The Inheritance
"His family destroyed hers. She spent seventeen years becoming powerful enough to buy him at auction. Revenge is everything she dreamed—until it isn't."
Isolde
I've waited seventeen years for this moment.
The auction house is brutalist chrome and recessed lighting, designed to make the merchandise look appealing. Lot 47 stands on the block in a gray intake uniform, wrists cuffed in front of him, chin raised in defiance that would be admirable if it weren't so pathetic.
Cassius Morrow. Crown prince of the dynasty that murdered mine.
He's thirty-five now. Still handsome—the strong jaw, the aristocratic cheekbones, the blue eyes that used to look down on me at every family function. But there's something hollowed out in his face. Three years of watching his empire crumble will do that.
The auctioneer begins the bidding. Kurosawa Industries opens at eight million—they want him for his pharmaceutical knowledge. A private collector counters with ten. Someone from the Eastern Bloc raises to twelve.
I wait.
Cassius scans the room, cataloging his potential owners. When his gaze reaches me, it passes over—then snaps back. I watch recognition dawn. Watch horror follow.
Hello, little prince. Remember me?
"Fifteen million," I say.
The room murmurs. The Kurosawa rep counters with eighteen. I raise to twenty-five without blinking. The bidding dies.
"Sold," the auctioneer announces, "to Isolde Vance."
Cassius's face goes white.
I smile.
Cassius
She's changed.
The girl I remember was fifteen, scrawny, forgettable. A minor Vance—not even the heir. I called her pathetic at her father's funeral because she was crying and I was seventeen and cruel.
The woman who owns me now is something else entirely.
Isolde Vance stands before me in the processing room, reviewing my ownership documents with the dispassion of someone examining a new vehicle. Her black hair is pulled back severely. Her suit costs more than my family's last liquid assets. She radiates power the way I once did—the casual certainty of someone who has never been told no.
"Sign here," she says, sliding a tablet across the table.
I look at the document. Terms of service. Behavioral expectations. A clause about "corrective measures" that makes my stomach drop.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you go to the public labor pool. Mining, construction, waste processing." She tilts her head. "You'd last about six months. Less, probably—you're soft."
I sign.
"Good." She takes the tablet back. "Your first event is tomorrow night. The Harrington Gala. You'll wear what I provide and do exactly what I say."
"And what exactly will you have me do?"
She smiles. It doesn't reach her eyes.
"Carry my drink."
Isolde
The Harrington Gala is perfect.
Three hundred of the city's elite, packed into a ballroom dripping with crystal and pretension. Half of them knew Cassius when he was a prince. Now they watch him trail behind me in dove-gray livery, a silver tray balanced in his hands.
"Isolde, darling." Marguerite Harrington glides over, champagne in hand. Her eyes flick to Cassius with barely concealed delight. "I heard you made an acquisition. Is this...?"
"Cassius Morrow." I take a glass from his tray without looking at him. "The Morrows and my family had history. I thought it fitting."
"How delicious." Marguerite laughs. "Cassius, dear, I don't suppose you remember that party at your estate? When you told my husband he'd never amount to anything?"
I feel him stiffen behind me. Don't turn to look.
"My husband runs Harrington Dynamics now," she continues sweetly. "We bought your mother's jewelry at the estate auction. I'm wearing her earrings tonight."
"Cassius," I say, "fetch Marguerite a fresh glass. Hers is nearly empty."
"Yes, ma'am."
His voice is steady. I give him that. But I hear the strain underneath.
This is only the beginning.
Cassius
The worst part isn't the serving.
It's the people who pretend they don't know me.
Viktor Ostrowski and I closed a billion-credit deal together three years ago. Tonight, he looks through me like I'm furniture. Eliza Chen—who I took to bed more than once—turns her back when I approach with canapes.
I am being erased.
Isolde watches it happen with quiet satisfaction. She positions me carefully throughout the evening, ensuring maximum exposure to people I once outranked. Makes me kneel to adjust her shoe in front of a cluster of former business partners. Has me hold her clutch while she networks.
By midnight, my feet ache and my face hurts from keeping it neutral.
"You did well," she says in the car afterward. "For a first outing."
"Fuck you."
She backhands me. Casual. Almost lazy.
"You don't speak to me that way." Her voice is pleasant. "You speak to me with respect, or you don't speak at all. Understood?"
My cheek burns. My eyes water.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good boy."
The words are poison, but I swallow them. I have no choice.
I tell myself I'll outlast her. That this is temporary. That eventually she'll bore of this game and I'll find a way out.
I'm lying to myself, and I know it.
Isolde
Week three. The Komori Investment Summit.
I make him kneel beside my chair during the keynote presentation. Three hundred executives watching the former Morrow heir sit at my feet like a dog.
The whispers are delicious.
Week four. The Ashworth Charity Auction.
I volunteer him to serve drinks. Put him in a shorter jacket that shows the silver collar I've started making him wear. Someone asks if he's available for private rental.
"He's not for sharing," I say. "But I'll let you know if that changes."
His jaw tightens. He says nothing.
Week six. The Meridian Tech Gala.
By now, everyone knows. The story has spread through every social circle in Neo-London: Isolde Vance bought the man who destroyed her family, and she's parading him like a trophy. Opinion is divided—some think I've gone too far, others think the Morrows deserve worse.
I don't care what they think. I only care that he knows.
Knows that every eye is on him. Every whisper is about him. Every smirk and pitying glance is another piece of his dignity stripped away.
I catch him in the bathroom at Meridian, splashing water on his face. His eyes in the mirror are hollow.
"Problem?" I ask.
"No, ma'am."
"Good. We're leaving in ten minutes. Make yourself presentable."
I turn to go. Pause at the door.
"You called me pathetic once," I say. "At my father's funeral. Do you remember?"
Silence.
"I do." I smile. "I remember everything."
Cassius
She uses me at night.
Not violently. Not with any particular cruelty. Just... uses me. Like I'm a tool designed for a specific purpose.
"On your knees," she says when we return from events. "Mouth."
I obey. I'm good at it now—I've learned what she likes, how to make it end faster. She comes with a sigh, pats my head like a pet, and dismisses me to my quarters.
I don't know if this is better or worse than the public humiliation.
At least in the bedroom, no one's watching. At least here, the shame is private.
But the mechanical nature of it—the way she treats my body as a convenience—that erodes something different. Something deeper.
I'm not a person to her. I'm not even an enemy anymore.
I'm furniture that occasionally provides orgasms.
Isolde
The Vance Memorial Gala.
Ten weeks since I bought him. Every year, I host this event in my father's memory. The industry gathers to honor a man who built an empire—and to pointedly not mention how the Morrows tore it down.
This year is special.
Three hundred guests. Everyone who matters. And at the center of the ballroom, a small raised platform I've had constructed for the occasion.
Cassius sees it when we arrive. I feel him tense.
"What is that for?"
"You'll see."
The evening proceeds normally—cocktails, networking, the usual performance of wealth and power. I keep him close, visible, kneeling when I sit, fetching when I command. The guests are used to it by now. Some even greet him by name, with varying degrees of mockery.
At ten o'clock, I take the stage.
"Thank you all for coming," I begin. "My father built something extraordinary. He believed in legacy, in honor, in the bonds between families. And some of you know—" I pause, letting the silence build. "—that legacy was stolen from us. By people we trusted. By rivals who chose destruction over competition."
Murmurs. Everyone knows I mean the Morrows.
"Tonight, I'd like to commemorate my father's memory in a special way." I gesture toward Cassius. "Mr. Morrow, please join me on stage."
He doesn't move. For a moment, I think he'll refuse.
Then, slowly, he climbs the steps.
"Kneel."
He kneels. Three hundred people watching.
"The Morrow family destroyed my father," I say, addressing the crowd. "They used every dirty trick, every underhanded tactic, every betrayal they could conceive. And when my father took his own life—" My voice cracks. I let it. "—Cassius Morrow came to his funeral and called me pathetic for crying."
Gasps. He didn't know I'd share that.
"So tonight, in front of everyone who matters, I'd like him to apologize." I look down at him. "Cassius. Tell them what your family did. Tell them you're sorry. And mean it."
His face is pale. His hands are shaking.
"My family..." He swallows. "My family engineered the collapse of Vance Pharmaceuticals through insider trading, industrial espionage, and bribery of regulatory officials. We destroyed a legacy that had been built over generations. We drove a good man to suicide." His voice is barely audible. "And I mocked his daughter at his funeral because I was young and cruel and thought I was untouchable."
"Louder," I say. "They can't hear you in the back."
He repeats it. Louder. Every word scraped out of him like flesh from bone.
"Now tell them what you are."
"I'm..." He looks up at me. His eyes are wet. "I'm property. I'm Isolde Vance's acquisition. I belong to her."
"And?"
"And I'm sorry." His voice breaks. "I'm sorry for what my family did. I'm sorry for what I said. I'm sorry I ever thought—"
He stops. Swallows.
"I'm sorry."
The room is silent. I look down at him, waiting for the satisfaction to hit.
It doesn't.
What I see is a man who's been hollowed out. A man who has nothing left—no pride, no dignity, no resistance. I've taken everything, ground it to dust, fed it back to him in public.
I won.
So why do I feel nothing?
Cassius
Something breaks when I finish the apology.
Not breaks. Empties.
The thing inside me that was still fighting, still hoping, still believing I might survive this with some piece of myself intact—it just... stops.
I am what she's made me. There's nothing else left.
When she dismisses me from the stage, I walk to my position without feeling my legs. When the gala ends, I follow her to the car without being told. When we arrive home, I kneel in the foyer without command.
I am the perfect possession now.
I am nothing.
Isolde
He's broken.
I knew it was coming—that was the point. But seeing it is different from anticipating it. He kneels in the foyer, eyes unfocused, completely still. Waiting for instructions that I suddenly don't want to give.
"Stand up," I say.
He stands.
"Look at me."
He looks. There's no hatred anymore. No defiance. Nothing at all.
I got exactly what I wanted.
For seventeen years, I dreamed of this. Planned for this. Built an empire specifically so I could reach this moment—Cassius Morrow, broken at my feet, everything he was reduced to what I allowed him to be.
Victory.
It tastes like ash.
"Go to your quarters," I tell him. "Sleep."
He turns and walks away without a word. Without reaction. A machine following programming.
I pour myself a drink. Then another. Then a third.
At two in the morning, I'm still sitting in the dark, staring at nothing.
I destroyed him. Completely. Publicly. Permanently. Everyone who knew Cassius Morrow will remember him as my property, my revenge, my prize.
So why do I feel more empty now than I did before I bought him?
Cassius
Days pass. I don't count them.
She stops taking me to events. Stops using me at night. Stops doing much of anything except occasionally checking that I'm eating, sleeping, functional.
I perform the required tasks. I wait.
I don't hope for anything. Hope requires believing things can change, and I no longer believe that.
One evening, she comes to my quarters. I kneel automatically. She stares at me for a long moment.
"Stop that," she says.
I don't understand.
"Stand up. Sit on the bed. Like a—" She falters. "Like a person."
I obey because obeying is what I do.
She sits in the chair across from me. We stare at each other.
"I broke you," she says. "At the gala. Something changed."
"Yes."
"I didn't expect..." She trails off. Starts again. "I didn't expect it to feel like this."
I wait. I have nothing to contribute.
"I spent seventeen years building toward that moment. Making you apologize. Making you kneel. Taking everything the way your family took everything from me." Her voice is flat. "And now it's done, and I feel nothing. Less than nothing. I feel like I destroyed the only thing I had left to live for."
I understand. In a distant way, I understand.
"Revenge was all you had," I say. "Now it's gone."
"Yes."
"Welcome to having nothing."
She laughs. It sounds like breaking glass.
"I didn't—" She stops. Breathes. "I didn't think about what comes after. There was never supposed to be an after."
We sit in silence.
"What do you want?" I finally ask. "From me. Now."
"I don't know." She looks at me—really looks, like she's seeing me for the first time. "I don't know what I want. I don't know who I am without hating you."
"Then we're the same." I meet her eyes. "I don't know who I am without being hated."
Isolde
He's right.
We're the same. Two people who defined themselves by opposition—by destruction and revenge and the cold comfort of hatred. Now the hatred is gone, and we're left with the wreckage.
I don't free him. I'm not ready for that. Don't know if I ever will be.
But I stop parading him. Stop the public humiliations. Stop treating him like furniture.
I don't know what I'm doing instead. It's not kindness—I don't think I'm capable of that anymore. But it's something.
One night, I find myself in his quarters again. Not for sex. Just... sitting.
"I dreamed about my father," I say. "He was disappointed. Said this wasn't what he would have wanted."
"Was he right?"
"Probably." I stare at the wall. "He was a good man. I'm not."
"Neither am I."
"No." I look at him. "But you could have been. Before your family twisted you. Before mine fell."
"Maybe." He shrugs. "Does it matter?"
I don't know.
I don't know anything anymore.
All I know is that I bought an enemy and broke him, and somewhere in the breaking, I broke myself too.
Maybe that's what I inherited. Not revenge. Not satisfaction.
Just this: two hollow people in a room, wondering what comes next.
"I don't know what to do with you," I admit.
"I don't know what to do with myself."
We sit in the silence of that confession.
It's not forgiveness. Not redemption. Not even beginning.
But it's something.
Maybe that's enough for now.