Page 52 of Never Broken

As shocking as it was to me, I wasgladwe’d stopped there. Not just because there was no time or that she’d hesitated at touching my healing wounds, or that the atmosphere sucked—and the fact that I even cared aboutthatwas weird enough—but because I didn’t know how far she wanted to go, or could go, or had gone. Slave girls letmecall the shots. I couldn’t play Louisa that way. In fact, I couldn’t remember a time when I’d been so genuinely concerned about someoneelse’spleasure. Of course, as a slave, that was all I wassupposedto care about. But asme? Well.

Still, I tried not to look too smug when I finally went upstairs to face an assault by one of the housekeeper’s mixer blades and two massive cabinets full of unsorted silverware that I spent the rest of the afternoon on my knees polishing, only interrupted when she broke down and slipped me one of her vanilla meringues. I smiled up at her, amused by what she’d think if she knew what I’dreallybeen up to earlier.

But therealproblem was that Louisa, for all she’d done to help me find Maeve, still had no idea that the man coming to dinner—the man who was supposedly about to save her family from ruin—had my sister. And for now, it had to stay that way. After all, how could I possibly explain that to her as she was dashing up the stairs wearing that impish, rosy, well-kissed grin, so self-conscious that she didn’t realizeIwas looking at her like some floppy-eared puppy?

Oh, and then there was the gardener. Earlier, I had scanned the entire terrace, including the outdoor dining and pool areas, just to make sure the gross toothless bastard a. wasn’t skulking around and b. hadn’t left any incriminating evidence, like the printed map to Langer’s warehouse he’d swiped. I’d found nothing and no sign of him, but it didn’t make me feel any better because I needed to warn Louisa, and I couldn’t without explaining everything. Andeverythingwould include what elseI’d been doing in her room during our tutoring sessions—other than mentally undressing her, which was probably no longer much of a secret.

Yes, Maeve was right. Louisa had risked a lot to get me that phone. Shecared, and that was terrifying enough. Sheshouldn’thave done it, and I shouldn’t have accepted it, but it happened, and there was no going back. But if the time came to choose between me and her family—especially after she learned I had not, to put it lightly, been entirely truthful—I knew the choice, for her, would still be an easy one.

So yeah, there was a lot I couldn’t tell her, and worst of all, it was all stuff she deserved to know. But after a lifetime spent aware that one carelessly dropped fact could earn you a flogging, a caning, or some other random method of unspeakable torture, lying wasn’t an easy habit to break. So maybe she’d cut me some slack?

Yeah, right.

With all her gold stars and high expectations, even as she grew and changed before my eyes, this desert princess would—despite knowing everything I’d been through—expectmeto be better, too. After all, she was used to the best.

And that’s why my first priority—besides brainstorming places to take her next time besides a dusty alcove full of broken furniture—should have been finding a solution to this problem. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to choose my priorities. So instead, I dutifully took up my post by the door in an all-black uniform I’d been given to wear. I’d been given a few dress shirts to wear in my time and generally found them too tight in the shoulders, but to my surprise, this one fit me as perfectly as if the housekeeper had worked some kind of magic on it.

The maid stood next to me in a black skirted outfit, holding a tray of champagne flutes, which she was efficiently offering to the arriving guests before directing them to the sprawlingterrace, where more cocktails would be served before dinner.Myonly job during this part of the evening was to stand there like a marble pillar and take coats, bags, and anything else people wanted to dump on me, and to ensure the guests knew immediately that despite what they’d heard, Keith Wainwright-Phillips wasn’t so broke that he couldn’t afford a brand-new, good-looking slave.

In fact, I felt one guest’s obliging eyes on me before I even saw her: the thirtysomething redhead in the corner, champagne flute twirling in her hand, was already checking me out like I was on the menu. I knew the type—rich, bored, undersexed, and always leering at slave boys like we were streaming entertainment. Still, up until recently, I would have played along, but tonight? The way she looked at me—hungry, expectant—just made my skin crawl.

Whatever. It was what it was. Better to be a piece of meat here than chained and half-naked at a public auction.

Actually, given that it was October in the desert, none of the guests—which so far seemed to be mostly Wainwright-Phillips’s friends, business associates, and their spouses, but no Langer—wore a whole lot of extra layers, which meant that so far, I hadn’t done much of anything. Which gave me a lot of extra time to covertly scan the top of the stairs. That would have been fine if it weren’t for thenextguest noticing it immediately.

“What are you looking at, slave?” The Big Douche on Campus, who’d just arrived with his parents, wore a light leather jacket reeking of menthol cigarettes, which he made a point of aggressively chucking at me like he’d somehow known ahead of time I’d get assigned to do this.

There was no torture quite like coming up with a million of the wittiest, most scathing retorts you’ve ever heard and then not being allowed to use them, but it was one I was all too familiar with. But with all the guests around—and Langer onhis way—there was too much at stake to waste them, even on someone as loathsome as Corey Killeen. All I could do was bite down hard on my lip and direct my eyes back to the floor where every person there—except maybe one—thought they belonged.

“Nothing, sir.”

“Good. Fucking keep it that way.”

Tonight was going to be rough.

773541N0

Abee jo,?1Brudderhäerz,?2 are you there?

773496S6

I’m here, Maeve

Heremeaning the wine cellar, desperately trying to tap out a message before the housekeeper burst in and demanded to know why I wasn’t back yet with that extra bottle of Marsala I’d lied and told her we were out of. Personally,Ijust wanted to know why I was such an idiot. This goddamn phone would have gotten me killed twice already if it weren’t for the grace of the girl in the backless dress, and yet here I wasstillcarrying it around instead of stashing it in the empty birdhouse next to the garden shed that would have made a damn good hiding place had I bothered to actually use it.

Too late.

773496S6

What is it? Did you find something?

773541N0

You were right, about the research

They’re doing experiments

On our microchips

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