VSR (Voluntary Surrender of Rights)

"Two anecdotes come to mind. The first is this, so this newspaper journalist interviews this couple who have been married for sixty years. He asked the wife how they did it. She says that they married when cars were still rare. They lived on a farm and had a horse drawn buggy pulled by a donkey. So as they plod to the farm the donkey stops, just stops."

Greg had a sip of whiskey. Veronica watched him with interest. Greg was average looking, average body more like a marathon athlete, average height maybe a little below, average brown hair, average haircut, average suit. What set Greg apart was his piercing blue eyes. He could stare into her soul with those eyes, they missed nothing; those eyes understood a lot more than was said but never said anything. That is unless it had to do with getting naked and fucking until somebody begged to stop. Somehow he always missed the romance invitation cues.

"" Donkey that's the first time." The old man warned and they donkey plodded on. Then the donkey stops. "Donkey that's the second time." The farmer warned, the donkey started going again. The donkey stops again, eight miles from the farm. The farmer takes his shotgun and shoots the donkey dead. With nothing to do but walk the newlyweds walk eight miles home. At home the husband takes a seat and tells her to make some coffee. The wife says she is tired from walking eight miles in high heels on a dust road. "Woman that's the first time." He warns. After that there were no more problems in their marriage."

The men listening burst into laughter. Greg had that ability, of telling a story in his quiet way that drew listeners. He was never rude, he never threatened, he never shouted, yet the feds, the soldiers, the lawyers who drank there never tried to push him. Veronica listened to the punchline officially offended. Her therapist practice had a lot of relationship counseling in which the industry doctrine was to encourage an atmosphere of respectful discussion. Authoritarian dispositions were strongly discourage. Additionally she was a woman after all, such a blatant suppression of women was terrible. Privately though she was intrigued, a power dynamic was established and from that the couple succeeded.

"What is the second story?" Veronica asked keeping her professional cool.

"So a young man wants to marry this young lady. He's at Sunday lunch with her family and finds her grandad sitting in the shade with a beer on his stomach looking at his family. "Sir how did you stay married so long?" the young man asks. "Well son, when we married Elsie and I agreed that I would make the big decisions and she could make the little ones. Well what do you know, fifty years, three houses, four kids, two careers, and my own business; and there were no major decisions!""

Veronica looked at Greg without understanding his point. One story had been about a mysoginistic ass, the other about a pussy whipped wimp. Neither story indicate that any of the four people were particularly admirable. She had just confessed her disappointing day in which two wonderful people had decided to divorce despite her best efforts to save their marriage. She wanted reassurance that her job meant something, he had just gently peed on that. It was her last effort to get him to seduce her away from her current boyfriend, a complete asshole who made tons of money buying and selling commodities. She was deciding to just drop him.

"What's your point?"

"Relationships are never democratic. One must lead, one must not. It's not about who brings the most money in, it's not about university graduation. It's not about being two healthy, well balanced, well adapted people respecting each other. It's about who has the authority, that needs to be established before the first date if possible. It must be agreed and habitual before two people waltz down the aisle. How that power structure is achieved is between the two. How it is maintained under challenge needs to be agreed upon through experience."

Veronica could not let that go.

"But that opens the door to all sorts of abuse! There must be communication, it must be open, honest, and trusting."

"Absolutely! That becomes much easier if the authority is respected and never challenged because it has been seen to work for the two involved. Rather than to encourage reconciliation and make up sex it's better to find out what the power distribution was and to understand if they were happy with it, understood it. The best thing you can do for a failing marriage is to establish an authority structure and enforce it. Go back to those two lovely people and you will find that things started going wrong when the power structure was challenged."

"So who do you think should have the power in a relationship?"

"The one who takes responsibility. That is never given, it is always taken."

"Not the honest one?"

"Do you see that hooker? I have a more honest relationship with her than I have with you. It's simple, I want to get laid and she wants my money. On the other hand you want me to screw you well enough that leaving your boyfriend is a pleasure without telling me you even have one. You want me to have the guts to take him on but then you want me to give you the power which is the reward for courage. So if open and honest relationships are to be encouraged, where does that put you or any of the half dozen women who have tried to get laid with me?"

Greg had not raised his voice. He had not changed his body language either. Yet Veronica knew every person in the bar was listening to every word. He had said she was worse than a hooker, and he had reason to, he was dead right about what she wanted. She was furious though.

"Did it occur to you that I'm married? Did it occur to you that I might not consider you worth firing my wife for? What motivation did you give me outside of getting laid? Loyalty? Did you offer half your income, something you would want of me because you dress a way higher price than your business allows for." Greg carried on.

"Get out!"

"No. I did not impose on you. You came to sit here. Come back when you have something of substance. I am not easy or comfortable or malleable."

Veronica sat furious and blushing staring at those piercing blue eyes that pinned her to the chair and dared her to run. If she did she would run forever. The future if she ran now was spread out before her, she would run to her boyfriend, marry him to be safe, and be utterly bored in five years to divorce him for another man you did not have Greg's ethics and hopefully bigger balls than brains.

On the other hand Greg was incredibly dangerous, with that perceptiveness, with that intellect, with that ethic. She calmed down enough to realize that he had revealed more about himself in the last half an hour than in five months of being a regular at this bar. That meant something. He had always evaded questions about his job. Clearly it had a lot to do with psychology.

"You're right about my boyfriend. What do you do Greg?"

"I'm a writer, a painter mostly. The pay is a joke; that is why I am saving my stepfather's business at the moment."

"What business?"

"Now that failed a test again. I'm relationship disabled."

Greg's phone rang. He picked it up with Veronica understanding that with three options she had asked exactly the wrong question. The business meant nothing to Greg, in fact he detested it. He spoke on the phone he was exasperated, mentioning London, a horse race, being unable to avoid his step sister, being a witness at a trial. He was positively upset at having to show something. Veronica wracked her brain about what to do now.

"When are you going?" She asked Greg.

"Six hours." Greg said staring at nothing in thought.

"I'm coming with you." Veronica said.

"Bad idea. My wife is a horse trainer and will probably win that race with my horse."

Greg paid his bill and left. Veronica stared at him leaving; furious. He was married, he set her up to fail. She was fuming as she went home to her boyfriend who was a complete asshole about her day and brushed it off as he complained about how oilseeds were climbing and he had missed the boat. He blamed her for that. He complained that her apartment was too small, he couldn't entertain customers, she cost him money. She completely lost her cool and went for a drive after inviting him to leave, she figured he was cheating anyway and probably had a place to go. Stopping at her father's place she decided to get some perspective. Greg was still running around her thoughts, he was incredibly intelligent, full of shit, and extremely dangerous. The impression of being dangerous came from how the soldiers, cops, and lawyers treated him and the eyes that showed nothing her dad, a retired police detective had the same eyes that said nothing.

Her father listened as she told him about deciding to break up with her current boyfriend and then unloaded about Greg. He listened without a word. When she started rehashing the same material her father stopped her with a radical suggestion.

"Don't whine! Fucking go after him! You know he is going to London. You know he has to be at a big horse race, you know he is a witness in a trial! Getting information and background of him is easy!"

"But he's married!"

"No he's not. There was a wedding but he has been in the states for six months without even bothering to try and see her. You know a lot about her too. She's a horse trainer; that means she probably likes horses more than him."

Her dad was busy while she crapped all over the two nice people the next day, Friaday. She found out who was suing, the wife, and asked whether she wanted the divorce. She did not, neither did he. Veronica told the husband to shut up and listen to his wife. She told the wife to shut up and take charge of saving the marriage. Lay down the law if she needed to, find out why her husband was not interested, and do something about it.

Her father gave her Greg's bio and some more information on him at the bar on Monday afternoon. He sat looking very cop like at the state prosecutor wanting a search or arrest warrant on very flimsy evidence while Veronica read.

She read the Bio first. Greg was born in Scotland to Lord Colonel and Lady McDrummond, his father and mother moved to Kenya shortly afterwards. He was in Kenya until fifteen when his father died in a border ambush. Greg himself had been a reconnaissance and horse patrol ranger from twelve, taken his mother back to Scotland to live with his uncle, the earl of Kinloch. He started Cambridge at sixteen having passed the entrance exams easily. He went to the army at nineteen, immediately going into officers training and then to the Gurkha regiments. The bio resumed after leaving the army with him writing his doctorate thesis in interrogation and counter interrogation psychology, now a prescribed and very well controlled textbook. He had written survival guides for people wanting to take survival or safari type holidays, with specialized books for jungles, arctic, desert, mountain, swampland, and sea or island survival. These were also military textbooks now. He was known as a popular but reclusive artist mostly painting golf and horses or horse racing scenes.

She looked at her dad when she finished reading the biography.

"At twelve? That's illegal!" veronica said.

"From what a buddy in the corps told me, he came upon a landmine blast on his way home with his mother. He stayed to help while his mother went to get help. When the help got there he was gone and tracking the insurgents. He snuck into their camp and got the army to take them out by using their radio. After that he often rode with the border patrols."

"A doctorate at Cambridge in psychology, damn!"

"Yeah, damn dangerous SOB. Read the case."

The file started by mentioning that he was involved with another case in which he had been shot with an arrow through the lung and walked two miles through a forest with the arrow through his body, no arrests had been made because the main suspect was dead. The case he was a witness in was about two hundred million pounds being stolen from the family brewery. He had been given power of attorney after his stepfather had a heart attack at hearing of the crime. Greg had taken the measures to save the business. The brewery accountant had been the main suspect but turned up murdered in a garbage dump. Greg had then had a running fight with his stepsister about control of the brewery, eventually being caught and tortured to reveal the whereabouts of several valuable family heirlooms and the contents of a crucial document to track down the money. He had not divulged anything and a soccer riot had saved him, the main criminal who had tortured him was charged with murdering the accountant as both he and the accountant had similar injuries inflicted on them. The hired muscle had confessed being present and helping to murder the accountant. Greg was needed as a witness because his stepsister was charge as an accessory to the crimes, she had helped to get him ambushed and tortured, she had been present when he was tortured.

Veronica looked at the pictures in the file and felt sick. He had been forced onto a barbecue after having been beaten. There was a picture of the lawyer, severely beaten and violently castrated, Greg was required to answer questions in regard to that too as the lawyer had been found in his garage with the injuries.

"What kind of a family is this?" Veronica asked

"A stinking rich one. I play golf with him, I like the kid."

"He's thirty seven! That's far from being a kid. What is he like to play with?"

"Interesting to talk to, never answers personal or business questions. He can tell fantastic stories, never cheats on the scorecard, floored the club captain once when the man tried pulling status with another man's wife. He has a brilliant right hook."

"So he's suspended?"

"Hell no! We want him to be the next club captain! He knows the game, he's a scratch handicap, he takes no shit and doesn't give any either."

Veronica watched the trial with her dad on a podcast and watched Greg eat the whole court alive as he sailed through the questions. Demands for the identity of the lawyer's assailant were met with a simple explanation that he had been lying in a fish pond to treat the burn wounds; he had not seen the assault and as such could not identify the attacker. This was blatantly true. Her father also said that it was a lie, the soccer riot had not been a lucky event; he had gone in with backup. Far from being condemned by her dad it was heartily approved of.

"You never drop the guy who backed you up." Her father said approvingly.

Veronica phoned Greg's wife on Tuesday evening for England. Her father was on the call although quiet. Veronica said that she was a psychologist and had met Greg. She was interested in taking him on. His wife had laughed at that, she had no doubt that the nature of taking him on was not as a therapist in her practice.

"I want a divorce you know?" His wife said to Veronica.

"Why?"

"He makes steel look like putty. He's never here, I have a lover who wants to get married. He hasn't been here for seven and a half years in the nine we've been married. He needed to be alone on his mountain then, it was convenient I had charge but there was a husband to chase the unsuitable and greedy bastards away. Do you know why he left the Gurkhas? He nailed a presidential aid's tits to her desk when he got back from a sortie that got sold out on the way in, a bicycle spoke through each breast and into the desk" His wife laughed.

"He got his team out but got captured while he fought the rearguard. He was a prisoner in ISIS captivity for thirty seven days and escaped. Four and a half months later he appeared in Washington and nailed the aid with evidence that she had been passing information to ISIS all around her. How the fuck he did that... walked five hundred miles through the Sahara desert and the Atlantic Ocean to do it."

Her father was impressed. He had not backed down, had persuaded them to keep him alive and got out with vital information. Nailing a woman's tits to a table had the old man laughing. His wife carried on about the races and his horses. He had nine, three were his entirely, six were inherited from his deceased father and could not be sold or moved as they were collateral on the financing for the brewery. As for the races on Saturday she was worried that he might not survive to the feature race. She sent some videos about why she was worried on email.

Along with that Veronica got a ton of information about other cases surrounding Greg. She got information about his painting. It turned out that he was highly sought after as an artist. He had good relationships with several successful authors and had already written three novels around his areas of expertise, those being wildland survival, prisoner and interrogation psychology, and horse racing.

She found his pen name and bought the books. Admitting to herself that she was obsessed she queried a patient who was a female jockey, Cecilia, sentenced to forty hours of mandatory anger management counseling about the videos of the races sent to her. The jockey was delighted to help and even happier to have ten hours of anger management signed off. Veronica got a long session about horses from being broken in through training and on to racing. As for the races Cecilia had a lot to offer despite being a flat race jockey and not a steeplechaser.

The soldiers at the bar informed her about the Gurkhas and what they did. A few war stories about them came out from guys who had dealt with them and none of them showed were anything less than vastly respected. Some research gave her an overview of the history and achievements of the unit. Shuddering at what he must have gone through as an ISIS prisoner from a deeply hated enemy she started thinking about him and the way his life was structured.

Greg returned three weeks after leaving for England. His now ex wife sent a message that their divorce was finalized two days before he appeared. Her first look at him in the bar showed a nice bruise on his cheek. Queries about it were charmingly evaded as a slight mishap. She had now had time to think. His life was incredibly compartmentalized, his writing career, painting, and racing never touched directly. She had questions, many questions, but she knew which questions to ask first now. Remembering that Greg was a feral genius she was going to have to leave coming closer to him and not rush or make sudden moves, just like breaking a horse in.

"I have many questions. But first I will tell you about me." Veronica started.

"That's fine. You seem to have done research on me and know the bits fit for public consumption."

"I'm not going to tell you of my past. I have broken up with my boyfriend. This is so that you can be the focus of what I intend, I want a baby, and I am considering you to make me pregnant. Before this happens though you will love me. I will see to that, in the process I will love you. I am not going to jump into bed with you, I am not going to guilt trip you. I am going to show you that you are happier with me than on your own. When you know that and will not leave me, then I'll get pregnant by you. We'll live a life together of more good times than bad, and you'll find comfort from that hell you have been through."

"Ambitious. What do you feel about using whips and chains to achieve these objectives?"

Veronica closed her eyes, it was a remark designed to drive her away. There was no way she could beat him into submission, it was unlikely that he would consider it sexy either.

"I'm not in favor."

"I am. Every relationship starts with a voluntary surrender of a right, the right to look after yourself. The first thing about being somebody's captive is that the captive needs to surrender the right to independence. The captor takes responsibility of that right to look after yourself for the captive, by structuring a day, determining a dress code, a behavior protocol. This is reinforced and enforced by discipline should there be non compliance to the measures introduced by the captor. Once trust in that dispensation is established the relationship can move on. This is most clearly done through some form of restraint and corporal punishment. Since you are taking responsibility for the evolution of our relationship the voluntary surrender needs to be mine."