"I can't leave it alone Adrian."
"Why not?"
"Garrett put it so well, if something is right then there's no going too far. This is the right thing to do, despite what the consequences might be."
Adrian bit the inside of his lip as Caroline began to speak so highly of Garrett, she didn't notice and continued.
"It doesn't matter who the slaves are, it's wrong to break the law, it's wrong to lie to the people you rule, and it's wrong and dangerous to use electricity on people. I have the information to stand up against it, I don't have a choice."
She finally looked up to see Adrian, head downcast through her happy rant. She walked across the room from where she was standing and placed one hand on his shoulder and the other on his cheek, gently directing his head so that he was looking into her eyes.
"I really do appreciate what you said, your honesty means everything to me. I want you to always be honest, even when what you think may contradict what I think."
"Yes Mistress," he replied, a smile sneaking out from behind his solemn gaze with her kind words.
"It's been a long day, why don't we sleep."
"Where shall I sleep?"
"Wherever you want to."
"May I sleep with you?"
"Always," she said with a smile, entering the bathroom to change into her pajamas. In the room Adrian did the same. The two were soon under the blankets and quickly fast asleep.
- - -
"What do you mean they've had no success?"
"I mean they've not been able to locate the man."
"How hard is it to find one guard in the woods?"
"Apparently we chose a good target. But don't worry, this man helped train the two, he knows why they should be feared, our dear Tonik girl does not."
- - -
The next few days went as most do in the Tonik household, children screaming on the lower floor, peace and relaxation on the upper. Caroline had been working with the photographs she had taken at The Auction, trying to find the perfect photo for an expose. She was not satisfied by any until she found the end of her camera roll, the photograph she had taken of Garrett before he had his name. You could clearly see the five scars on his shoulder, his downcast head perfectly representing all of the abused slaves across Seba. She edited the lighting on the photo, making his skin paler and the red stand out more than it had in the original. She printed in bold letters on the bottom of the photograph 'BIRTHMARKS? NOT LIKELY.'
"Will that be enough?" Adrian asked from where he was leaning on the back of her chair. Earlier in the day it would have been obvious that he was jealous that Caroline had chosen a picture of Garrett to head her exposition, anyone else he would not have cared, but she seemed rather too close to the boy down the hall. Fortunately for Adrian Caroline was too caught up in her work to notice, much less question, his change in character. By the time she had pulled herself out of it with a finished product, Adrian had talked himself out of such notions.
"I'd rather it not be all I have," Caroline said after some hesitation.
"What more information can there be?"
"I need to know if they use it on slaves that they don't own.
"How will you find that out?"
"I'll need to go back in pet, I must ask you to do something for me."
"Anything mistress."
"I need you to do something wrong."
- - -
Caroline shoved Adrian through the door to the Yoski Auction House. His hands were cuffed together behind him and Caroline held the lead attached to his collar. She pushed him again, this time causing him to stumble up to the front desk.
"May I help you?"
"Well I certainly hope so," Caroline said in the prissiest voice that she could muster.
"What seems to be the problem?"
"This dog pushed me into a wall!"
"Do you want punishment or to sell him back?"
"Punishment."
"How much?"
"As much as you can do in an hour. I need him yet today."
"All right. You can pick him up in an hour Miss?"
"Setki, Farri Setki, and I'll be waiting here."
"As you wish," the woman said snidely, "hand the slave to the guard once he comes up."
With that the woman returned to the small room behind the desk where Caroline assumed she was slacking off from the work she was supposed to be doing. Caroline turned to Adrian.
"Okay, remember, blink twice and the cameras in the contact lenses with send the image that you see to my cell up here. I'll get you out of there immediately if they go for the voltaic gloves. Are you feeling alright?"
Adrian nodded but before he had the chance to reply a large red haired muscular man in a guard's uniform burst, for lack of better phrase, out of the elevator.
"Miss Setki?" He questioned, green eyes glaring down at her.
"Yes, here you are and please, I don't have long, do the most damage you can."
A wicked smile crossed the man's face as he took hold of the lead on Adrian's collar and stepped back into the elevator. Caroline paced back to the waiting area where she found herself alone. Instead of sitting she walked down the hall and began opening doors. She got halfway down the hall and pulled open a closet door, she had been expecting linens but was almost crushed by a mans body falling on top of her. Stifling her scream she shoved the body back into the closet, jumping and wiggling trying to get the feeling off of her. Before slamming the door shut her eyes widened as she recognized the dead man, he was the same man she had seen in her photo.
Slamming the closet door shut Caroline tried to wipe the dead off of her and scurried back to the waiting area, sitting on the couch and checking her phone. Thirty minutes had passed and she had still heard nothing from Adrian. She checked her phone for the hundredth time; perhaps she had made a horrible mistake. What if they didn't use electric shocks on their customer's slaves? What if she made Adrian go through all of this for nothing?
Just as she was about to tell the woman at the desk to bring him back up her phone went off. She quickly slid her finger across the screen to reveal one of the most horrifying images that she had ever seen. It was taken from below the man she had seen earlier, his sneer alone was terrifying, but even worse was the sparking blue glove on his hand. Running to the front desk she yelled at the woman.
"I need my slave now!"
"But you still have-"
"Now," Caroline growled.
Rather than argue farther the woman pushed the button to intercom the basement and told the man to bring Miss Setki's slave back upstairs immediately. Caroline looked at the woman's confused face and quickly came up with a lie.
"I'm going to be late for a meeting that I forgot about and won't have a chance to come back by."
The woman nodded and receded again to the back room. Caroline paced back and forth, what would she do now? She had proof that the Yoski family was breaking the law, but how could she bring herself to publicize it? Her thoughts were broken when the elevator doors opened. The sight of Adrian brought tears to her eyes.
One of his eyes was already black and swollen shut, the other was swelling from a cut on his cheek right underneath it. His nose was bleeding and his lower lip was already scabbing over. His left arm was cradled in his right and definitely broken, from the way he stood likely some of his ribs were as well. His shirt had been discarded, revealing his now red abdominal muscles. If Caroline had to guess she would say that the man had taken a lead pipe to Adrian's abs and used the same to break his ribs, she'd seen the method used before.
Taking the lead from the guard Caroline thanked him and did her best to flounce out of the building. Once they were back near the car Adrian loosed a cry of pain. He had certainly screamed when the blows fell but he had to appear strong to the man who had beaten him, make him believe that he hadn't accomplished anything.
Men like that guard got extreme satisfaction from the hurt and pain of others and now that Adrian had the chance he would do everything that he could to keep that satisfaction away from them. This was something he had attempted when he had first arrived in Seba but he soon learned that if he didn't show them pain they would beat him harder.
"I'm sorry, let me heal it all right now," Caroline said from where she stood on the asphalt.
She helped Adrian painfully sit on the tailgate of the pickup and began to work. She healed the broken arm first because it was kind of grossing her out then made sure that he was good as new in every way. He was still covered in blood but it may as well have not been his own, all of the pain that had caused it had vanished. They both moved to their seats in the car and Caroline pulled out of the parking lot.
"How did you get away from the volts? It looked to me in the photo like he was right on top of you."
"Well rather than tying me down he just tossed me onto the floor so I scooted away as much as I could once he got that glove out. It was terrifying, he started laughing when he saw how scared I was of that glove, he had just cornered me when that woman told him to stop. He actually got angry about it."
Caroline reached over and took Adrian's bloodied hand into her own.
"Thank you Adrian, thank you so much."
He sat in silence, grasping her hand just as tightly as she held his for the ride home; upon reaching it he opened his door and walked up the stairs. Caroline got out of the car and followed him up to the house.
As soon as she reached her room Caroline began ravenously typing away at her computer, compiling all of the photographs she had attained to a single document, describing within it how she came by the photos and what information she knew, as well as what had happened when she tried to uncover the truth. She had worked for close to three hours when she finally decided it was time to sleep. She crawled into bed leaving Adrian to sleep on the floor and fell fast asleep, only to be awakened the next morning by her phone beginning to ring, Adrian brought it to her and she answered.
"Hello?"
"Miss Tonik, so good to hear your voice."
"Your Majesty, an honor to hear from you personally."
"Yes, it is. My dear, I would like to see you today. Alone if you please, one hour Miss Tonik."
The call was disconnected from the king's end of the line.
"Who was that?" Adrian asked, primarily questioning the sudden paleness that had overtaken Caroline's normally tanned face.
"The king, he needs to see me."
"It's okay, I'll be right there for you."
"Alone."
Adrian stood with his mouth agape, if he couldn't go with her, he couldn't help her if she needed it.
"I have to go now."
"Can't I at least come and stay in the car?"
"They'll know if I don't go alone. I'm sorry, I'll be back soon."
Caroline took her keys and walked out the room, throwing one last worried look back at Adrian before leaving her father's house. She drove the half hour in silent nerve, parking in front of the palace and entering the same way she had the day before with Adrian.
"Ah, Miss Caroline, please have a seat."
The king had turned when she entered the room to address her, returning his gaze to the television that had been set up in front of him. Taking the remote in his hand he stepped around so that he was positioned behind Caroline's chair and started the video.
It was the security tape that had been taken at Yoski House the day before. At first it was innocent, it only showed a brunette girl wandering around a hall, then she began opening doors. The video became incriminating when the body fell onto her, she couldn't be convicted of murder since the man was already dead, but it had already been hours and she had done nothing about it, she had told no one that she had almost been crushed by a dead man. That could be considered obstruction of justice, a criminal offence.
"What do you want from me?"
"Did you recognize that man Miss Tonik? Or should I say, Miss Setki."
"I did."
"Who was he?"
"The man in the photograph."
"Very good girl!" The king nonchalantly walked around his desk and sat down, picking up a pen and pondering over a sheet of paper sitting in front of him.
"Now I wanted you out to set a date."
"A date sir?"
"A date to start the photographing. Would you be able to come out tomorrow?"
"Uh-ye-yes your highness."
"Good then, you may go."
"Your majesty?"
"What?"
"Did you kill that man?"
The king set down the pen in his hand, looking Caroline in the eye for the first time since she had arrived. The king, much like Darren Yoski, did not appear a scary man, professional and royal perhaps with his full head of blonde hair and tanned skin, but as Caroline looked into his brown eyes fear overtook every fiber of her being.
"I will tell you one thing Miss Tonik. I always do what is necessary."
Caroline again found herself all but running out the palace doors, though what did she expect when she had come? She drove aimlessly around the town, trying to calm her nerves from the experience. She pulled into a small park and sat on a swing for how long she couldn't remember, numbly staring at the water in front of her, not really registering anything that she saw.
It was when she stood from the swing that she heard movement behind her, spinning around she saw a single bush shaking in the dense forest behind her. Backing away she ran to her car, someone had been watching her. She sped fearfully back to her house, walking through the doors just in time for dinner.
The dining room of the Tonik house was immense; it had to be to fit eighteen plus people for each meal. In order to do so it was separated into two tables, one for the youngest ten children and the other for the elder six, the parents, and any guests that may dine with the family. At the latter table there was one seat empty as the eldest Tonik child, twenty four year old Jared was currently living away from home.
Caroline found a seat between nineteen year old Abigail and Estella, knowing that Adrian was in the kitchen waiting to help the rest of the staff.
"Caroline dear, I haven't seen you in a matter of days my love. What have you been doing?" Her mother asked from a few chairs down.
"Working really, I was actually offered an amazing opportunity, I'm doing the portraits for the Royal family."
"Oh Caroline! That's wonderful! You really do astound me, graduating college at only twenty, I still marvel at how you did it, then you working with the Yoski family right of the bat and now this! You're going places love."
Places. Places like the afterlife.
Caroline thought to herself, she couldn't help but wonder if there was anything she could do to appease the king and Mr. Yoski, the likely answer to that question was no. She couldn't shake the feeling that they would still kill her, no matter what she did.
She was pulled from her thoughts when Adrian sat a plate full of food in front of her, looking down at her awkwardly before asking if she would like anything else. She answered no and he, along with all of the other personal slaves like the dogs they were believed to be, crawled under the table to sit at her feet.
There were six personal slaves still living in the Tonik household, these slaves were very outcast from the larger group of workers. This small group, consisting of thirty four year old Peter and thirty two year old Leila, who belonged to Benedict and Martha, Adrian, Bernice, Abigail's seventeen year old girl, Olive, belonging to seventeen year old Felice, and now Garrett. When the eldest sibling was home for a visit this group readily welcomed Jared's twenty four year old boy Derek. The friendship between these slaves was as strong as a slave's friendship could be, the constant awareness that a person could be at dinner one night and absent from breakfast the next always hovering over their weary glances to one another.
This particular night Garrett chose to have a hushed conversation with Adrian, leaning over from where he sat at Estella's feet so as not to disturb the family sitting above them.
"Adrian?" He whispered, "Are you holding up alright?"
Adrian looked back at the boy wearily, "of course, should I not be?"
"It's just Miss Caroline, she's apparently getting rather bored."
"Who told you that?"
"Mistress."
"When was that a topic of conversation?"
"After Miss Caroline visited me yesterday. Mistress didn't particularly like it, after all, I am her's not Miss Caroline's."
"I thought she just asked you some questions."
"That's what I thought, but not according to mistress, anyway, I just wanted to make sure you were okay."
Adrian stared down at the carpeted floor, tears welling in his eyes. Was Caroline really getting bored of him? He did everything she told him to without complaint, not that there was reason for it. Did she not find him appealing enough? He leaned against her legs waiting for her to rise from the table. When she did he followed her back upstairs where she entered the bathroom. He sat on the bed looking positively forlorn. She returned to find him like this and immediately questioned him.
"What's wrong?"
"Are you bored of me? Am I not pleasing to you?"
"Adrian what are you asking?"
"I know Garrett is younger and better looking than I am but please mistress please don't send me away."
"Why are you saying this pet?" She said taking a seat next to him on the mattress.
"Tell me what I can change mistress."
"Why would you need to change anything?"
"You've been seeing Garrett so much perhaps if I were more like him you wouldn't sell me back."
"Adrian I've only seen Garrett because he had more recent information, that's all. And I wouldn't sell you for all the money in the world.
"Did you care?
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing would change if you didn't, but-I want to know. Seeing me like that today, did you care?"
"I healed you didn't I?"
"You've healed me after giving me a beating, forgive me but I don't think that really means that you care. I'm sorry, it was wrong of me to ask, and I don't mean anything by it, I was just curious."
"Adrian, I almost cried when I saw you that way. Nothing that you could do would make me want you to look like that because I know it means you're in pain. I don't like it when you hurt Adrian, you mean so much to me my pet."
Caroline put her hand on Adrian's cheek and turned his face so that they were mere inches apart, staring into each other's eyes.
"So you're not bored of me?"
Rather than answering Caroline leaned forward, her lips parting slightly as she closed the gap between them, quickly finding his. She was overtaken by the soft power of his kiss; it engulfed her, turning from a single kiss into the next until she found herself overwhelmed with glee. She had finally done it. For years she had wanted to know what this would be like, forever growing more and more curious with a heated desire at what his lips would feel like against her own.
To say that she had not developed strong feeling for him over the years would be a lie. His sweet nature and gentle heart had won her over far greater than his handsome looks. Many a man Caroline had dated, trying to find a proper husband but each one fell short of the character she had come to desire, the character she had found in Adrian.
She pulled away from him, catching her breath from the moment in which she had been in pure heaven.
Adrian smiled down at her, pulling her tightly into his arms, feeling hers wrap around his waist and resting his forehead onto hers. Erotic with joy, he guided her thin body away from him to look into her eyes, the love and kindness filling her large blue orbs overtook him and he pulled her into another kiss, the time to be subtle was gone.
She cared about him.