Taboo Sin System

Chapter 11 The Butler

Pan quickly got ready for college and moved through the private wing.

Christina's door was locked. Of course it was. She always left early, but today it felt personal. The bitch had run for her life.

Good. Let her sit in class with the memory of my hands still burned into her ass. Let her fantasize what else I'll do to her the next time we're alone.

The kitchen island adventure was only the beginning. Pan could already imagine other ways to humiliate his sister's holy spirit.

Gemina's wing was silent. She had gone off on her usual round of shopping and lunch with the other wives who lived off their husbands' accounts.

Tanya's door stood open on an empty room. School had taken her at seven, the only Osborne who left the house without an argument.

Downstairs, the ballroom doors were propped wide. Two hired men were carrying in folding tables for tonight, walking straight over the floor Pan had waxed at six that morning, leaving grey scuffs the length of the room.

Pan would be doing that floor twice, then, and nobody was going to mention it.

The house felt temporarily ownerless. The marble floors belonged to no one who could order him around for a few hours.

Pan could not have been more wrong.

He walked toward the exit only to run into an imposing figure blocking it.

Evelyn Chestnut stood with her hands clasped behind her back, spine straight, uniform crisp. The Osborne family butler.

After Gregory, she was the one who had dealt out the punishment as Pan grew up. When the Osborne patriarch was tired or busy, he simply delegated the whipping to her.

Even her face still triggered the old trauma in Pan's back. The sound of her boots on stone, the size of her shadow, had once been enough to drop his stomach through the floor.

Pan had been nine the first time she disciplined him. A broken serving dish, with Gregory away on business. Evelyn had said it would be better coming from her than waiting a week for the master.

The woman made him count the lashes out loud. When he lost the number, she started again from one.

Evelyn was a war veteran, thirty-eight and still in fighting shape. Tall, obscenely voluptuous, with large breasts that somehow defied gravity and massive thighs that could choke a man to death.

A husband had existed once. He disappeared mysteriously, and Pan had always suspected the man died in bed, under her.

Evelyn looked down at him. "Where do you think you're going?"

"College," he said.

"Hmm? Have you forgotten you are a servant of this house, Pangborn?"

Pan flinched. She was the only one who used his full name. It hit him like a slave brand every time.

"I finished all the morning chores. I'll return by four to start the pending gala work."

"Is that so?" Her voice stayed flat and cold. "It seems the Osborne house is going lightly on you these days. Come with me. There is something you need to do before you go to college."

Evelyn did not wait for agreement. She turned and expected him to follow, the way she demanded obedience out of every servant in the house.

Pan walked behind her, careful not to gaze at her large, muscular behind. If she caught him staring, she would sit on his face and crush him. The thought crept up in his mind anyway and brought darker images with it.

Something had begun to change how threats registered in him. Fear still lived in his gut. It no longer lived there alone.

The laundry room sat on the ground floor. The air smelled of detergent and steam, and fluorescent lights hummed overhead. A heap of staff clothes lay in a large basket, sleeves and collars tangled together.

"Wash the staff uniforms. Iron and press them to perfection before tonight's gala."

Pan clenched his jaw. He had never been asked to clean the staff clothes before. The demand felt deliberate, a reminder of rank and a delivery of humiliation.

"What is this? It is not on my chores and responsibility list. I am going to college."

Evelyn's slap cracked across his face. The impact snapped his head sideways. Heat bloomed over his cheek and stayed there, throbbing with his pulse.

"You little rat! You are not going anywhere until this is done. Being a legal adult does not buy you the right to talk back to me."

Evelyn stepped closer. Starch and cold metal came with her. Her presence filled the space until there was nowhere to look but the buttons straining across her chest.

"You think the title of adopted son means anything here?" she continued, voice low and hurtful. "You are still the mutt this family keeps out of pity."

"Lord Osborne may have grown soft with age, not punishing you enough, but I have not."

Her grip did not loosen. "I remember every time you talked back as a boy. I remember the sound the belt made. Don't you?"

A gloved hand shot out and gripped his chin, forcing his eyes up to hers.

"Finish the work, or I will pull your pants down and spank you in front of the staff. Every maid and footman will be watching. You won't be able to walk for weeks. Do you understand me, Pangborn?"

"The gala starts at eight," Pan protested. "There are forty uniforms in that basket."

"Then you had better stop talking and get to work."

Pan trembled in rage. Evelyn was physically stronger than him, and Gregory had given her full rights to torture him. He had no escape through normal means.

Eleven years of yes ma'am. The one morning I got my first victory in the Osborne house, and she was standing in the door ready to ruin it.

The old road of silence and endurance was still open. The system offered another.

Pan ran through what he had, one item at a time.

The Invisibility skill was spent for the day. Even with a charge it bought twenty seconds, and vanishing in front of Evelyn would tell her exactly what he was carrying. That was a card he could only play once, on somebody who could not report it.

Lewd Vision was practically useless in this situation. He did not need to know what the butler wore underneath right now. He needed her out of that doorway.

The consumable darts could force a reaction out of her. A forced kiss from a woman twice his size did not cancel an order, though, and it did not get him out of this room. A forced reaction would only hand her a reason to do worse than the laundry.

So I have to stop looking for a way out of the room. I must find a way to put her on the back foot and take back control.

Every tool the system had given him was built for taking something. None of them would actually help him escape.

Except one.

[Dark Secret Revealer Lvl 1]