I decided on the relationship between these characters for my Legacy, well before I did much with the smuggler storyline. So I didn’t know how close it paralleled the Darmas plot.

Kirya leaned back from the terminal, her stomach churning. Just one message. Four sentences. Must have been sent to her by mistake.

“Batch sold but for less than you wanted. Try some general laborers next time. Credits already deposited in your account, minus my commission as usual. Pleasure doing business with you, Rixik. D. Leegstra”

Leegstra was a slave broker, and not a reputable one. However much she hated her father and his business, he never dealt with Leegstra. Said, in fact, that Leegstra was the kind of slaver everyone hated.

She’d just helped Jesp free eight slaves from another broker, all eight of them trained as household servants. Jesp told her contacts on Alderaan and Coruscant would help them get real jobs there. And now he was getting sales reports from Leegstra.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out she’d been duped. For months. She couldn’t even cry yet. She’d sliced into the accounting records, the transfer records, even broke into a couple encrypted files and it was all there. Not a single one of the slaves she’d helped rescue had gone on to freedom. They’d all been sold. Poached. Rebranded, laundered, resold into servitude. Including the six she’d helped him take from her father. Wedding present, he’d joked.

How could she have been so stupid?

Kirya stared at the ceiling of the apartment they shared. The fact that he’d lied was bad enough, but the way he did it. Smiled and kissed her and said he loved her, that she was making a difference, just like she dreamed. Instead it was a nightmare. She wanted to wake up and find that her Jesp Rixik really was the charming, friendly man who hated the rampant enslavement of her species as much as she did. But this was waking up from the dream. And it felt horrible.

Maybe…maybe there was an explanation. Maybe this was just paperwork to cover the thefts. The thought made her stomach churn worse. Even as the explanation occurred to her she knew it was a delusion. Regardless, she wanted to hear it from him. From those lips that kissed her said he loved her.

Kirya rubbed dry eyes and called Jesp’s holofrequency. He answered on the third chime, “Hey, babe, kinda busy here, can I call you back?”

“We need to talk, Jesp.”

“Right in the middle of something. We can talk later, hmm?”

“We can talk now,” Kirya said, her voice lowering.

“Doll, it’s really a bad time. I promise I’ll call as soon as I’m done here. Love you—“ he moved to break the connection.

“It’s about Leegstra.”

Rixik stopped. That little pause, that momentary hesitation and Kirya knew. Everything he’d ever told her was a lie. And that his next words would be lies like all the rest. “Is that all? I’ve gotten some very solid leads—“

“He sold for you, Jesp!” Kirya cried.

“Listen, Kirya love, let me call you back. Straighten everything out, mesh’la-mesh’la.”

“Don’t you dare call me that!” Kirya yelled. Her eyes were burning. There were the tears, finally. Jesp’s blue holographic image swam in her vision.

“We’ll talk later,” he said, and cut the call.

Kirya stared at the empty terminal. “You did not just hang up on me,” she hissed. Tears ran down her cheeks. She punched in his frequency again. He was not getting out of this. No answer; the service disconnected her call. She tried again, same result. Tears flowed more, furious now. She stared daggers at the terminal, willing him to answer her holo. As though her unspoken demand forced the issue, he picked up the third call.

“Babe, you picked a lousy time,” he said. He sounded out of breath. The holo was distorted and wavery. She could hear blaster fire in the background.

“You sold those people! You said we—that I freed them and then you sold them! How could you do that? How could you lie to me like that? About everything?” It all poured out like wine from an upended bottle.

Again, that slight hesitation. The pause before another lie, “Why in the galaxy would you think that, love?” He glanced left, fired a shot. Something cried, unseen off the feed.

“I saw the accounts Jesp! The records! Every last one of them, sold. Even—“ Kirya sniffed, “even the ones from Dad. All the way back then. You lied to me from the very start.”

Looking at the image, Kirya saw his mask fall away. Something in his stance, his face, she couldn’t pin it down, but it was like taking the pretty clothes off of a little girl’s dress-up doll and seeing the ugly, cheap plastic body beneath. This was the real Jesp Rixik, and he’d always been there, lurking under all the pretty words. “Oh, so now you’re worried about Daddy. He had good security, doll. It was so much easier to get you to lead me through it than to break in from the outside.”

“How could you!” she yelled at the distant image.

“Me? You hated him so much you jumped at the chance,” that little lascivious grin, “not all you jumped at, either.”

“How dare you—“

“Oh, dare what? State the obvious? It wasn’t hard to hook you. Told you the story you wanted to hear and you were on good. After? Well, you were a decent slicer, a decent accomplice—“

“You used me—“

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Big deal. You wanted to be fooled. You really think I could keep a con like that going for so long without some help on your end?”

Kirya stared at the image. He was wrong. Had to be wrong. There had to be some truth in his story, somewhere in his words to her. Something she’d known was true, leading her to believe all the rest, “Was it all a lie? Everything? Being born a slave? Seeing your family sold off? The man who freed you? Wanting to pay back his kindness?” Kirya sniffed, trying to check the tears threatening to blur the holo, “Loving me?”

Pause. Composing his tale. Bastard. “I lie to everyone, doll, what makes you think you’re special?” he answered.

Kirya slashed her hand through the hologram, disrupting it, “You bastard son of a Hutt, Jesp Rixik!” she shrieked. One fist came down on the disconnect button and the holo cut off.

She stared at the dead holoterminal. “You want lies, Jesp Rixik? Let’s have some lies, then,” she muttered. Two steps to the datacenter and she pulled up his record. Jesp was supposed to be on Kuat, a staunch Republic world. Let’s see how long he lasts with a few choice alerts to Republic security. Kirya settled in and began work.

The holoterminal alerted her to an incoming call. She ignored it. It chimed again, this time with an urgent tag. From guess who. Kirya sun around and opened the channel.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Rixik snarled.

Aww, poor baby, “Fixing things,” she said sweetly, “you taught me everything I know about slicing, dear.”

“You stay the hell out of that record, b*tch!”

“What happened to ‘mesh’la-mesh’la’? Don’t you love me anymore?”

“Kirya, I’m warning you—“

“Oh, wait, is that another lie I hear? Bye-bye, Jesp.” She leaned forward to end the call.

“Do not cut this—“ he began, but the signal ended and the holo dissolved.

Kirya sat back, smiling. No, wait, the accounts! He’d weasel his way offworld unless she cut off his access. Back to the datacenter. Looks like he was already trying. She transferred most of it but couldn’t quite beat him. Still, she got the rancor’s share. He barely had enough for a cross-town speeder. So much for profiting on the misery of other people, slimeball.

She went through the apartment in a flurry and cleared out all of his crap. Threw it out or put up for auction on the GTN. Everything from his pazaak cards to his clothes. Everything. All of it. All of it gone. Out of her life, forever. Then she lay down on the sofa in the bleak little apartment and wept until there was nothing else left. She felt hollow. Washed out. Empty.

She didn’t move as the pale sunlight outside swapped for the nighttime lights of the city. Or when the windows brightened again with day. And it was only then that she realized she’d forgotten to take care of the most important thing.

She hadn’t dissolved their marriage.