Lot fourteen- I was bought to read the room
By @Georgij Boguslawskij - Seraph IT
They sold me as lot fourteen.
No passport, no name anyone could call. Just a debt somebody else invented, a collar under my jaw, and a file four houses signed without admitting their own people were careless.
I had three seconds before the gavel came down.
So I stayed very polite, and I told the room the truth about the man who was about to own me, and I watched it take him apart. He'd bought the lot before mine. I'd seen his face while they brought the boy down.
The woman in the back row got me instead. She doesn't want a servant. She wants someone who can read a room full of people who spent thirty years learning to be unreadable.
So I offered her a contract instead of a promise. Respect for obedience. Quid pro quo.
She said she hadn't paid for a partner. She'd paid for something she could control.
Now I stand at her shoulder in ballrooms, collar under my shirt, remote in her handbag.
I don't lie. I've never found one worth the maintenance.
I just don't tell them everything.
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