Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
“OK. I’ll do my best.”
I nod. “Thank you. For all this, actually.” I wave a hand at the food. “Did I ever apologize for being rude to you on the Bull of Light?”
“Do you have a memory of apologizing for the scene you made on the Bull of Light?”
I point to myself, smiling. “Scene I made? You ambushed us. And you broke the terms.”
“To hell with terms. If I followed every stupid contract I ever had with a Ring fighter I’d never get any information at all. And ambushed you?” She scoffs. “Please. I once parachuted into a Ring camp in Cambodia to get a story on a fighter.”
“Shut up.”
“Swear to God. That was probably the most extreme case, but I’ve done a lot for that stupid magazine. And every owner, every fighter, was insane. They’re all crazy. You and Cort? Easily the sanest of the bunch. That interview with Pavo was something else. He tried to kiss me. In fact…” She pauses for a moment, like she’s thinking back on a memory. “That Benny fellow? The Saudi prince? He came on to me too. Gross.” She makes a face. “He was handsome enough, and definitely rich enough, but that man would fuck anything that walked. Anyway. Small world, I guess.”
“Who are you?”
She laughs, then offers me her hand from across the table. “Mackenzie Scott. Nice to meet you, Maart Carvalho.”
I shake her hand and let it go, smiling at her. “I have a funny feeling that your story should be in the magazine, not mine.”
“Well, you’re not wrong there.”
“So you…” I’m not sure how to ask this. “You grew up… knowing how they get us, Mackenzie?”
She offers me a much smaller smile now. “I was twelve when I met my first fighter. My father’s fighter. His name was Jeroen, but they called him King.”
“I don’t think I ever heard of him.”
“No. He died a long time ago.”
“Were you friends?”
“Friends?” She considers this. “Maybe. I was his prize.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I was Anya, once upon a time.”
“But your father—”
“He wasn’t my real father, Maart.”
“Oh.”
“I was Anya. Once upon a time.”
“Oh.” She was a slave. A ‘house slave’ is the nice term for it. But the real term is ‘sex slave.’ They kill them, usually. Right around puberty. Either that, or they turn them into breeders. “Did you…”
“No. I never did have children. Not for their lack of trying. Just”—she shrugs a little—“broken inside, I guess.”
“Oh, fuck, Beth. I’m so sorry.”
She reaches for my hand and gives it a squeeze. “Don’t worry. It’s been over now for a very long time. I stayed in Jeroen’s harem for about three years. Then he died in his last fight. And you know how it works. Fighters and women of the loser go to the winner’s owner. But my father paid to get me back.”
I wince.
“Yeah. He was attached, I guess. But he wasn’t interested in me anymore. Not like that. I was too old for his taste.”
It has been years since I’ve had to have a conversation about this shit. And the whole thing makes me want to vomit. I want to tell her to stop talking, but I can’t. Because this is her story. And no one should be told to shut up when they’re telling their story.
But then I realize something about this doesn’t make sense. “But Beth, this penthouse? All the other properties? How—”
“Oh, that’s a whole other story.” And she’s smiling again. Laughing, almost. “Do you want to hear it?”
“Yeah. I get the feeling you came out on top.”
She looks around, then out at the ocean, sighing out the words, “Did I ever.”
We finish eating and then move to the two cheap lounge chairs positioned in front of the short flowering hedges that double as the terrace wall, and stare out at the ocean. There is a lap pool just to our right, but it’s empty. It looks like it’s been empty for years.
Mackenzie Scott left her harem house when she was fifteen and was taken back to her ‘father’s’ estate in Scotland to care for Sir Brendon Scott’s aging wife.
“I was her caregiver until she died, just a few months after I returned home.” Beth looks sad for a moment.
“You liked her?”
“I did. She was me, once upon a time.”
“Not one of them?”
“We’re all one of them, Maart. Even you, at this point.”
“Probably right.”
“But yeah. She was a house slave too, when she was small. Lord Scott took a fancy to her, the way he took a fancy to me.” She shrugs. “And I have to say, as far as slave owners go, my lord was less evil than most. He hired me tutors. I ended up going to university when I was sixteen, but only stayed two years because by then, I was offered the job at Ring of Fire magazine.”