Chapter 7 Giovanni
She’s processing—the desk, the contract, the shoes. Every glance, every frown, every furrowed eyebrow is a data point, and I’m collecting them all. The slight twitch at the corner of her mouth. The rapid blinking. The way her throat moves when she swallows her pride.
“Put them on,” I tell her, nodding to the shoes. Not harshly. Just in a tone that demands compliance.
She looks at the red Louboutins again, recognition dawning that they’re too large for her small frame. Lucia is all legs and attitude. Little Miss Take here is compact, precise. The shoes will swallow her feet. Perfect.
She huffs—a small, defiant sound that shouldn’t please me as much as it does. Her eyes scan the room, lock onto the leather couch. She walks over with deliberate steps, sits down, and begins tugging at her worn knee-high boots.
The socks nearly break my composure. Pink with red hearts. Fucking hearts. She yanks them off without ceremony, balls them up and stuffs them into the toes of her boots with practiced efficiency. My chest tightens with something dangerously close to amusement.
Not because she’s ridiculous. Because she’s real. Painfully, beautifully real in a way nothing in my world ever is anymore.
She stands, walks back to the standing desk, her movements measured and deliberate.
She picks up the shoes—those ridiculous, expensive things—and places them on the desk surface with unnatural precision.
Then she just stares at them like they’re live grenades about to detonate, her fingers hovering near but not touching the leather.
I wait. The moment stretches between us, taut with possibility, charged with something electric and dangerous. The air feels weighted, like the pressure before a storm breaks. I could cut this tension with the knife strapped to my ankle.
Will she do it?
Will she break?
I’ve seen men twice her size crumble under less pressure than this. Yet she stands there, spine straight, face carefully arranged into neutrality despite the war I can see raging behind those pale green eyes.
She carefully places them on the floor, each movement controlled to the millimeter. Not thrown. Not slammed. Placed. A small act of defiance wrapped in compliance—the most dangerous kind.
I catalog this, too—her ability to yield while maintaining some internal fortress I can’t quite breach. It’s... unexpected. Most people I break are either all defiance or total submission. This calibrated resistance is fun.
She lifts one foot, hovering it over the red leather like she’s about to step on broken glass. I can almost hear her thoughts—calculating how to manage this, how to survive the next move without showing weakness. The moment stretches, and I wait.
She slips her foot in and immediately loses her balance, arms flailing slightly before she catches herself against the desk. Something tightens in my chest—not concern, but interest. The kind of interest a scientist has watching a particularly resilient specimen under pressure.
Her second foot follows with similar awkwardness. Now she stands there, looking down at Lucia’s thousand-dollar shoes like they’re alien objects attached to her body. The red soles peek out as she shifts her weight, trying to find stability.
“Walk around a little,” I say quietly.
Her eyes flash to mine—defiance, embarrassment, calculation—before she takes a tentative step.
Then another. The shoes are clearly too big.
Lucia’s narrow stilettos weren’t made for Emmaleen’s small feet—they gape at the heel, forcing her to flex her toes just to stay inside them.
It makes her movements awkward, unsteady, vulnerable.
It makes her mine.
She takes a careful circuit around the room, one hand hovering near surfaces for balance. That skirt—that absurd, fluttery little thing—flips when she moves, revealing just enough thigh to punch a jolt of heat straight into my bloodstream.
I force my expression to remain neutral, bored even. But something inside me shifts—a tectonic plate moving beneath the frozen surface.
I didn’t expect… this.
Whatever “this” is.
“Go back to your desk,” I command.
She turns too quickly and wobbles, catching herself before disaster. The sight of her unsteady on those ridiculous heels sends a dark thrill through me—like watching a rare bird with clipped wings.
She’s muttering something under her breath, her lips moving in a private conversation with herself. “Fifty-two thousand dollars,” I think she says.
The salary I promised her. She thought it was a lot of money on Saturday, her eyes widening just enough to tell me she’d been surviving on far less.
What does she think now that she knows what I expect of her? Now that she’s seen the cold machinery of this “office,” felt the weight of my expectations pressing down on those delicate shoulders?
The number probably feels smaller by the minute, shrinking against the magnitude of what she’s walked into.
When she reaches the desk, she places both hands flat on its surface, steadying herself. Relief flashes across her features for just a moment before she schools her expression back to neutrality.
But I caught it.
I catch everything.
The power in the room has shifted. She knows it. I know it. These absurd red shoes have accomplished exactly what I wanted—they’ve made her uncertain in her own body. They’ve given me the upper hand.
And yet there’s something about the way she stands now—slightly uncomfortable but refusing to complain—that suggests this battle is far from over.
I circle the room slowly, studying her from every angle like a predator. Each deliberate step is another turn of the screw. Little Miss Take shifts her weight from foot to foot, already uncomfortable.
“Stop shuffling,” I murmur. “Posture matters, Miss Take. Chin up. Shoulders back.”
The look she gives me could freeze hell.
Her eyes narrow, jaw tightening—a flash of pure hatred before she masks it.
But she obeys, straightening her spine and lifting her chin with mechanical precision.
The movement forces her to adjust her balance, her body tilting forward slightly, fingers splayed at her sides for stability.
I can almost see the calculation in her head—weighing defiance against self-preservation, pride against necessity. She’s learning the first rule already: adaptation is survival.
She hates this.
She hates me.
It makes me irrationally pleased.
I move to the kitchen counter, retrieving a manila folder I prepared last night. It’s thick with invoices from the restaurant’s shell companies—meaningless busywork that looks important. Perfect for establishing the hierarchy between us.
“Alphabetize these,” I say, extending the folder like I’m doing her a favor.
There must be a thousand invoices in there.
All different sizes, each one unique and filled with data only an accountant can appreciate.
Receipts for wine deliveries, produce orders, linen services—all printed on different paper stock, some crisp and new, others creased from handling.
The kind of mind-numbing busywork designed to establish who’s in charge and who takes orders. I can almost taste her frustration.
The folder almost slips from her grasp when I hand it over. Her fingers scramble against the manila surface, catching it at the last moment. The red heels click awkwardly against my polished wood floors as she shifts her weight to compensate.
“By company name or contact?” she asks, voice admirably steady despite the precarious balance she’s fighting to maintain and the chaos of paper in front of her.
I don’t answer immediately. Instead, I watch her open the folder, those delicate fingers sorting through the first few pages. The slight tremble in her hands is visible only because I’m looking for it.
“Company name,” I finally reply, moving to stand behind her.
She tenses, sensing my proximity without turning. Her shoulders hitch slightly higher—a defensive posture.
Interesting.
Someone’s trained her to expect danger from behind.
She turns her head just enough to side-eye me. “I’ll need somewhere to sort them.”
I gesture to the room. “Use all the space you require, Miss Take. Consider the entire apartment your office.”
I step back, giving her space to work while maintaining my position of power. “I have emails to return. Continue this task until it’s complete.”
Little Miss Take doesn’t look at me, already arranging the invoices in preliminary piles across the desk surface. Her focus is absolute, eyes scanning each document efficiently. The shoes force her to shift constantly, subtly swaying as she works to keep her balance.
That flirty fucking skirt kills me each time it flutters against her pale thighs.
It’s a deliberate distraction, dancing just at the edge of professional, teasing the boundary between modest and maddening.
Every slight movement sends the fabric whispering across her skin, drawing my attention when I should be focused on anything else.
I find myself tracking the hem like a predator, waiting for the next innocent shift that will reveal another half-inch of those legs she’s trying so hard to downplay.
She shoots me another side-eye. This time it’s menacing. Am I going to watch her all morning?
Yes, Emmaleen. Yes, I am.
I sprawl across the couch, phone in hand, pretending to scroll through emails I’ve already answered. The real entertainment is across the room, struggling with Louboutins and loose papers.
Little Miss Take has created a system—a chaotic one, but a system, nonetheless. Piles grow across her desk, each labeled with a sticky note from the pack she pulled from her purse.
“Fuck,” she mutters as an invoice slips from her fingers, floating to the floor like a surrender flag.
She freezes, eyes darting my way to check if I noticed. I keep my face blank, gaze fixed on my phone. Let her think she’s unobserved. The best intel comes when people believe no one’s watching.