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"Come now," he says, reeling the laughter back in like it's a trick he's practiced, repackaging himself into the charming political specimen he trots out for fundraisers and Sunday dinners. "Surely you understand that's not true, Savannah."

He says my name the way people say property—with casual ownership, with zero awareness that the word should cost more than it does.

"People are bought and sold every single day. Contracts are written for their servitude, their labor, their discretion. And much, much more."

He lets that last part land slow, deliberate, the way a gavel comes down.

"The Ashby family was built on a contract exactly such as this. A promise—made generations before your mother ever pointed a camera at your face—to deliver a female child to my family. Our families have been connected for more than a hundred years."

I don't blink or respond. The novelty of this revelation, though only minutes old at this point, has already worn off.

I'm so over this shit.

My silence forces him to keep goin'. A signal, whether he knows it or not, that he's lost control of this conversation. He needs to justify his claim. I'm makin' him justify his claim.

"You belonged to me from the moment you drew your first breath," Marcus says, pacing now, slow and measured, like a lawyer deliverin' a closing argument to a jury of one. "Your mother understood this. She honored it. She lived it. Every photograph she ever took of you was a record of my investment appreciating in value."

He stops pacin'. Faces me.

"And Eleanor? Eleanor belonged to my father in exactly the same way. Same contract. Same terms. Same understanding between families who knew how the world actually works. Your grandmother before her—same arrangement. This is not new, Savannah. This is tradition. This is the architecture of your bloodline, and you don't get to opt out because some tattooed convict makes your pussy wet."

His voice hasn't risen. That's what makes it unbearable. He's not ranting. He believes every word the way people believe in gravity.

"Everything that happens to you—every meal, every breath, every orgasm, every child you bear—happens because I allow it. For the rest of your days. Whether you're in that house, or in a trailer, or chained to a fucking radiator, Savannah, you are mine by law older than this state."

I don't engage. I sit with my arms crossed, and my legs crossed, and I look at him the way I'd look at a stain on a tablecloth.

The silence eats at him. I can see it workin' behind his eyes—the recalculation, the pivot.

"Have you ever," he says, voice droppin' to something almost gentle, "even once, wondered about who your father was?"

OK. I admit it. This actually turns my stomach and for a moment, I can't breathe. I can't… I can't… I cannot…

"Don't worry," Marcus chuckles. "We're not brother and sister. That's not how this works. You see, that's also bought and sold. Also part of the contract. Our side, the White side. Not the Ashby side. Everyone is bought and sold this way, you see. I have, in fact, fathered children with other women already. Part of my contract. It's a duty to fulfill. Other little slave girls like you need impregnating. Other men like me need progeny. The breeding records are meticulous. We're very careful. I will never see these offspring of mine. Will never care for them, never miss them. They are products, Savannah. Just. Like. You. And one day, very soon." He actually checks his watch here. "I will send you away to a man who has paid me for the privilege of fucking you blind, and you will be returned swollen, and bruised, and pregnant."

He takes another step forward. Eyes locked on me.

"This," he says in a low whisper, "is the way of things. This is the price you pay for your status, your class, your land, your water, your… identity. You are not Savannah Ashby, honey-bear. You are mine."

I refuse to blink, let alone cower. But I will admit, I'm… stunned.

Eleanor. My father? How many fathers? Do me and my siblings have the same father? Or did Senator White sell her four times?

I search my memory for anything regarding a father figure. There was one. He's a vague picture in my mind. Dead. Or not. Probably not, after hearin' this. I never questioned it. He was just—not here. Part of the story the way a dead grandparent is, but only ever in the background.

Eleanor, as a parent, was more than enough. At least for me. I can't speak for my brothers and how they felt about the missing patriarch, but I didn't have time for that silly business.

Once or twice, I might've asked, and I don't recall Eleanor ever bein' harsh about the topic, but how could something be missing when you never had it to begin with? When your mother is the bigger-than-life Eleanor Ashby, the rest of the world seems small.

But there was a father. Everyone has a father. And this. This is what Eleanor was hiding down here. I know it instantly.

The contract is real.

A paper consequence of a deal struck generations ago. Something I neither partook in, nor agreed to.

I don't know what I gave Cash last week. I only skimmed those papers. But there was nothin' like this mentioned in them. Not overtly, at least.

Which means… the archive holds more secrets than I ever imagined.