Chapter 8 Emmaleen #2
I reach in and pick up the first notebook with the cautious reverence of someone handling an unexploded ordnance.
It’s heavier than it looks—matte cover, cream pages that feel thick and expensive between my fingers.
This isn’t your basic Moleskine knockoff from Target.
This is bespoke stationery, probably handcrafted by Italian monks who’ve taken vows of silence and poverty.
I open to the first page and find immaculate handwriting. Flowing cursive that belongs in a calligraphy museum. Black ink. Fountain pen, obviously. Each letter is perfectly formed, like Giovanni attended some elite boarding school where they still teach penmanship as a core subject.
At the top of the page is what I assume to be a title: Sistema di Demerito.
Below it, a numbered list with formal-looking bullet points:
· Mancata puntualità
· Mancato rispetto del protocollo
· Comportamento non conforme
· Interruzioni non autorizzate
I stare at the words, trying to decipher them through sheer force of will.
My four years of high school Spanish offer zero help.
The Latin roots swim before my eyes, taunting me with their almost-familiarity.
I catch what might be “punctuality” in the first line, which tracks with Giovanni’s obsession with timeliness.
Non conforme is… breaking rules, maybe? The rest? Not sure.
I flip through a few more pages, each one more meticulously organized than the last. There are graphs.
Charts. A scale that runs from one to ten.
This isn’t just casual observation—it’s measurement.
Scientific. Clinical. The kind of detailed analysis usually reserved for lab specimens or Olympic athletes.
I don’t need a translation app to understand what I’m looking at. This is a scoring system. A rubric. A methodical catalog of my failures, neatly categorized in a language I can’t understand—which feels like a metaphor so on the nose it would get rejected from a creative writing workshop.
“Man-cata pun-tual-ita,” I attempt, my tongue tripping over syllables it wasn’t built for. I sound like someone ordering at an Italian restaurant for the first time, determined to pronounce “bruschetta” correctly and failing spectacularly.
I snap the notebook shut, suddenly aware of the absurdity of my situation.
I’m standing barefoot in a parking lot, holding stolen shoes, leaning into a car worth more than the building it’s parked next to, reading a performance evaluation I can’t understand, written by a man who’s probably watching me on camera right now.
For a job that involves fetching his dry cleaning.
And I still have to pee.
I pick up the second notebook. Same size. Same texture. Same expensive weight. The twin to its companion, yet somehow more ominous in its perfection. I hesitate before touching it, as if it might burn my fingers or trigger some invisible alarm.
But curiosity overwhelms caution. When I flip it open, the language barrier evaporates. This one’s in English. Crystal clear, devastatingly precise English that leaves no room for misinterpretation or plausible deniability.
Again, his penmanship... very surprising.
The elegant script flows across the page with confident precision, each letter formed with the same meticulous care he seems to bring to everything else in his life.
It’s not the hasty scrawl of a busy man, nor the utilitarian block letters I might have expected from someone so calculating.
Instead, there’s an almost artistic quality to it—graceful loops and perfectly measured spacing that reveal yet another layer to the enigma that is Giovanni Bavga.
I find myself tracing the lines with my eyes, wondering if it’s another skill he cultivated to ensure absolute control over every aspect of his presentation. The contrast between the beautiful handwriting and the clinical system it describes only makes the whole thing more unsettling.
“Performance Incentives — Phase 1” stares back at me in elegant loops. The words sit centered on the page, perfectly aligned, the kind of visual that speaks of obsessive attention to detail.
I scan the contents, and my brain short-circuits like I’ve just stuck a fork in an electrical socket. The information refuses to process correctly the first time through.
This isn’t a punishment manual.
It’s a reward system.
A fucking doubling reward system that escalates with mathematical precision.
Day 1: $250 — For completing full day with 0 demerits.
The amount seems trivial compared to what follows, yet it’s still more than I made in a day at the bakery next door.
I would call myself speechless here, but my internal monologue is actually going crazy as I read down the rest of the list…
Day 2: $500 — Double the previous day’s reward for the same requirement. No demerits. Just follow whatever rules are hidden in that Italian notebook.
A deposit on a studio, right there.
And if I add in day one, that’s seven-fifty. Hell, in this town, that might get me a one-bedroom.
For two days of compliance. Forty-eight hours. Less, actually. Because I’m only here for eight hours each day. Sixteen hours. Seven-hundred-and-fifty dollars.
Wow.
I keep reading.
Day 3: $1000 — A grand. One thousand dollars for an extra day of whatever Giovanni Bavga expects from me.
That’s a down payment on a car. Added up for a grand total of seventeen-fifty.
This will get me utilities and groceries with enough left over for the luxury of not checking my account balance before every purchase.
Day 4: $2000 — The page continues its relentless upward trajectory. Two thousand dollars. That’s more than my whole one-month paycheck from the bakery compressed into a single perfect day under his watchful green eyes.
But it just keeps going. The prizes for my compliance become outrageous.
Day 5: $4000 — My fingertips tingle as I stare at this figure. Four thousand dollars is more than I’ve ever had in my checking account at one time.
Day 6: $8000 — Impossible money. The kind of sum that would make me feel rich, untouchable, secure in ways I’ve never experienced.
Day 7: $16,000 — A semester of college. A down payment on a condo. A reset button on my entire financial existence. My hands tremble slightly as I force myself to breathe normally, the zeros blurring before my eyes.
I blink. Read it again. Blink harder, like maybe I’ve developed some rare ocular condition that makes me hallucinate zeros. I even rub my eyes with my knuckles, childlike, as if that might reset my vision to something more believable.
My stomach does a complicated gymnastics routine that would score a perfect 10 at the Olympics. Heat flushes through my body in waves, making my palms sweat and my mouth go dry.
This isn’t fear. This is want. Raw, unfiltered economic desire crashing through my carefully maintained wall of dignity. The kind of visceral need that makes rational thought impossible.
$31,750. In one week.
That’s not a salary. That’s a fucking miracle. That’s rent for a year plus a security deposit plus furniture that doesn’t come pre-stained by strangers. That’s a used car that actually starts in winter. That’s the difference between surviving and actually living.
I’ve never seen that much money listed anywhere near my name—not on a bank statement, not on a tax return, not even in my most delusional daydreams where I somehow become a BookTok romance author and get a publishing deal.
The closest I’ve come is calculating how much debt I owe, which is its own special form of financial nightmare.
I glance back at the demerit book, and suddenly its meticulous Italian takes on new meaning.
The elegant script no longer seems merely judgmental—it’s the counterweight to this impossible bounty.
One error—one single mistake—and the entire reward structure collapses like a house of cards in a hurricane.
One moment of human weakness, one slip of concentration, one rebellious impulse, and it all vanishes.
The equation is brutally simple: perfection equals payment. Failure equals nothing. The mathematical progression makes the stakes higher with each passing day—each hour bringing me closer to either windfall or devastating disappointment.
And I’m standing barefoot in a parking lot, technically late for an errand, with shoes in my hand instead of on my feet where they’re supposed to be. The potential demerits hover over me like an executioner’s axe when you add in the ten I’ve already earned and not officially burned.
The stakes snap into place with the cold precision of a guillotine blade. One week. One rulebook. One reward. The game is rigged for failure, designed to tantalize with the impossibility of human perfection measured against Giovanni Bavga’s exacting standards.
$31,750 reasons to be perfect.
$31,750 reasons to ignore my bladder, my blistered feet, my wounded pride, my instinct for self-preservation.
$31,750 reasons to become whatever version of myself Giovanni Bavga wants to buy.
It’s not even a question of whether I’ll try.
It’s a question of whether I’ll survive this game with my dignity intact.