues, just watched me strip off my T-shirt, and then, to my annoyance, used his oversized musclesto shove my face painfully against the pole, mashing wood splinters into my skin.

“Hey, dickhead, take it easy. I’m cooperating, yeah?” Like the son of a bitch actually cared. He roughly attached me to the thick wooden pole with a pair of rusty cuffs wrapped around it by a thick chain, my arms raised above my head at a weird angle he didn’t bother to adjust. The pole had been hosed down, though it still bore visible spatters of flesh and blood, plus a distinctive metallic smell that I would know anywhere. I wondered who had been the last one whipped here. Hopefully the gardener himself.

Where is Louisa?

What the fuck? Why wouldthatcross my mind? Miles from here, no doubt. I didn’t dare to think she even knew what was happening, let alone would give a damn about it. She probably had some three-Cosmopolitan lunch to go to, some country club outing, some shopping spree, some pleasant and innocuous activity that made sense in her world. She would never have to see a scene like this. Why would she want to?

Behind me, the gardener drew in an impressed breath as he surveyed the handiwork of previous owners and their punishers. “Your back isn’t nearly as pretty as your face, boy.”

“That’s what they tell me.” I hadn’t seen it, but Ihadseen the naked backs of plenty of other slaves, and I wasn’t so vain as to think mine was any different. At eight, I’d graduated from canes to whips—a real rite of passage since after all, whips break the skin while canes generally don’t. But my first master had been an amateur compared to the overseers at the farm, who used to attend fucking professional development seminars on how to make their punishments more brutal. I wasn’t kidding. I’d once actually found the agenda for one, complete with diagrams.

The gardener, meanwhile, was a slave, not a professional. So he wasn’t aware of best practices about whether to go for depth or breadth—aiming again and again for the same spot to deepenthe pain or spreading it out to cover more area. He’d be relying on primitive technique, so what he’d do was anyone’s guess. That would make it especially fun.

“Don’t worry,” the gardener said, running his thick paw down the whip sensually, like a Thoroughbred’s mane, “the master told me to take it easy on ya. So I’m only gonna do six lashes instead of seven.”

“But—“ I cursed the fact that I was already chained, which of course was what the bastard had been counting on.

The gardener laughed wheezily again. “Don’t worry, it’ll be our little secret. By the way, I hear you and Miss Loulou are about to have regular dates.”

Louisa’s name in this ugly motherfucker’s mouth made me want to rip my fist free and shatter every tooth the guy had left.

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