Please note that this chapter is definitely not a stand-alone piece. You should read the rest of the story before reading this chapter or you will have no chance of understanding what is going on! If you aren't interested in the plot and just want to cut to 'the action' then that is the section entitled 'The Price of Success'. Don't forget that ratings and constructive criticism are always welcome.
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The miles rolled by under the wheels of her vehicle - the lights flashed through her vision as she drove through the night. She knew her mind was all over the place, hurtling in a thousand different directions, unable to really process the situation. She just knew that she had to see her daughter, had to know the truth.
It was only as she neared her destination that she realised how impractical she had been. It was past Midnight - was she really intending to haul her daughter out of bed and demand to know whether a Black stranger had knocked her up. She thought of her phone but instantly rejected the idea. Some things had to be dealt with face to face. If nothing else she wanted to be able to hold Charli, to let her know that whatever had happened or would happen she would always love her.
Her brain began to try to rationalise the situation. She had been to Charli's house and noticed its unusual lay-out but it couldn't be the only one with a similar set-up. Perhaps other old merchant houses had been cut down due to disrepair, perhaps the clip hadn't been filmed in her daughter's home after all. She knew it sounded ridiculously far-fetched, too much of a coincidence to be practical, but she grasped at the chance. Suddenly as she reached the far side of the Capital she dreaded the last few miles, dreaded the certain knowledge of what she now only suspected. The adrenaline that had fuelled her rush to drive North was now long dissipated. She felt confused and scared and miserable.
She saw a motel sign, presumably for business travellers to the Capital. Probably the last such before they entered the straggling urban sprawl that stretched between the Capital and its down-at-heel, crime, vice and drug-ridden neighbour - H-Town. She took a snap decision and pulled in. Parked in the lot and pushed back against the head-rest with her eyes closed, fighting the panic down. She had to get it right when she met Charli, clear of thought and speech. Getting this wrong might lose her daughter for good.
There was no-one she could trust with this. Charli's father? He'd faithfully and honourably made bank transfers over the last few years but he would not want or need this drama. She knew his second wife was expecting too, their second. She realised that thought, 'expecting too', had come into her head.
What about the other key person in her life over the last few months? What about her ... she hesitated. What was his real name - Izeye. Didn't the clips come from him? Hadn't he arranged all this? Had he... How could her daughter have been so stupid - to let herself be used and exploited like this! She glanced down at her own body - knew that her own belly might soon be filling out too and with the baby of the man behind all this. He had fooled them, manipulated them both.
Even as the thought ran through her mind she knew it wasn't true. With her daughter perhaps but certainly not for her. Her mind flashed back again. Her helping her Master, she couldn't help thinking of him as anything but that, capture Ann as a new 'trainee'. Her telling Shaka to seed Dee when she was unprotected and fertile, to send her home to her husband and family with a Black man's baby in her. At that moment she had wanted it - wanted her Master and Shaka to succeed, had not cared what happened to the other women.
But was that true? She had worked from her own experience. How good all of this had been for her. How she knew that she could not turn back, more accurately WOULD not turn back once she had gone so far. It hadn't been hypocrisy because she had only helped the other women do just what she was doing, become what she was, enjoy everything that their new lives had to offer. What now? Go back to Izeye despite everything? Find a new Black Master? Just cruise the clubs looking for casual Black partners?
She shook her head and found her bag, checked her credit card was there. Only when checked in and lying on the bed in her little room did she realise that not for one moment had she contemplated giving up Black cock, not for one moment had she considered preventing any pregnancy that she might already have begun. She wasn't the same person that she had been before she gave herself to him. She didn't regret that for one moment - couldn't honestly claim to regret having led others down the same path - but the possible cost to her daughter kept her head whirling until, emotionally exhausted, she finally slept a shallow fitful few hours.
***
She woke still feeling tired and she couldn't face any breakfast. At least her mind seemed to have stabilised . The initial brutality of the shock had worn off. She would consider her own future in time. First she had to see her daughter. They would survive and get through, just as they always had, but she had to see Charli. No matter how much she dreaded it...
She got there at 0930 in the morning. Saw the familiar little street with the big, cut-down frontage. Noticed the change there and knew that any chance of a coincidence, however slim, had gone. On the wall by the front door was a sign and on that sign the design she now had tattooed on her own lower back. The Black face and the White face united in a kiss and forming the symbol of yin and yang. The symbol of her Master's ownership.
Georgia took a deep breath. She rang the bell but heard nothing so she knocked on the door. No response so she tried again. Then again. Still nothing. She closed her eyes - she knew she would have to make the decision.
It cut against the grain. The key really was only for use in emergency. However, wasn't this just that. She quickly reached into her bag and unlocked the front door. The alarm box buzzed until the entered the code - identical to her own, just as her daughter had once joked. With the door closed she looked carefully around her.
It was the strangely truncated lobby with the over-sized staircase - just as she remembered from her previous visit and just as she had seen on the video. She made her way up the stairs and checked the balcony carefully. In a couple of places she noticed that the varnish had been slightly rubbed. Had a rope or cord been tied there? It was possible.
She felt very strange - like some sort of a spy on the lives of her daughter and her house-mate Lex. However, she knew she could have no peace, reach no equilibrium, until she knew the truth. She didn't search the house she just went from room to room and noticed what she found there. Essentially she found ... nothing. Well she found everything you would expect to find in a house occupied by two young female students. Some rooms were none too tidy but other than that there was nothing to cause alarm. Until she reached the final room downstairs. The locked one.
It was a door that had presumably survived since the house's grander days. A big solid wooden door with an old-fashioned keyhole. They'd had doors like that back home when Georgia had been growing up. She remembered the old keys - big metal objects. Definitely not the sort of thing that a young woman carried about with her on her key-chain.
She looked around her and saw a drawer. She pulled it open but found only spare sheets and bedding. That was the first place you might think to put the key. Then, of course, it would seem ridiculously obvious and you would think of somewhere else. She and her daughter had always joked that they seemed to think alike in many ways. She felt anxiety again at the thought but pushed it down. She focused on what her daughter would have decided to do. If Lex had hidden the key then she'd never find it.
