Chapter 7: Return of the Slave
The shuttle touched down not in the shadowy docking bay she remembered, but on a clean, well-marked landing pad adorned with the official seal of the Canto Bight Trade Consortium. The change was so profound it felt like a physical dislocation. Rose adjusted the collar of her crisp New Republic liaison officer’s jacket—a legitimate cover, now—and stepped out into air that smelled of salted ocean and polished stone, not spice and sweat.
The palace’s exterior had been scrubbed clean. The neon was gone, replaced by tasteful illuminated signage. The smug holographic face of Rotta had been replaced by rotating artistic displays of Canto Bight’s coastline. Uniformed attendants, not Gamorrean thugs, guided traffic. Her stomach knotted. She’d heard the reports, of course. Rotta the Hutt, philanthropist. The former crime lord had leveraged his obscene wealth into legitimate shipping, construction, and entertainment conglomerates. The ‘retirement’ was the stuff of political legend. She’d argued with Finn about it, insisting it was a facade. Now, standing before it, the facade looked disconcertingly solid.
She announced herself at a sleek reception desk. “Lieutenant Tico, New Republic Compliance Bureau. Here for an unannounced audit regarding licensure for your deep-core mining ventures. I have questions about your holding company’s recent transition from… previous asset management.”
The Twi’lek receptionist, professional and polite, directed her to a sitting area of minimalist furniture and real plants. Rose waited, her knees bouncing. The silence was wrong. The gentle hum of climate control and soft Muzak was a mockery of the chaotic, vital noise that once lived in these walls.
The door whispered open. Melina stood there.
Two years had refined her, not aged her. She wore a tailored suit of slate grey, her hair pinned back in a severe, elegant twist. She looked every inch the chief operating officer her title claimed. But the sultry dark eyes were the same, and they saw through Rose’s jacket, her rank, her pretense, in an instant.
“Rose Tico,” Melina said, her soft voice carrying perfectly in the quiet room. A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “Or should I say, Lieutenant? What a surprise.”
“Ms. Carniss,” Rose said, standing, trying to project official authority. “Thank you for seeing me on short notice. As I mentioned to your receptionist, the Bureau has some concerns about the validity of your operational shift. There are… whispers. That the retirement isn’t entirely what it seems.”
Melina didn’t move from the doorway. She simply studied Rose, the silence stretching until Rose felt her cheeks grow warm.
“Come to my office,” Melina said finally, turning. “We’ll talk.”
The walk was another shock. The grand marble halls remained, but they were now galleries. The cages and opulent pits were gone, replaced by tasteful art installations and holographic stock tickers. They passed open doors where beings in business attire conducted meetings around holotables. Rose saw a Hutt—not Rotta, a smaller one—in a floating repulsor-chair, laughing with a Sullustan in a sharp suit. It was surreal.
Melina’s office was all cool blues and clean lines, a panoramic view of the sparkling city below. She sat behind a glass desk, gesturing for Rose to take the opposing chair.
“You look well, Rose. The New Republic agrees with you.” Melina leaned back, steepling her fingers. “Now. Let’s stop this. I have sources, very good ones, in several New Republic departments. There is no audit. There are no ‘whispers’ significant enough to warrant a site visit, especially not from a decorated Resistance hero turned mid-level liaison.” Her gaze sharpened. “So. You’re not here in an official capacity. Which means you’re here in a personal one. Why are you really here?”
The lie, so carefully constructed, evaporated. Rose felt the official mask crack, then shatter. She looked down at her hands, clenched in her lap. The sounds of the legitimate business around her faded, replaced by memory: the guttural grunts, the slap of skin, the taste, the overwhelming, shameful liberation of it.
“I lied,” Rose whispered to her hands. Then she looked up, meeting Melina’s knowing eyes. “I’m not here for the New Republic.”
“I know.”
“I… I think about it,” Rose said, the words feeling torn from her. “Not all the time. But sometimes. In the quiet moments. I’ll be fixing a generator or reading a report and my mind will just… go back. To the throne room. To Grakkus’s chambers. To the feeling of…” She trailed off, swallowing hard. “I had a week left. I sneaked out through the vent after five. I never finished my time.”
Melina’s expression didn’t change, but something warmed in her eyes, a familiar, assessing heat. “That was a different life, Rose. We don’t have slaves anymore. That business is closed. Rotta is a respected, if eccentric, member of the galactic community. What you’re talking about… it doesn’t exist here.”
“I know that,” Rose said, her voice gaining strength, urgency. “I see that. And part of me is glad. But another part…” She took a steadying breath. “I want to finish it. I want the five days I owed. Not as a prisoner. Not as a slave. But… as a choice. My choice.”
Melina blinked, once, slowly. “You’re asking me to…”
“I’m asking you to let me be whatever I was then. Just for five days. I want to complete the contract.” Rose leaned forward, her heart hammering against her ribs. “I want to be yours. His. However it works now.”
A long, heavy silence filled the sunlit office. Melina stood and walked to the window, looking out at her legitimate empire.
“It would be different,” Melina said, her back to Rose. “The context is gone. The fear, the coercion, the genuine powerlessness… that fueled a certain kind of fire. You can’t replicate that. Not truly.”
“I don’t want to replicate it,” Rose said. “I want the… the effect. The consequence. I’m asking for the experience, knowing I can leave. That’s the part I need.”
Melina turned. The professional mask was still there, but underneath, Rose saw the pleasure domme reawakening, intrigued, calculating. “You understand,” Melina said, her voice dropping into that familiar, gentle firmness, “that if I agree to this, if I go down to the private levels and reactivate a suite… it will not be a gentle revisitation. The reason you think about it, the reason it haunts you, is because of what it was. If I do this, I will not hold back simply because you have a safe word. I will treat you exactly as I would have then. Perhaps, given this is your choice, even more thoroughly.”
A shiver ran the length of Rose’s spine, pure and electric. The ache between her legs, a phantom for two years, became a sudden, throbbing reality.
She stood up, shedding the New Republic officer completely. She met Melina’s dark, hungry gaze.
“Good,” Rose said, a slow smile spreading on her lips. She began to unbutton her jacket. “I’m counting on it.”