Chapter 22
I’m standing in Giovanni Bavga’s shower with water hot enough to scald the memory of his hands off my skin, and yet here I am, replaying every touch like it’s the director’s cut of a movie I shouldn’t be watching.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I press my forehead against the cool marble tile. The water pressure is perfect because of course it is. Even his shower is an overachiever.
It’s not the sex I regret. Sex is just bodies doing what bodies do.
Physics and chemistry and a sprinkle of bad judgment.
No, what’s making me want to crawl out of my skin is that somewhere between him shoving me against a door and reciting poetry about wisteria in that voice that sounds like expensive whiskey, I started to like him.
Like. Him.
Giovanni Bavga, who makes grown men piss themselves. Giovanni Bavga, who keeps a notebook of my mistakes. Giovanni Bavga, who probably has bodies buried under those wisteria vines.
And I’m standing here with my heart all a flutter because he knows poetry.
God, I’m such a cliché. Every dark romance protagonist ever. “But he has layers, you guys!” Yeah, layers of criminal activity and manipulation tactics. The man collects women like trading cards, and I’m just the latest limited edition holographic pull.
I reach for his fancy body wash. It smells like him. I hate that I noticed that.
This isn’t my first rodeo on the Bad Decision Bronco. I’ve been here before, riding high on the rush of being wanted by someone dangerous, telling myself it’s different this time.
My ex—no, I won’t dignify him with a name, not even in my thoughts—he wrote the playbook Giovanni is following. The rules. The punishments. The rewards. The way he’d swing between cruelty and tenderness until I couldn’t tell which was which anymore.
I remember the day he laid out his expectations, bullet-pointed like a corporate memo. “If you break these rules, here’s what happens.” And like an idiot with a PhD in self-destruction, I nodded and said, “I understand.”
Giovanni’s demerit notebook might as well be written in my ex’s handwriting. I knew this the moment I picked it up from the seat in his Lambo. I understood what this was.
But it’s different, you guys! Because Giovanni is playing a game. And… it comes with rewards.
How. Fucking. Pathetic.
The shower spray hits a tender spot on my hip—Giovanni’s fingerprints. Tangible evidence of my spectacular judgment.
Twenty-one days until I’m completely homeless. Five demerits—this seems to be a number we keep circling back to. Thirty-one thousand dollars dangling in front of me like a carrot on a stick.
And all I need to do is not fall for the mobster.
Simple, right? Just like “don’t touch the hot stove” is simple until you’re freezing and it’s the only warmth in the room.
I should take the five hundred dollars. Get an Uber back to the shelter. Use the money for a bus ticket to anywhere-but-here. Sister Margaret would call it “a sensible choice.” My therapist, if I had one of those, would call it “a boundary.”
I think about that king-sized bed out there, and the way Giovanni looked at me when I was speaking my mind instead of playing his game, and the fact that for the first time in forever, I feel alive instead of just surviving.
That’s the real trap, isn’t it? Not the money. Not even the sex. It’s the feeling that maybe, just maybe, I matter to someone again. Even if that someone is the worst possible choice.
I turn off the water and stand dripping in his luxury shower, watching rivulets race down my body. The bruises are already forming—little purple galaxies of warning signs that I’m choosing to misread as constellations.
I wrap the towel around me like it’s the last line of defense between me and a series of increasingly terrible decisions. A second towel goes around my hair, twisted with efficiency.
Deep breath. Armor up. I open the bathroom door.
Giovanni is stretched across the bed like some Renaissance painting of masculine repose—hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling with an intensity that suggests it might start confessing its sins any moment. He’s changed into gray sweatpants but no shirt.
I hover in the doorway, painfully aware that I’m naked under this towel.
“Um,” I begin eloquently. Pulitzer material, really.
“Closet’s yours,” he says without looking at me. “Wear whatever you want.”
No sarcastic nickname. No smirk. Just blank permission that feels worse than any barb.
The closet is smaller than his Riverview palace of pristine suits, but still obscenely organized. I open a built-in drawer to find neatly folded athletic wear. I pull out a pair of black sweat shorts and a gray tank top with “U of P, HWT Crew” printed across the chest.
University of Pennsylvania. Because of course he went to an Ivy League school. And of course he was on the heavyweight rowing team. The man is a walking collection of villain origin story tropes.
I drop the towel and quickly pull on his clothes, trying not to notice how they smell like expensive laundry detergent and that indefinable Giovanni scent. The shorts hang precariously on my hips, and the tank is loose enough to swim in.
When I return, Giovanni hasn’t moved. Still staring at the ceiling like it contains the secrets of the universe. Or maybe just calculating interest rates on blood money. Who knows with him?
I hesitate at the edge of the bed, glancing at the leather couch across the room.
“Should I sleep on the—”
“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” He doesn’t look at me.
Fair point. We’ve already crossed every line except maybe tax fraud together today. Sharing a mattress seems quaint by comparison.
I slip under the covers on the opposite side, maintaining maximum distance while still technically being in the same bed. Then I mirror his position—flat on my back, hands behind my head, staring up at the same ceiling that’s apparently fascinating enough to fill a Grand Canyon of silence.
“I ran that background check on you,” he says finally.
My stomach drops through the mattress and probably keeps going straight through the floor. Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he?
“Cleveland,” he continues. “Parents were academics. Car accident when you were nineteen. Dropped out of Case Western, two semesters in community college—then, the scholarship money ran out.”
Each fact lands like a punch. Precise. Clinical. The CliffsNotes version of my tragedy.
“You had quite the following online. Book reviews. Seventy-five thousand followers.”
I feel my jaw tighten, teeth grinding together. The rage bubbles up hot and fast, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing it. Instead, I roll over, turning my back to him with deliberate slowness.
“Emmaleen.”
I say nothing.
“I’m not going to ask,” he says.
“Ask what?” The words snap out, brittle as kindling.
“Why there’s a year missing from your life.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Because you’ve already figured it out? Or because it’s none of your fucking business?”
“Because you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”
I laugh, and it sounds like breaking glass. “That’s rich. What is this, a therapy session? Going to bill my insurance for this heart-to-heart?”
“You’re angry.”
“Wow. U Penn really paid off with those analytical skills. You have no right to dissect my life like it’s one of your little business acquisitions.”
I feel the mattress shift as he turns toward me. “I wasn’t trying to—”
“What did you think you’d find?” I interrupt, still facing away from him. “More importantly, why would you want to know?”
“I was curious.”
“Curious.” I roll the word around like it’s poison. “Like I’m some exotic specimen in your collection.”
“That’s not—”
“Just stop talking. I’m tired, OK? It’s been… a helluva day.” I pull the covers up higher.
He sighs, and it sounds almost genuine. “Emmaleen, I’m trying to understand—”
“No,” I cut him off, finally rolling over to face him. His green eyes are closer than I expected, startlingly bright even in the dim light. “You’re trying to control. There’s a difference.”
“Is that what you think this is?”
“I know exactly what this is,” I say, my voice dropping to something dangerous and low. “This is you gathering intel. This is you looking for pressure points. This is you figuring out exactly how much it would take to break me.”
“That’s not—”
“It’s what men like you do,” I continue, riding the wave of fury that’s been building all day. “You study. You categorize. You exploit. You’re no different from—” I catch myself just in time.
Giovanni’s eyes narrow. “From who?”
“From every other entitled asshole who thinks money buys them the right to other people’s lives.”
He’s quiet for a moment, studying me with that unnerving intensity. “You’re comparing me to someone specific.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me,” I snap. “You’re my boss, not my therapist.”
“I’m the man you fucked against a door an hour ago,” he says, his voice dangerously soft. “I think we’re past professional boundaries.”
The words hit like a slap. “And whose fault is that? You’re the one who made the rules. You’re the one who keeps changing them.”
“You’re deflecting.”
“And you’re overstepping,” I counter. “My past is off-limits.”
“Everything about you is a locked door,” he says. “Even when you’re naked and coming apart in my hands.”
My cheeks burn with humiliation and rage. “Fuck you.”
“You already did,” he reminds me, maddeningly calm. “Rather enthusiastically.”
I want to scream. I want to hit him. I want to kiss him until neither of us can breathe.
Instead, I do what I do best. What did he call it? I wield words like weapons.
“You’re not the only one who can play detective,” I say, once again staring at the ceiling. My voice is cool despite the fire in my chest. “Let’s review our little road trip game, shall we? Two lies and a truth—except that’s not how you played it.”