This isn’t supposed to happen to guys like me. I’m not a criminal or an illegal alien. I’m a middle-class boy from a good family.

But my Dad’s business hit a rough patch, and he needed a loan to save it. And he only had one asset left that the bank would accept as collateral.

Me.

Dad said that it wouldn’t be so bad. That it would only be for a few years, and I’d be a free man again as soon as he paid off the loan. He made it sound like I’d be waiting tables or mowing lawns. Hard work that would “build character,” he told me.

But Dad hadn’t thought about how things would change once I was in the collar.

Or what other uses the bank might find for a blond eighteen-year-old slave.