Chapter 6 Emmaleen
I’m standing in a mob boss’s apartment holding his phone like I’ve won a particularly horrifying game show prize. Congratulations, Emmaleen! You’ve unlocked the Psychological Torture Round! Your reward is crippling uncertainty and the growing suspicion that you’ve accidentally joined a cult!
What exactly is happening here? I’ve gone from bakery disaster to.
.. what? Personal assistant to a man who owns a mansion but prefers to live above his restaurant because his associates have too much sex?
A man who punishes tardiness with furniture deprivation?
This is either the worst job interview or the weirdest episode of Undercover Boss ever filmed.
My brain is frantically running calculations like a malfunctioning supercomputer. Twenty-one days until homelessness. Minus one if I walk out now. Plus however many days I can tolerate... whatever this is. Divided by my rapidly diminishing self-respect. The math is not mathing.
The phone in my hand vibrates, jolting me back to this dystopian HGTV nightmare.
A text message appears from someone named Lucia: “Were you at my apartment last night? Please tell me it was you and some rando didn’t break in to steal my Loubs.
My red ‘So Kates’ are missing. Call me when you get this. ”
“What the hell...?” I whisper, staring at the screen.
Lucia. That name rings a bell, clanging through my memory with the subtlety of a panic attack. Saturday. The bakery. Giovanni telling Marge to talk to Lucia about the ruined wedding cake.
And now... stolen shoes? Designer shoes. The kind of shoes that have their own Instagram accounts.
Did my new boss—my potential boss—my whatever-the-hell-he-is—steal a woman’s designer shoes? And if so... why?
The possibilities are lining up like contestants in a particularly disturbing reality show.
None of these options spark joy. None of these options make me feel safe in this sterile apartment with its perfect sight lines and complete lack of witnesses.
I’ve barely processed the stolen-shoes text when the door outside slams like a gunshot. I flinch, almost dropping Giovanni’s phone—which would probably earn me desk-chair privileges revoked for eternity.
Heavy boots stomp down the hall. Male voices. Great. More terrifying men to complete my Monday morning nightmare bingo card.
“Watch the fucking wall, Paulie.” The voice is rough, impatient.
“You watch it. This thing weighs a ton.” Different voice. Equally charming.
“That’s because it’s quality, unlike the shit in your apartment.”
More scraping sounds follow, like furniture being dragged by people who don’t care about security deposits.
The door swings open with dramatic flair, and Giovanni backs in, guiding what appears to be a desk—sleek glass and metal that probably costs more than my entire life savings (which, to be fair, totals $243. 87).
Two men muscle the other end through the doorway.
One is built like a refrigerator with human arms, a neck tattoo creeping up from his collar like ivy on abandoned property.
The other is leaner, with slicked-back hair that suggests he owns both hair gel stock and a subscription to Wannabe Goodfellas Monthly.
I’m standing here clutching a phone with evidence of shoe theft while the furniture delivery from hell unfolds. Typical Monday.
“Little more to the left,” Giovanni directs, sounding irritatingly casual. “Against that wall.”
The human refrigerator—Paulie, I’m guessing—glances at me like I’m a particularly interesting museum exhibit.
“This the new girl?” he asks at full volume, as though I’m deaf or possibly a potted plant.
“No, she’s a hallucination we’re all sharing,” Slick Hair responds with eye-roll punctuation. “What do you think?”
Giovanni ignores them both, focusing on the desk placement with the same intensity he’d probably use to plan a hit. There’s something deeply unsettling about watching him arrange furniture—like seeing a shark fold laundry or a tiger do taxes.
“You get the chair from the car, Tony,” Giovanni orders Slick Hair. “Paulie, help me with the power.”
They move with practiced efficiency, like they’ve done this exact thing before. Moving furniture. Or bodies. Probably both. I remain frozen, clutching the phone like it’s the nuclear launch codes.
Paulie keeps shooting me looks that make me want to bathe in hand sanitizer.
His half-smile screams “I’m thinking inappropriate thoughts and want you to know it.
” Tony returns with what must be the executive version of a throne—all black leather and chrome, probably made from the hide of previous assistants who failed the coffee test.
“Standing desk,” Tony announces with all the subtlety of a foghorn. “G says you’ll be working long hours.”
He says working like it’s the punchline to a joke I don’t want to understand. Paulie snickers. My face burns hot enough to melt steel, but I keep my expression blank. I’ve had enough practice with men like this to know reactions are the oxygen their creepiness breathes.
“She doesn’t talk much, does she?” Paulie stage-whispers to Giovanni, like I’m not standing five feet away.
“Unlike some people, she knows when to keep her mouth shut,” Giovanni replies without looking up from cable management.
Tony laughs. “Ouch. He got you there, Paulie.”
“Whatever. You sure know how to pick ’em, G. This one’s prettier than the last assistant.”
Last assistant? The words hit like ice water. What happened to the last person who stood where I’m standing? Did she fall into a vat of acid? Get shipped to a black site? Or worse—did she drink civet coffee without permission?
Giovanni straightens up and gives Paulie a look that could freeze hell itself. The big man immediately sobers, clearing his throat as though he’s trying to swallow his own tongue.
“We’re done here,” Tony says quickly, nudging Paulie toward the door like he’s steering a drunk friend away from a bar fight.
They file out, but not before Tony throws me another smirk and Paulie makes a sound that’s half-laugh, half-warning. The door closes behind them with finality, leaving me alone with Giovanni and a motorized desk that now hums with power.
I’m left standing in the center of the room, clutching Giovanni’s phone while a $3,000 desk whirs to life like something from a sci-fi movie where the furniture eventually gains sentience and murders everyone.
I know it costs $3,000 because the price tag is still dangling from one corner.
A power move that screams: Look what I can casually drop on a Monday morning for someone I don’t even like.
This is so weird. Demerits. Standing desks as punishment. One desk in a living room does not transform an apartment into an office. It’s like putting a litter box in your kitchen and calling it a cat café.
And then there’s the elephant in the room—or rather, the word still electric on my tongue. Spanking. I said it out loud. To my boss. On day one. My brain keeps replaying it in high-definition humiliation-vision, complete with surround sound and director’s commentary.
For fuck’s sake, Emmaleen. Get a grip. You’re standing here getting aroused over a standing desk punishment. What’s next? Sexually charged fantasies about the copy machine jamming? Office supply fetishes? Will you start finding staplers erotic?
Giovanni clears his throat, the sound cutting through my internal spiral like a knife.
“So what’s your decision?” He gestures to the phone in my hand. “I need to know now so I can cancel the temp I hired for this afternoon.”
I blink. “Temp?”
“I don’t know how you spend your days, Miss Take, but I work.
” His voice is all smooth edges and sharp corners.
“If you remember correctly, you were eight minutes late. At the five-minute mark, I called my temp agency. The girl will be here at one. So are you signing the contract, or not? Because if so, we’ve got things to discuss.
And if not, you need to be on your way.”
The temp agency. Of course. This man has a backup plan for his backup plan. Probably has a warehouse full of desperate women waiting to be summoned to standing desks across town.
My finger hovers over the signature line on the screen. A tiny rebellion flashes through me—a second where I consider walking out, preserving whatever shreds of dignity I have left, and spending the next three weeks hustling for minimum wage jobs before officially becoming homeless.
But the math is brutal and unavoidable. Twenty-one days minus zero dollars equals zero options.
I press my finger to the screen and trace my signature.
When I look up, Giovanni’s face has transformed. He’s smiling—a real, dark, predatory satisfaction that makes his previous expressions seem like blank paper. It’s the look of someone who’s just watched their elaborate trap spring shut exactly as designed.
Oh god. What have I done?
The realization crashes through me: this wasn’t about the job, or the desk, or even the eight minutes. This was about getting me to surrender. To choose the chains. To sign on the dotted line and hand him the power he didn’t even have to demand.
And right behind that panic comes a second, more disturbing realization that hits like a slap: he’s fucking hot.
Not in the conventional, Instagram-model way. Hot like a storm system. Like something dangerous you shouldn’t stand near but can’t look away from. The kind of hot that makes you hate yourself a little for noticing.
I hate it. Love it. Want to crawl inside it and smash it all at once.
His eyes hold mine as he takes the phone back, our fingers brushing in a contact that shouldn’t feel like anything but somehow feels like everything.
“Excellent choice, Miss Rourke. Let’s begin.”
His words hang in the air like a threat. A promise. Something in between.