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Twenty-Five Years Earlier

Daniel was folding ties for a new display when a well-dressed man knocked on the door of the boutique. They were appointment only, and he knew this man didn’t have one because the mistress was out to lunch and she never missed appointments. But if he turned away potential business, she’d be mad. She’d beat him.

Daniel sighed and put down a tie midfold. She’d probably beat him for letting the man in, too. He wasn’t supposed to wait on customers, after all—he was only eleven, and good for nothing anyway—but his mom was two blocks over picking up buttons, and Jaime was delivering a suit uptown, which meant it was him or no one.

The man knocked again. Daniel straightened his own tie, ran a careful hand over his hair, and went to the door. He thought of saying, I’m sorry, we’re closed, sir, but the man looked made of money, and Daniel couldn’t risk him complaining. He unlocked the door.

“Welcome to Roberta’s, sir,” Daniel managed to say without stuttering. Like Jaime would do, or the mistress, all smooth and confident. “Do you have an appointment?”

The man looked at him, looked at him in a way he’d only recently begun to understand, and Daniel darted his eyes to the floor, throat tightening, stinging. They were alone here, no one to stop the man from . . . But he wouldn’t, would he? Wouldn’t touch someone else’s property without their permission. Wouldn’t damage it like that. It was against the law. Men dressed as nice as this man didn’t break the law, did they?

“I’m afraid not,” the man said, voice gentle, and Daniel dared a glance up from his polished shoes. The man was smiling. A nice smile—not at all like the way those other customers had smiled before they’d . . . before they’d hurt Daniel. “Do I need one?”

Daniel swallowed down the tightness in his throat and said to the man’s silver belt buckle, “The mistress is at lunch, sir.”

“Then maybe you can help me until she returns. That would please her, wouldn’t it?”

Daniel meant to say yes—Never contradict a customer, you useless little shit!—but his body had other ideas, and he ended up half nodding, half shaking his head all at once.

“Let me see your face, boy.” The man took hold of Daniel’s chin, but not rough like his mistress, and Daniel dared to let his eyes stray all the way up to the man’s clean-shaven upper lip. He held perfectly still, didn’t even tremble, though he knew there was no way this could end well. The mistress would come in and find them like this and she’d be so mad and then—

And then the magic question, the one his mistress, in her endless stream of beatings and berating, had told him he would never, ever hear: “Are you for sale, boy?”

“I’m difficult, sir,” he replied, just like he’d been trained. “You wouldn’t want me. Nobody wants me.”

The man smiled, stroked Daniel’s face with a gentleness so startling that Daniel nearly jumped, and then pulled the hem of Daniel’s fitted shirt from his pants.

Daniel’s heart sank even as it began to thrash against his ribs. He’d told the man the truth, answered the way he’d been taught. Would the stranger punish him for that? Or worse, use him the way the mistress had recently let some of her other customers do while they waited for their suits? He glanced once, frantically, around the small showroom floor, hoping his mistress might magically appear. But no—even if she were to return from lunch right now, she would not protect him if this man felt wronged. She would watch, most likely, and then beat him later herself for upsetting a customer, and send him to bed without supper again.

The man spun him around, and Daniel swallowed hard, squeezed his eyes closed. He wouldn’t run, and he wouldn’t beg, and he wouldn’t cry. Running and begging just made things worse, and crying was for babies.

But there was no pain, and no move to undress him further. Only a sigh, low and deep, and a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Relax, boy,” the man said, “I won’t hurt you.” The last man to strip Daniel had said the same thing, and it’d been a lie. A terrible, terrible lie. “I just want to see how difficult your mistress thinks you are.”

Daniel believed him. Or maybe he just really, really wanted to. Either way, the muscles in Daniel’s shoulder hesitantly unclenched beneath the man’s touch. The man released him and lifted Daniel’s shirt. Cool air met his back, and then fingertips skimmed a line of welts, gentle enough to be painless. A tug on the waistband of his pants sent his heart jackhammering again—to Daniel’s horror, he actually took half a step forward, like his stupid body didn’t realize how bad and wrong it was to try to escape his duties. But the man only lowered his waistband an inch or two, and then more feather touches traveled along the marks high on his hips, on the curve of his buttocks. The man let out a low whistle and spun Daniel back around.

“Quite difficult indeed, eh? Well, you’d better put yourself back together before your mistress sees you.” The man’s face looked carefully blank—no anger, no impatience, none of that other thing, either—but his eyes, Daniel thought, were smiling just a little. “And then show me something in a dark gray chalk stripe.”

The mistress looked shocked, then angry, when she came back from lunch to find Daniel tucking and pinning the man’s suit for alterations, but before she could work up too big a head of steam, the man said, “Sorry I didn’t make an appointment, but Daniel here was very helpful.” He fished his wallet from the pants draped across the table beside the stool he was standing on, pulled out his credit card, and then waved to himself. “I’d like to buy this, please. Daniel said he wasn’t allowed to use the register.”

Daniel knew better than to think the mistress’s anger was defused, but of course she wouldn’t show it in front of a happy customer. He went back to pinning the man’s pants. The mistress ran his charge card, all the while apologizing profusely for not being here, for any unknown slights her stupid slave might’ve committed while she was gone, for not having offered him a refreshment the moment she walked in. He waved her off, promised he’d been well cared for, but it wouldn’t matter. It never did. Not even the four-thousand-dollar sale would matter. The moment the customer was out the door, the mistress would punish Daniel just the same.

Or so he was convinced, anyway, until the man took back his credit card, pointed it at Daniel, and said, “I’d like to buy this too, please.”

Daniel jolted so hard he almost stuck the man with a pin. Not possible, he thought, and then, But what about my mom? and then, Oh God now you have to take me you can’t leave me here, when he saw the cold fury twisting his mistress’s face.

“He’s a lousy fuck,” she said.

Daniel was staring resolutely at the man’s shoes, but he could picture the gentleness on the man’s face, hear it in his voice when he said, “That’s not why I want him.”

“Then why?” the mistress practically spat. She’d kept the checkout counter between her and them, but now she circled around, big angry steps, and what had happened to never contradict a customer?

The man stepped off the stool, met her halfway. Daniel kept his head down and busied his hands with his pins and chalk and measuring tape, but his entire focus was on the man and his mistress. He might be nothing but a dumb cunt slave, but even he knew how important this was. How much his life might be about to change. How much his mother’s might change if he had to leave her alone here, couldn’t protect her anymore. His hands stilled—no one was paying him any attention anyway—and he watched them through his lashes, breath held.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” the man said, and stuck his hand out for the mistress to shake. He seemed so pleasant, even in the face of her wary, guarded anger. But he was a customer, after all, so she took his hand. “I’m William Krantz. The Chief VP of Human Resources over at NewWorld Media.”

The name meant nothing to Daniel, but it obviously meant something to the mistress, whose mean mouth turned up in the kind of grin she reserved for stupid rich fucks born to be parted with their money, and if you ever repeat that I’ll beat you to death, do you hear me? Then she turned that dangerous smile on Daniel, who dropped his gaze so quickly he made himself dizzy for a second. “Go to your room, Daniel.”

Never in all his life had he found it so difficult to make his mouth say, “Yes, Mistress,” what with the panic all tangled up with excitement clawing through his throat. But he managed it somehow, and through the same magic got his feet moving to obey. He scurried through the shop into the back room, then up the narrow flight of stairs and down the short hall to the bunkroom he shared with his mom and Jaime.