burned

been essentially

been essentially forced into siring on a sweet but unfortunate slave girl who didn't particularly want to become pregnant with a killer's child. Surely Bericus hadn't hurt Lucania yet? Not even Bericus could be such a monstrous libertine as that. Could he?
Charlie closed his eyes as hurt throbbed through him. He wondered what his one surviving little girl looked like. He would probably never know. He doubted Bericus would keep a girl who couldn't fight in the Circus Maximus. Not unless he really were into child rape.
Enough Romans were—he'd seen the girls on the auction blocks, sold into brothels—Charlie closed his hands on the wooden handle of his broom until his palms burned against rough wood. Charlie wanted to hurt Publius Bericus and Xanthus Imbros Brutus as desperately as they'd hurt him—and knew there would never be a way to do it. Not and survive. Not and protect Lucania's life, too.
He was a slave. That said it all.
At least Xanthus and Bericus had apparently given up their grandiose plans, convinced by the fact that he sired only girls and monsters, that breeding Rufus the Champion might not be such a good—
Voices close by jerked Charlie's attention back to the present. Xanthus and his guest had emerged from the main house. Charlie returned to sweeping with renewed haste. Loud laughter and drunken talk shattered the hush in the peristyle garden.
Dinner's over early tonight. That made him uneasy. Whenever his master broke routine, unpleasant things occurred. Charlie listened with only half an ear, just enough to know if his name were mentioned, and concentrated on cleaning the portico floor. The Lycian merchant and his guest drank wine and wandered through the torchlit garden, talking, while Charlie swept half of one long wing of the four which comprised Xanthus' house. He had just paused to retrieve his crutch for the next four rows of tile when the household steward entered the courtyard and bowed.
"Master, Publius Bericus."
Charlie went cold. He eased deeper into the shadows and narrowly studied the new arrival. Bericus was somewhere between thirty and thirty-five. He possessed the kind of nose that had earned "Roman noses" the name: it drooped at the end, just like a Clydesdale stallion's. His hairline had receded considerably since Charlie had last seen him. Bericus was, if anything, fleshier than ever. Gold jewelry