Page 25 of Never Broken

He shook his head in bemusement. “I have no idea what that means.”

“So, Albert Einstein, thereissomething you don’t know. It means it’s expensive.”

His eyes flicked back mischievously. “Maybe you should charge me by the hour.”

I grabbed a pillow from the floor and threw it at him, prompting his laughter. “Half an hour is all you’re getting. And you couldn’t even afford that.”

I sat back down. I’d let him settle down without me looking. No one enjoyed being stared at going to sleep, after all. Instead, I opened some dumb email from a clothing retailer promoting white skinny jeans and reread it ten times, and when I looked back some time later, his eyes were closed, his long, light lashes casting shadows on his milky skin, his lips slightly parted. Hecould have been pretending, but I didn’t think so. His breathing was even. Peaceful.

And it only made me that much more curious. As silently as I could, I wheeled my desk chair closer.

A shaft of afternoon sunlight from my open window seemed to bless him uniquely, playing with his golden hair. It was the same light that made his metal bracelet shine, held as it was slightly over his head, out of the covers. The one bearing his number, the one that thanks to Erica Muller, I knew would have been assigned to him at birth and was the closest thing he had ever had to an official name.

Stalkerwas the word going through my head as, my heart rate picking up, I returned to my desk and quickly pulled up the website for the international slave registration database. I hesitated for a second before rapidly typing in the number from his bracelet and hitting “return.” I closed my eyes and held my breath as the page loaded. Although I’d long known the site existed, I’d never been even remotely curious enough about a slave to look one up. But right now, my very fingers were buzzing with anticipation about what I might find.

And all of a sudden, there he was: 773496S6.My77349S6: nineteen, male, blond, literate, right-handed, and born into slavery in Luxembourg City.

The front photo was older, since he looked noticeably younger, though every inch as stunningly gorgeous—more so in the photo’s stark relief, which highlighted his high cheekbones and exquisite jawline. God, this boy could be a fucking aristocrat if he hadn’t been a slave. Hell, maybe he was—European nobility had fallen victim to the hard times, same as everybody else. His ancestor might well have been one of them. Bolstering that theory was his expression, which, at least in this photo, was one of boredom and superiority, as if he’d had infinitely better things to do that day. And below the headshots were?—

Shit.His abs. I lowered my laptop screen, stealthily glancing behind me. But he didn’t stir.

Still, I thought it safer to click away—for now. But I sure had a date with them later.

However, I even forgot all aboutthatwhen I saw the photo of his back. Just a puckered roadmap of destruction and pain—three years in the fields had left barely an inch left untouched by the whip. Feeling ill, I clicked away fromthatphoto, too, not daring to glance again at the peaceful, angelic figure sleeping behind me. I was starting to regret logging on, though I couldn’t stop now.

Three former owners. First, a private home in Luxembourg, where he’d lived until he was twelve. After that, I couldn’t make much sense of things. It said “remanded to the government,” then something about an auction. Then he’d been leased to something called Biofields SA and sent to Romania—the factory farm.

I couldn’t forget that photo of his back. According to Erica Muller, farms that used slaves were barely a step up from the mines. If he’d spent three years at one of them and survived, he was stronger than I could possibly imagine—and not just physically.

But now I wasangry. And as weird as it seemed, ashamed of my own kind. How the hell could a family who had owned and raised him since birth sell him to a place like that? Didn’t they have any affection toward him at all? He’d been achild. Surely my parents would never dream of being that cruel toward?—

But they had. At least, my grandparents had. They’d sold off the housekeeper’s children right before my older brother was born—becausehe was born. And I’d never paused for even a second to think about how the woman must have grieved.

The same way my own parents must have grieved when Ethan disappeared.

Ethan. Scottsdale’s favorite golden retriever. Tattooed, chestnut-curled, golf-betting, guitar-riffing party boy. A complete and total fuckup in the best possible way—or, when it came to my father, the worst. As hard as Daddy rode him to achieve, he couldn’t solve Ethan’s dyslexia or ADHD, and it was no surprise when he went the opposite way, turning to drugs and ultimately doing two stints in rehab in the most expensive facility in the union. Both times, he’d relapsed and after a few months, disappeared. The first time, he came back. The second time, he didn’t.

We last heard from him two Decembers ago, when he’d called to ask for money. My father had refused, of course, while my mother cried silently into her triple appletini. He was now off the grid, off the radar, out of our lives unless and until he came back clean.

And that was why my father had given up and let our fortune slip away, and why my mother drank—because losing a family member felt like a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body every second of the day.

I knew because I’d felt it, too.

And so the housekeeper must have, times two. All while getting up at five every morning to cook breakfast, clean up after me and my brother’s stupid messes, and attend to our petty cares.

They aren’t like us,my father had reassured me once, when he’d sold my favorite slave, a playful teenage nanny who for a year or so had taken over caring for Ethan and me while the housekeeper attended culinary training. I’d called her Cupcake because she was always hiding them around the house for us, and even though Daddy subscribed to the theory that slaves shouldn’t have names, even demeaning ones, he hadn’t objected.

Then she was gone.They get over it.

How?

And what about thekids? Slave children were legally treated the same as adults in almost every way, I’d also been shocked to learn in class. If the slave boy—myslave boy—had been sold to the farm at thirteen, if Erica Muller could be believed, he would have worked twelve-hour days, been fed barely more than gruel and water, and given zero medical attention. And shackles, chains, beatings, and floggings to keep him in line—and worse punishments, ones that required a trigger warning in class. Having heard the remarks that came out of his mouth, I knew he would not have been spared them. Overseers weren’t as easily charmed as farmers’ wives.

At fifteen, blessedly—or not-so-blessedly, to hear him tell it—he’d been sold to Professor von Esch in Heidelberg. I knew the story after that, more or less. My father’s name was at the end of the list of owners, but he hadn’t gotten around to adding much to the file.

I scrolled down to theKnown Familysection, heart rate picking up.

He had one living family member: a sister. Clicking on the sister’s number brought me to another page, where a beautiful blond seventeen-year-old girl—same sun-bleached hair, worn in a pixie bob around her heart-shaped face, and same amber-gold eyes, bigger and with longer lashes—greeted me. But unlike her brother, she didn’t look bored. More like curious, dreamy, surprised, sad—maybe even a little mischievous. She had two former owners, the first one the same as the boy’s, then a riding school in Belgium. But the page saidlocation unknown, and there it stopped.

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