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The day after their adoption papers went through, Seto drew up a contract.
“What’s this,” Gozaburo said, sneering, when Seto presented it to him.
“Our agreement,” said Seto.
It stipulated, in quite clear and detailed terms, that Seto would bear the brunt of all punishments and responsibilities associated with the Kaiba family name. In return, Gozaburo would not lay a hand on Mokuba, for any reason; not even to hug him.
Gozaburo laughed, looking the document over. “Looks like you’ve got some promising business sense after all.”
His expression was amused, but got frostier as he read on. Seto had been extremely thorough. There was no room for loopholes or technicalities. By the end, his face with twisted with contempt, but he took out his pen and signed.
“I’ll be keeping this,” Gozaburo said.
“Yes, sir,” Seto said. Relief bubbled up inside him, but he did not show it.
Then the collar went on, and it did not come off for six years.
Gozaburo’s accelerated study program occupied the majority of his time. He was locked inside a spare office, tiny, with a rigid desk and chair. This was where his schooling took place.
Mathematics. Calculus, statistics. The sciences, physical and applied: chemistry, physics, computer technology, engineering. World history, Japanese history, business history. Literature. Strategy. Accounting, finance, economics.
His sleep suffered. He would be denied food, and only allowed to drink water. He learned to drink sparingly, because at times, Gozaburo would deny him use of the bathroom as well.
After a grueling year of this, Gozaburo hired a formal tutor, and Seto learned the subtleties of sonkeigo and practical business etiquette. Another tutor, and he learned languages. English and Mandarin, to start. Then Russian, French, Arabic, and German. Another tutor. Piano. Another. Self-defense.
Go. Mahjong. Shogi. Chess.
By the time Seto was admitted to Domino High, years later, his attendance was merely a formality.
Then there was the pageantry. Performance. This was the outward image Gozaburo had him assume for the rest of the word. The perfect son. Events he attended as Gozaburo’s heir, the brilliant young prodigy; events he attended as a representative of Kaiba Corporation. Events where Gozaburo paraded him around like his trophy-winning dog, head held high under the weight of dozens of hungry gazes. A face he presented to everyone else, and, sometimes, to Mokuba. It was acting.
It didn’t come naturally to him. Not like the studies did. But in time, he learned, and it got easier. He grew into his mask and became it.
When he wasn’t studying, Gozaburo would bring him to Kaiba Corporation and have him kneel seiza beside him in business meetings, or in his office, the collar’s leash detached but coiled on top of his desk like a whip, and a warning. He was to keep still and quiet unless spoken to directly. The visiting businessmen and high-ranking employees who witnessed this seemed unperturbed, and if they were, knew better than to mention it.
They had all become well-aware of Seto’s existence: his training was no secret. But it was clear they wouldn’t dare go against Gozaburo, or question his methods, for fear of immediate dismissal from their jobs. And it seemed, at times, as if some of them actively approved.
Seto felt their eyes on him, judging, appraising, and felt his skin crawl. But he watched them right back. Soon, he knew the names and faces of every majority shareholder, board member, and upper-level employee in the company.
By the time he was allowed to get up, his legs were numb, and he could barely stand.
At the end of the day, when they were back at the mansion, tucked into Gozaburo’s richly upholstered, smoke and whiskey-soaked study, Gozaburo would ask him to recount every single detail of those meetings, and to apply what he’d learned. Most of the time, Gozaburo would seem satisfied with his answers: Seto was a very quick study, good with numbers, good with strategy. But he was not always correct.
If he gave an unsatisfactory answer, or failed to remember, Gozaburo would punish him. First, with open-handed slaps, and then with close-fisted hits, blunt and strong, which left him smeared with ugly ink-splotch bruises. The worst of the hits were aimed below the neck, to be covered later by bespoke Mandarin collar suits, like a fresh tablecloth over stained wood.
His reward for correct responses was a nod and a grunt, and if Gozaburo was feeling generous, extra time to see Mokuba. It was all he looked forward to, until it wasn’t.
Perhaps he should have seen it coming. Perhaps he had, foolishly, let hope and ambition cloud his judgment.
He’d accounted for cruelty. He’d expected it. But he hadn’t accounted for this.
In the Kaiba Corporation executive office, far above the glittering Domino skyline, Gozaburo looked him over, grunted, and said, “You’ll be thirteen soon, won’t you.”
“Yes, sir,” Seto said.
“Old enough to keep a man’s cock warm.”
For a moment, the words did not register. They could not have possibly been spoken. He stared at Gozaburo, stunned. His control slipped, and the sting of fear must have shown in his eyes, for Gozaburo smiled cruelly and pressed his advantage.
“How about a little trial run? Knees.”
Seto couldn’t move. Gozaburo struck him, and he reeled. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
Seto got on his knees, cheek throbbing.
There was a strange buzzing in his ears. His skin felt like it was about to peel right off. Flake away like ash. Maybe he’d burn up on the spot. He swallowed bile.
Gozaburo didn’t take his cock out, but he did grab the back of Seto’s head and crush his face against his groin.
“Feel that?” he grunted, combing a hand through Seto’s hair. “That’ll be your birthday present, boy.”
He rutted against Seto’s mouth and cheek, the rigid line of him getting harder with each deliberate thrust. His huge hand curved nearly halfway around Seto’s skull, his grip immovable as steel, crushing. It was impossible not to feel how big he was. The heat of it was intense, even through the thick, expensive material of his suit. Seto felt like he was being branded.
Then Gozaburo let him go. The heat lingered like a stain.
Smirking, he grasped the outline of his dick through his suit, and the long hard bulge of it looked as big as it had felt. Seto looked at it detachedly, blankly. He was going to have to put that in his mouth.
In retrospect, it seemed a kindness that Gozaburo would warn him. He had time to prepare.
Then it became a duty like any other.
“Business is like chess,” Gozaburo said. “There’s a strategy for everything.”
Since the adoption, they had continued to play. One game, every evening.
Gozaburo always took white, and thus had the advantage. His favored aggressive strategies that sacrificed material to achieve his goal. Seto, playing black, was nearly always forced to defend, his pieces smothered and trapped. Yet, when Seto attempted to develop his pieces to attack, Gozaburo had him mated much faster than when he played defensively.
“You’re weak,” Gozaburo snorted. “Weak strategy, weak player. You think you’re being clever? I can see right through you.”
Seto was good, but he wasn’t good enough. Not yet. With Gozaburo taking him seriously, scrutinizing his every move, he couldn’t afford to cheat again, and so he lost. And when he lost, he was punished.
When he was twelve, Gozaburo made him bend over, undo his trousers, and hold onto the edge of the big cherrywood desk. He was subjected to the switch. One lash for every move it took to complete the match. That year, the most had been thirty-four; the least, seventeen. Gozaburo made him recite the each game’s notation from memory: white pawn to b3, black pawn to e5, white bishop to b2, black knight to c6—
When he was thirteen, he was made to bend over Gozaburo’s lap instead, trousers shoved down, ass-up over broad, muscled thighs. Gozaburo used his hand. Each hit landed like a brick, rattling through him, as vicious as a swinging cudgel. Queen’s Gambit, declined, Albin Countergambit, white d-file pawn takes black pawn at e5, black pawn to d4—
When he was fourteen, after the punishment, Gozaburo used both hands to spread him open, and worked a thick, blunt finger inside of him. Seto had been expecting it—for years, he had been expecting it—so it was easy to let go, float away, to simply shut down and allow the invasion to happen.
Gozaburo didn’t touch his cock. He never did. But Seto came anyway, helplessly, unable to escape from overwhelming sensation of being roughly penetrated, and the corded suit-clad thigh pressing inexorably into his dick. The orgasm fired like a distant gunshot across the landscape of his mind. A wave of startled birds out of a field of grass. Fireworks over rolling hills, a pretty explosion far away. The pleasure barely reached him, dull and unsatisfying, filtered through a haze of pain and denial. He didn’t want it to feel good, but it did.
“Liked that, did you?” said Gozaburo, holding him open with a single broad thumb, inspecting his work. It burned, but Seto didn’t flinch. He only barely registered it. “Pathetic.”
He was put back on his knees. His heels dug into bruised, throbbing flesh, and he almost gasped at the shock of pain. Sitting seiza was agony. Gozaburo took hold of his jaw and guided him to the stains he’d left, spattered over the bulge of Gozaburo’s cock. “Clean it.”
Head swimming, Seto dragged his tongue against the rough, dampened fabric, collecting the smears of his own semen. It was a tweed suit, and scraped his tongue like sandpaper. The hard bulge jumped as he licked against it. He felt sick.
When he was done, Gozaburo undid his belt, laughing. “You want more, eh? Greedy little shit.”
The nature of a gambit was to sacrifice material in the hopes of later obtaining an advantageous position.
It felt, at times, that all Seto did was sacrifice.
When Gozaburo was in a good mood, he would summon Seto to his study. Chopin, or maybe Liszt, would be pumping out of the old record player. The air was thick the stale antique smell of old books. While the music played, he smoked a cigar, and had Seto kneel down beside him.
Gozaburo’s hand would stroke through his hair, petting heavily down his nape. His fingers would linger at his collar, sometimes dipping beneath, as if testing the thickness and looseness of the leather. It would pull tight at his neck, and Seto would hold his breath. But nothing would come of it.
When he was feeling particularly magnanimous, he would make Seto lay his head against his thigh, like an old, faithful dog. The thick smoke would curl in the air, sharp, pungent. The haunting music would throb in Seto’s ears. Each chord rattled through him, jangling his nerves. His blood raced, hot under his skin.
But still, nothing happened. They would stay that way, and Gozaburo wouldn’t speak, though he might read a book, or look over documents, absentmindedly stroking Seto’s head all the while—gentle, fond sweeps, affection-laden and terrible. Seto never dared speak. Didn’t want to break that careful, awful equilibrium. So he floated, unmoored, lulled into unreality.
But it couldn’t last. And sure enough, one night Gozaburo said abruptly, “You're a lucky find. Strong. Fit to be a Kaiba. Any other upstart would've broken a long time ago.”
Forced out of his hazy meditative state, frozen with unease, Seto stayed silent. But that was all Gozaburo said for a long while, until the ticking clock struck eleven, and eleven gentle chimes echoed along with the music, discordant and off-beat.
Then he tugged the leash. Seto came up, knees screaming. Gozaburo drew him into his lap. Acrid, alcohol-soaked breath blew over his face, and Seto’s gut churned.
“Don’t just sit there, you ungrateful brat,” Gozaburo said. “Give your father a goodnight kiss.”
Seto threw up in the servants’ bathroom just minutes later, shivering. The stain of Gozaburo’s lips on his mouth, the vile cigar-taste of his tongue still vivid and strong.
It had not been a father’s kiss.
Gozaburo couldn’t win all the time. He was just a man, like any other, and Seto was determined to find his weak point.
When Gozaburo was out of the mansion on a business trip, Seto went looking for tournament footage. It wasn’t difficult: he found boxes full of VHS tapes of his matches, tucked discreetly away, each clearly labeled. But there was one box that was different than the others, the tapes inside dusty and untouched: his losses.
GOZABURO KAIBA vs. GARRY KASPAROV
Moscow, 1988. 39 moves. Win: Kasparov.
GOZABURO KAIBA vs. MIYOKO WATAI
Domino, 1990. 31 moves. Win: Watai.
GOZABURO KAIBA vs. NIGEL SHORT
London, 1993. 26 moves. Win: Short.
Seto pored over each match religiously, studying, examining, but there was one he couldn’t stop watching. And when he wasn’t watching, it played on repeat in the back of his mind, until it had dug a little trench, looping over and over.
GOZABURO KAIBA vs. VESELIN TOPALOV
New York, 1994. 44 moves. Win: Topalov.
It was a brilliant attacking game. Topalov, black, had used the Sicilian Najdorf defense, aiming for a minority attack on Gozaburo’s queenside. On his twenty-third move, he’d put his rook on a seemingly meaningless square; several moves later, he’d opened that sector of the board and activated his pieces, chasing Gozaburo’s king and eventually driving it to capture.
It had been an outstanding little bit of strategy that had ultimately cost Gozaburo the game: he hadn’t been playing defensively enough, obsessed with advancing his own offensive attack, obsessed with winning.
That single-mindedness had cost him. And the defeat had clearly scalded.
It brought a cruel smirk to Seto’s mouth, watching him lose. Watching the mounting fury in his eyes as he realized his options were thinning. The man was fallible. He could be defeated.
In fact, Gozaburo was an easy opponent to understand: strip away the trappings, and he was just a brute, concerned only with cultivating and maintaining power. It was the way in which he enforced that power that was difficult to navigate. He had a strong, iron grasp of strategy, and the capital to enforce it. But his pride made him overconfident.
Seto soon began to entertain fantasy matches. The both of them would sit opposite each other, the last bracket of a tournament, the world’s eyes upon them, feasting.
Gozaburo, opening, would play his pawn to e4. Seto would counter with a Sicilian Defense—his pawn to c5, attacking from the c-file, fighting for center control. Then, after Gozaburo played his knight to f3, Seto would set up the Dragon Variation of the defense; he would fianchetto a bishop on the h8-a1 diagonal, targeting Gozaburo queenside.
When Gozaburo’s king was on the half-open c-file, the path to victory clear and sharp as glass, Seto’s pieces would fuse into a sinuous creature of scales and teeth and claws, and it would tear Gozaburo’s throat out, spattering the chessboard in bright red blood.
The crowd would go wild.
Seto, victorious, would smile.
He slept in a tiny room on the first floor, cold and barren, save for piles and piles of books. One night, the mattress dipped beside him, and Seto felt a hand on his waist. Fear lanced through him before he could suppress it, deep and instinctual, and he froze.
But it was only Mokuba.
He was a dim shape in the darkness, but real and familiar, and he said, “Nii-sama?”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Seto croaked. Mokuba must’ve picked the lock. But if he was caught, they would both be punished.
Mokuba shook his head.
“I don’t care.” He pressed in tight, like they used to do, tucking himself against Seto’s chest. “I miss you.”
At nine years of age, Mokuba was a tiny thing, small and slight, and barely came up to Seto’s waist—nothing at all like their huge, towering stepfather. Still, it took a monumental effort of will to return the physical touch, to put an arm around him. Mokuba was his brother, his world. Not his enemy.
“I hate that you’re always gone,” Mokuba said. He fell quiet, and the oldness and stillness of the little room seemed to press in on them. Then he mumbled, “You’re not like you were.”
Weak. Useless.
Seto did not answer. Mokuba held him tighter, clinging defiantly, as if trying to bring him back through touch alone.
The meeting was held in the executive conference room, the east bank of windows overlooking Domino’s massive business district. Gozaburo sat at the head of the table, alone, facing an array of large flat screens. They were on standby, waiting to flicker to life at exactly three o’clock.
As always, Seto knelt beside him. But this time, the leash was on, and Gozaburo wrapped his fist up in the leather, pulling it taut. He spread his legs, his exquisitely-tailored suit pulling tight over the thick bulge of his cock.
With a dull pang, Seto knew exactly what he was going to be expected to do.
"Get under there."
Lifelessly, Seto shifted forward and under the lip of the table, the bruises on his knees tender with pain, close enough to catch a whiff of Gozaburo’s cologne. It clogged his nose: a sickening fragrance that reminded him strongly of moss and old leather. He hated that smell. Hated it like he hated the smell of Gozaburo’s cigars. The smoky tobacco scent clung to his skin like a miasma, like it was a part of him, living in his pores and in his sweat.
“This is an important meeting,” Gozaburo said. The low threat of punishment coated his voice like honey. “Keep me hard, but don’t make me come.”
Seto nodded jerkily, not trusting himself to speak, but Gozaburo said, sounding darkly amused, “Tell me you understand, boy.”
“Yes, sir,” he forced out, just barely getting his jaw to move. “I understand.”
Nausea writhed in his gut, but he pushed it down. It was getting easier as time went on. Just another game.
Gozaburo unzipped. His cock, already swollen, hung fat and blood-heavy over the parted flaps of his suit trousers, balls straining plumply against his inseam.
The leash tugged. Seto bent forward. Gozaburo eased himself into Seto’s mouth just as the first screen flickered to life.
At first, it had been easy to divorce himself from the act. The requirements of the game were simple, and human bodies had tells. Gozaburo’s were easy to parse after some experimentation, and after that, he could redirect his focus. While he carefully, gently suckled, he listened to the meeting, the callous hum of powerful men discussing plans that would, when implemented, almost certainly kill thousands of innocents.
Profit. That was all they cared about. Seto let the contempt wash over him. He hated these people more than he had ever hated anything. If—when—he won, he would ruin them all.
But by the end, it was difficult to remain disconnected from the experience. Seto’s jaw ached, and his mouth felt raw and numb, lips tight and puffy. Humiliatingly, drool had crept down his chin and onto the floor in long dripping strings. He could taste nothing, smell nothing, but Gozaburo. His head was swimming with it. He longed for fresh, clean air. The cloying humidity of sweat and damp hair choked him more than the hard flesh ever could.
One of his hands snuck down and grabbed the back of Seto’s head, holding him still. The leash pulled tight in his other fist. Seto fought not to gag, struggling to take it. His nose touched thick curly hair, and the scent of sweat and salt and that musky cologne had him dizzyingly nauseous again.
“That’s all, gentlemen,” Gozaburo said, sounding brisk but pleased, and the meeting was concluded. Seto heard chairs being pushed back, of doors being opened, and then the tell-tale click and fizz of the monitors turning off, one by one. But Gozaburo stayed where he was, and so did Seto, thighs burning, still obediently nursing on his cock.
It twitched in his mouth, hard as nails. Gozaburo’s grip loosened, and he swept the hair off of Seto’s forehead in a parody of affection.
Seto wasn’t expecting praise, and received none. But he knew he had done well; Gozaburo would have struck him otherwise.
“Listen up, boy. When you are in a position of power, do everything to maintain it. Never give your opponent an opportunity to gain the upper hand. If they forget their place, remind them.”
Gozaburo pulled him off his cock.
“Kiss it,” he said, hand strong on Seto’s jaw. Numbly, Seto leaned forward and kissed the flushed, saliva-slick head. Gozaburo made a darkly pleased noise, like the purring growl of a predator.
Then he gripped himself in one meaty hand and started to stroke. Seto knew what was about to happen, so he closed his eyes and braced himself. He felt the hot fluid stripe across his face and suppressed a violent shudder of disgust.
When he opened his eyes, Gozaburo was doing up his fly and buckling his belt, rings glinting on his thick fingers. Seto kept his eyes on those hands: he didn’t want to crane his head back to look at Gozaburo’s face, didn’t want to see the look of awful, smug triumph.
Gozaburo’s fingers gripped his chin, as immovable as steel, and turned Seto’s head to survey the mess he’d left.
“Don’t wash it off,” he warned, and let Seto go.
Seto stared into nothing, and felt nothing, for a very long moment. When at last he forced himself to get to his feet—and he could barely stand, thigh muscles screaming in protest—Gozaburo was gone, and the semen was beginning to dry, pulling tightly at the skin of his face.
He could hide all the usual traces of ownership beneath high stiff standing collars of his suits and school uniform, but he could not hide this.
He waited until he no longer felt the urge to vomit, or to scream. Then, stiffly, divorced from the reality of it, he made himself walk forward.
Endure. Sacrifice. Think ahead. Develop your pieces. Win.
He could see the path to victory. Distant, maybe. But certain.
At the beginning, he had clung to memories of his childhood. He would review them when his physical body ached, a soothing mental balm against the abrasions of reality.
The blurry, time-distorted faces of his father and mother. The taste of her home-cooked nikujaga. The calming rumble of his father’s voice. The first time he had been allowed to hold Mokuba.
Mokuba had been crying, his ugly little face scrunched up as he wailed. But then Seto had picked him up and cradled him in his arms, and he’d stopped, his big eyes glassy-red and puffy. Mokuba’s pudgy hand, so tiny and soft, had patted aimlessly at his cheek, grasping at something to hold. He’d caught Seto’s nose, and then his hair, and then, finally, his finger.
Seto had felt something within himself shift and click into place. Above anything else, this was his purpose. He’d known it so clearly then.
I’d die before I let anything happen to you.
That boy was dead now, he decided. He had died—or had, at least, begun to rot—when the collar went on. Perhaps it was best to imagine he’d never existed. It was some other life, lived by some other boy, the soft innocence of it long dissolved in the acid of time. He was was stronger now. He had learned the value of control, of power. The past was gone. He would never look back. He had risen above it.
To win, you must move forward.
On his sixteenth birthday, Gozaburo presented him with the billion-yen loan and the contract, and 2% of Kaiba Corporation’s shares, for both himself and for Mokuba.
Make 100 billion yen in one year or lose everything. That was the deal.
It was an impossible test. Seto accepted. He wouldn’t need a year. He didn’t need to pass it. It was, at last, the opening he’d been waiting for.
That night, as if sensing this, Gozaburo tied him to the bed and fucked him.
“You think you’re going to win,” Gozaburo grunted, hunched over him. “You’re just a parasite, leeching off your betters. You’ll never get the best of me. You’ll never amount to anything. You’ll always be gutter trash. I’ll crush you like an ant.”
If they forget their place, remind them.
It had only ever been fingers, before. Now, he felt ripped apart.
It was, of course, obvious: Gozaburo expected him to lose. The test was impossible on purpose. He had no intention of letting him inherit, no intention of ever letting Seto succeed him in any way. He would die before he gave up control of the company. He wanted Seto under his heel, perfectly obedient, maintaining an outward appearance of filial perfection. To him, Seto was nothing but a resource, property, capital. A tool to be used, bent, remolded in his image. A mirror of mercury, fluid and flattering.
“Make some noise. Show me how much you like it.”
Seto forced himself to moan. It sounded more like a harsh gasp, spilling out of him like jagged shards of glass. He half-expected to see blood on the pillow.
“Louder,” Gozaburo said. “Scream. I want to hear it.”
He couldn’t do it. He still had some pride left.
Gozaburo yanked violently on the leash. “Scream, brat!”
Seto choked and screamed.
Gozaburo bent over him, breathing ragged, his cock a steel bar of heat inside him.
“Hear that?” Gozaburo rasped, into the sudden, suffocating silence. “That’s right. It’s nothing. Nobody’s coming to save you. It’s just us, boy. Just you and me.”
Not Mokuba, alone in his room; studying, unaware. Not the staff, who were paid to turn a blind eye. The mansion was so big, it was unlikely anyone had even heard him. Of course Seto wasn’t going to be rescued. He’d grown out of that stupid, childish fantasy a long time ago.
He would do it himself. He had to.
Endure. Sacrifice. Endure.
Satisfied, Gozaburo resumed the punishment. He pounded into Seto with painful, humiliating slaps of flesh. The bruises from Gozaburo’s hands and the crop throbbed in agony. It was like a hydraulic hammer pounding him into the mattress, unstoppable, unrelenting. It went on for a long time, until his wrists were rubbed raw, and horrible pleasure was vibrating shrilly in him: a horsehair bow scraping slowly across a string.
It couldn’t be helped. He came weakly, cock shoving against the bedsheets with every battering thrust, long before Gozaburo was done. The nauseating flare of pleasure felt wrenched from him, torn out like a weed, and was quickly gone. He did not get hard again.
When Gozaburo got close, he bore down and pulled hard on the leash, like Seto was a frothing mount, drawing him up into a straining arch. Seto couldn’t breathe. Bright spots danced before his eyes. Without his permission, his body panicked and began to struggle, scrambling for air. But he was completely immobilized, speared on Gozaburo’s pistoning cock. Unable to escape. Unable to do anything but try, weakly, to fight back.
It didn’t work. The world went fuzzy and dark. Gozaburo was grunting like a pig as he fucked him, unrelenting and unrestrained—until at last he went rigid, and gave the leash some slack: Seto wheezed, gasping for breath, even as his vision flickered and blurred, feeling Gozaburo pulse sluggishly inside him.
He pulled out. The crushing weight lifted from his back. Seto coughed, wracked with shivers of pain and disgust. Semen slipped out of him in a revolting rivulet of heat.
Gozaburo chuckled and patted his hip like he was a prize-winning stallion. “I’ll have you sit on my cock next time, boy, since you seem to like it so much. Make you do all the work.”
Then Gozaburo put on his robe and smoked a cigar, sitting in the leather wingback chair by the window. He did not untie Seto. He watched him instead. Seto fought muscle tremors as he lay there, numb from the waist down, come drying against his balls. He felt it staining his insides, the filth of it poisoning him, contaminating him. It was a fungus. A sickness. Mold. Rotting him from the inside out.
He would not show weakness. He closed his eyes and went somewhere else for a while.
At first, it kept happening in the bed, Seto tied to the headboard, fucked into the mattress like before. But then it drifted, slid sideways: after their Friday chess matches, Gozaburo would continue to open him up, push a finger in deep where he was still slick. He’d manhandle Seto up on his knees and make him sink down onto his cock right there in the study, hands huge and controlling on Seto’s waist. Seto clawed his fingers on the back of the leather chair, Gozaburo’s clinking belt buckle digging painfully into the backs of his thighs.
Queen’s Gambit, Queen’s Gambit accepted, white knight to f3, black knight to f6, white pawn to e3, black pawn to e6—
Each move mirrored, irreverent. Then, the punishment. White bishop takes black pawn.
Seto would never touch himself, even when molten pleasure seared through him. He refused, even when he became desperately, shamefully hard. The sensation was inescapable. His body betrayed him over and over again, stimulated in ways he couldn’t shut out or off, and he hated it. How his breath stuttered. How the sweat dampened his hair, slipped down his spine, smearing under the collar.
Gozaburo would laugh, seeing his shame. “Remember, boy,” he’d grunt, grabbing Seto by the neck and thrusting hard and fast, hitting something inside him that sent scorching heat up his spine, “I own you.”
Then Seto would come, semen dripping thinly down his cock, while muted ecstasy ruined his careful detachment. Sometimes, Gozaburo made him stay that way: kept stretching him open with his thick, fat dick, unmoving, except for a few shallow rocking thrusts now and then, until Seto’s body was shrilling in overstimulation.
Gozaburo may have thought he was beating Seto down, that he was winning and had been all along, but he didn’t see the reality of things. He was too blinded by his own power, just like the match against Topalov. He’d gotten comfortable, sure of his victory. Why else would he have given Seto the loan, if he wasn’t absolutely certain of his own success?
But Gozaburo failed to understand that the game was no longer just between them. He was too focused on keeping Seto chained to a rock to realize that the world was warping around him, that Seto had moved the goalposts. That he held the strings. That he was gathering them, one by one, into his fist.
Seto was no stranger to cheating. He’d realized long ago that if he had any hope of winning, he had to change the rules of engagement. Make his play when Gozaburo wasn’t looking, in the periphery of his vision, the dusty dark corners of his gilded cage. That was how he’d gotten himself in, after all. Except this time, he had everything to lose, and everything to gain.
When the time came, either he would win, or he would lose, and he could not lose. He just couldn’t.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the topography of Domino reflected brightly in the afternoon sun, shimmering with heat and light. The sky was a solid wash of blue, not a cloud in sight.
Standing before Gozaburo’s desk was a man Seto had seen only a few times before, but whose name he knew from memory: Okada Hisao, one of Kaiba Corporation’s top investors. He was an older man, middle-aged. Late-forties, maybe, with a pleasant, handsome face. Seto had once seen him grope a hostess at one of their corporate dinners, arm over her shoulder, hand casually squeezing at her breast.
He looked nervous now, which was not uncommon to see in people who were meeting with Gozaburo. But it was a skittish kind of nervousness. It was clear he didn’t want to be there, and had been wanting to make his excuses to leave, but Seto had arrived before he could.
“Perfect timing,” Gozaburo said smoothly. “Okada, this is my stepson and heir, Seto.”
It was impossible that Okada didn’t already know who he was. Seto’s face was as well-known as his stepfather’s by now, at least to the corporate elite.
“Seto, this man backed out of a very important deal at the last minute, and has cost me quite a bit of money. Unfortunately for him, it was the wrong move. Now he's come back to grovel at my feet. Isn't that right, Okada-san?”
Before giving Okada a chance to answer, Gozaburo continued, “Of course, apologies aren't good enough. So Seto is going to teach you a lesson about loyalty, and why you shouldn’t challenge your betters if you don’t have the skill to win.”
Seto hadn’t known why he was there until that moment. Then he knew all at once.
“You can’t be serious,” said Okada, half-laughing. His eyes darted furtively from Gozaburo to Seto and then back again. “Kaiba-san, what is this?”
Gozaburo laughed. It was a cruel laugh. “Go ahead, boy. Just like I showed you.”
He knew what that meant. He knew what Gozaburo wanted him to do.
Tendrils of ice curled throughout his entire body, freezing him over.
He would not show weakness.
It took effort to walk forward, but in a moment, he was standing before Okada, looking down his nose at him. Okada seemed taken aback. A flash of doubt crossed his face. He must have never thought to cross Gozaburo before, or else he would be shaking in fear. As it was, he merely seemed offended.
“Well?” Seto said, his voice as stiff and cold as he felt. “Get down on your knees and beg for forgiveness.”
Okada spluttered, seemingly incensed that a sixteen year-old would dare speak to him that way. “Excuse me?”
“Get,” Seto said, “down.”
He kicked out at Okada’s legs, and he toppled with a shout of pain, falling to the floor on his hands and knees. Before he could struggle back up, Seto put his shoe on the back of Okada’s skull, pushing until his forehead touched the polished hardwood in full dogeza. “Good,” he said. “Now, beg.”
Okada tried to push back, but couldn't dislodge the crushing pressure. “You little bastard,” he hissed. “How dare you!”
“That's no way to speak to your superior.”
“A good start,” Gozaburo said, watching from behind his desk. “But he’s not sorry enough. He needs to show real penitence. Punish him.”
The line of Okada’s shoulders stiffened. “What—” he said, before Seto kicked him in the face.
He went sprawling. Blood began to gush from his nose. He clutched at it, staring up at Seto in disbelief. Little red dots dripped onto his collar and slid between the slats of his fingers.
Seto strode forward. Okada scrambled back, but there was nowhere to run.
It was remarkably easy to overpower him. This man was used to leather office chairs and top shelf alcohol; he didn’t know how to fight. But Seto did.
He hauled Okada up, twisted his arms behind his back, and put him face-down over the desk.
“You don’t have to do this,” Okada was pleading, panicked. “You don’t have to listen to him!”
Seto didn’t answer. He was already gone, only barely involved with what his hands were doing. He would make it quick. There would be pain—there was always pain—but then it would be over.
He didn’t bother to undress Okada more than was needed for direct access. Okada struggled, shouting in horrified incredulity, but Seto was stronger, and he had Okada bared in a matter of seconds.
“Kaiba! You bastard! You can't do this!”
Gozaburo had the riding crop out. He had stood, coming around the desk to stand at Seto’s shoulder, a mean, looming wall of a man. “That's where you're mistaken,” he said. “I can do whatever I want.”
“Please,” begged Okada, trembling now. “Stop. Stop. I’ll do anything, please, I’ll get you the money—”
Okada was being too loud. The office was soundproofed, the doors locked, but it put Seto’s teeth on edge, hearing him wail. Deftly, he got Okada’s tie loose enough to pull out of his collar and up around his mouth, knotting it tight behind his head, and the yelling gurgled into a muffled bellow.
“Cooperate,” he said, voice devoid of inflection. Okada did not cooperate. Seto pried him open with a thumb, but the man howled and clenched down hard.
“Be aggressive,” Gozaburo said. He hit Seto sharply with the crop, right in the small of the back, as if correcting his posture. “Attack with purpose. Overpower your enemy.”
Win material. Develop your pieces. Protect your king. Control the board.
Make intelligent, purposeful moves toward achieving your objective.
Sacrifice.
Gozaburo’s meaty hand passed over his waist, down over his hip. He pressed forward. His cock dug into Seto’s ass, straining. His cigar-stained breath stirred his hair.
“This is real power,” he said. “The power to make grown men weep. To strip them of their fragile pride. To make them submit. To break them. Reduce them to nothing.”
Sacrifice.
Win.
Gozaburo’s fingers slid beneath the waistband of his trousers, searching. He undid his fly, cupping him in hand, and Seto jerked. It was the first time Gozaburo had ever held his cock. The touch was warm, steady, and coaxed him quickly into an erection.
He forced his mind away.
“That’s it,” Gozaburo rumbled in his ear, positioning him. “Now. Fuck him.”
With a nudge of his hips, Gozaburo helped push him in. It was too dry, too tight. Okada yelled again and started to bleed, but that made it easier. Seto did not stop. He watched himself sink into the man with a clinical, detached fascination. Gozaburo withdrew, but the touch of the crop wasn’t far away, a light pressure on his spine.
He had never been inside another person before. There was so much heat. The wet warmth of the blood. The shuddering convulsions. The ring of muscle, struggling to take him, constricting uselessly. Clinging to the head of his dick. An unwanted, poisonous burst of pleasure fired in him, sharp, like the bite of a striking snake. Acid rose in the back of his throat, burning. He forced it back down.
He was in control.
“Good boy,” Gozaburo said, coolly. “Make sure he comes. Make him enjoy his defeat.”
Okada whimpered like a wounded animal, over and over again. It sounded like please, please, please.
Pathetic. At least he’d never begged.
Seto fucked him.
There was blood on his cock. Smears of pink on the clean white of his suit.
His hands were shaking.
Weak!
They stopped shaking. He tucked himself away.
Okada lay unmoving, save for the shudder of his shoulders, the rough, ragged breathing. Semen leaked out of him and down a pale, trembling thigh. He had come against the desk with Seto’s hand tight around his cock, twitching like a fish out of water. His cries had turned into helpless bleating moans halfway through. Seto felt a sneer curl his mouth.
Then Gozaburo’s hands were on him. One on his waist. The other under his collar, fingers crooked and pulling.
“Feel that? That’s real power. Absolute domination. He’ll fear you for the rest of his life.”
Gozaburo’s hand pushed down on his shoulder. Obediently, Seto went to his knees.
“If you give up now, I won’t send you back.” Gozaburo caressed his cheek, deceptively gentle. “I can be merciful. Admit your loss. I’ll keep you, and that little brat. You can pay me back in other ways.”
Seto stared coldly up at him. He knew what his answer would get him, but he didn’t care. “The game isn’t over yet.”
Gozaburo slapped him. The pain was sharp and familiar, but faded quickly.
“Then you’ll end up just like him,” he said, and unzipped to free his straining cock, flushed and dripping. “You’re going to lose. Just give up.”
No. He wouldn’t lose. He would be better.
Gozaburo pushed up against Seto's lips, smearing them with fluid. Automatically, he opened his mouth, closed his lips over the slick head; Gozaburo grabbed a fistful of his hair and shoved himself in, right down his throat. Seto gagged, then forcibly relaxed, and Gozaburo nudged even further in. The press of his balls, still trapped beneath a layer of cotton and chalk-striped wool, were warm and soft against Seto’s chin. The zipper dug into his cheek. He closed his eyes.
Suddenly the cock left his mouth, and Gozaburo slapped him again. “Eyes up,” he said, low and dangerous. “Look at your father when you're sucking his cock.”
Seto swallowed, feeling the fluid stick in his throat as he did. He clenched both fists on his thighs. “Yes, sir,” he said dully, and kept his eyes on Gozaburo’s flinty grey gaze as he fed himself back into Seto’s mouth.
“Fuck, you really are a born cocksucker,” Gozaburo breathed, running a hand through Seto’s hair. “It's a real shame. Even if you lose, maybe I'll keep you around, just for this.” He gave a thick, deep sigh, pushing hard against Seto’s tongue. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, boy? You’d have my cock whenever you wanted it. And when your brother’s old enough, he’d have it too. Long hair like that, might even pass for a girl. He’d be real pretty then.”
Once, the words might have incensed him beyond reason. Now, he simply refused to react; refused to even consider the idea. Seto would kill Gozaburo himself before he ever let that happen. Kill him without a second thought. Kill him a thousand times over.
Blood on a chessboard. The roar of a crowd. Thunderous applause.
His gaze slid to the side, and with a dull jolt, he found Okada watching him.
His eyes were dark and glassy, and drying tear tracks streaked his face. But his mouth was set around the spit-soaked tie, and there was an edge of cruel vindication in the clench of his jaw. But—pity, too. Horrible and condemning.
A long-forgotten emotion—shame—bubbled up in Seto’s chest. Fury soon followed, frozen, crystallized. Knives of ice between his ribs.
That piece of trash. He’d lost. What right did he have to look at Seto like he was something lesser?
What right did he have to witness—to witness this—
Humiliation.
Disgust flooded him. He tore his gaze away. Back to Gozaburo, who was watching his own cock slide wetly in and out of Seto’s mouth. He hadn’t noticed Seto’s eyes wander, but now he sunk two fingers behind the collar and began fucking Seto’s mouth in earnest, stroking in sloppy and rough. The crop dug under his chin. Seto’s jaw ached, and his throat ached, and the urge to gag was extreme. But he took it, eyes watering.
Gozaburo seemed to like that, seeing him cry. He gave a low rumbling groan and started to come.
“Swallow it,” he grunted, shoved in deep, cock pulsing hot down Seto’s throat. His eyes were fixed on the way the collar stretched tight with each gulp. “Good. Good boy.”
He was so far in that Seto couldn’t even taste it. His vision blurred and stung, and he longed to cough. Gozaburo swiped a thumb under his eye, smearing the tears toward his temple, and laughed. Then he let go.
Seto reared back and finally coughed, shoulders hunched. Saliva dripped from his mouth as he heaved for breath, but he didn’t try to wipe it away. He stared at the way the cool light reflected off of Gozaburo’s shiny wingtips, wavering, as if it would rather be anywhere else.
Gozaburo patted the side of his face with two hard, jarring smacks.
“Know when you’ve been beaten, son,” he said. Then he tucked himself away and left.
Incredibly, Seto felt like laughing. It knotted up in his gut like a ball of wire, barbed and cruel.
The flash of teeth. A spray of red.
“Yes, father,” he rasped, and felt his mouth form into a rictus of a smile. “You will.”