Chapter 26 Emmaleen
I’m floating in green. Not the forest green of trees, but the specific shade of Giovanni Bavga’s eyes.
Apparently, I’ve been upgraded to the Bavga Color Experience.
They’re everywhere—above me, beside me, inside my skull—cold and calculating one moment, flaring with something that might be concern the next.
I try to speak, but my tongue feels like sandpaper. My eyelids weigh seventeen pounds each. When I finally manage to crack them open, the light stabs directly into my brain.
White ceiling. Beeping machines. The antiseptic smell that screams hospital more effectively than any sign.
Great. Emmaleen Rourke, Hospital Edition. Yet another debt I can’t pay.
Wait. Why am I here?
I turn my head, vision swimming through a blur of color until it sharpens into... flowers. Everywhere. Not the sad grocery-store kind people buy out of obligation, but massive, sculpted arrangements that belong at a celebrity funeral.
For a second, I think I died and Giovanni sent condolence bouquets to himself. The absurdity almost makes me laugh—almost.
Then a nurse appears beside me, all penguin scrubs and weaponized cheer. “Well, good morning, sunshine,” she says, voice bright enough to qualify as a controlled substance. “About time you rejoined the land of the living. We were starting to take bets.”
I blink at her, still foggy. “Lucky winner?”
“Mr. Tall, Dark, and Don’t-Argue-With-Him.” She adjusts my IV with a wink, like we’ve been doing this for years. “Man hasn’t left your bedside in six days. Pretty sure the chair’s molded to his ass.”
The image hits somewhere between funny and terrifying. “Six days?”
She nods, unfazed. “Mmhmm. Would’ve been seven, but you finally opened your eyes this morning. Gave the poor guy a reason to shower.”
“Where did all these flowers come from? I don’t actually have this many friends.”
“Same guy, honey. They started small. He was absolutely convinced you’d recover within hours. That man’s confidence is off the charts. But... as things got worse, the arrangements got bigger. Flowers are a way for loved ones to feel… useful. In a time of helplessness.”
Helplessness. I manage a weak smile, though it hurts. When has Giovanni Bavga ever been helpless. Even as a kidnapped child, he was not helpless.
“Am I OK now?”
“Well,” she snickers, “the boss man left, so… you must be.”
She moves on, checking vitals, humming something bright and old-fashioned—like none of this is strange. But the word six keeps echoing in my skull, each repetition heavier than the last.
I’ve lost a week of my life.
“He left something behind,” the nurse says, pointing to a small stainless-steel case nestled beside me. “Said it was for you. Said it was to settle his debt.”
The words hit harder than they should.
Settle his debt.
My throat tightens. There’s only one man who’d phrase it like that.
The case gleams under the fluorescent light—sleek, utilitarian, expensive. Giovanni Bavga in object form. The clasp is cold under my fingers, and for one absurd second, I think of his Lamborghini door—searching for a handle that wasn’t there, feeling stupid and fascinated all at once.
Then memory slams into me—not in pieces, but whole and merciless.
The pool house.
Being naked.
Rico’s hands in my hair.
The sculpture.
Blood.
Giovanni’s eyes after he pulled the trigger.
The monitor starts beeping faster, and the nurse murmurs something about taking it easy, but I barely hear her. I’m back in time, replaying every second of the single day I worked for a mob boss.
The set up. The contract. The desk. The shoes, the Lambo, the closets, the drive, the game, my poem, the threat, the new deal, the wall-fucking, the sex party, the blatant display of exhibitionism, his poem, our first fight.
Then our first real conversation.
The lifting of burdens we didn’t even know were weighing us down. I took some of his, he took some of mine…
I sigh.
Romantic, it is not.
And yet…
I flip the lid open, and my breath catches.
Cash. Stacks of it. Crisp, banded hundreds that look suspiciously like exactly $31,750. The promised reward for a week without demerits.
Except I didn’t make it through the week without demerits.
I lift the cash, and there they are—both notebooks. Sitting side by side like twin judges: one for my sins, one for my salvation.
I pick up the demerit book first. The leather is soft, worn smooth along the edges. The spine has a faint bend, like it’s been opened and reopened a hundred times. The corners are no longer sharp, instead, rounded from use.
The crimson leather bookmark divides the middle. I flip to it and pause.
Words. His words. Everywhere.
The page is full—dense with black ink, packed edge to edge as if he couldn’t bear to stop. The margins are gone, consumed by notes that climb right to the edge, each line pressed against the next. Tiny ink blots mark the pauses—moments where he must have stopped to think, to breathe, to try again.
What is going on here? This page is chaos unleashed. It makes no sense. Not in the context of Giovanni Bavga.
I flip to the first page. It looks completely different. Structured, orderly, neat. His handwriting, a testament to years of elite prep-school expectation. Each entry is numbered. Boxed. Ruled off with straight, deliberate lines.
Demerit: Blood pressure dropped to 82/45 at 3:17 a.m.
Explanation: This is unacceptable. I did not give you permission to die, Miss Rourke.
Demerit: Erratic brain waves during hour seven.
Explanation: Your thoughts should be more orderly. This is simply sloppy.
I snort, which makes my head throb. Even unconscious, I can’t meet his standards.
Demerit: Required second blood transfusion.
Explanation: Wasteful. One should have been sufficient.
Demerit: Developed fever of 102.3.
Explanation: Drama queen.
Demerit: Left pupil unresponsive to light.
Explanation: Insubordination.
Demerit: Heart rate dropped to 42 BPM at 2:06 a.m.
Explanation: You are deliberately trying to terrify me. It’s working.
Demerit: Failed to respond to verbal commands.
Explanation: Selective hearing is not an attractive quality, Miss Rourke.
Demerit: Required intubation for seventeen hours.
Explanation: Breathing is not optional.
My fingers tremble as I turn the page. The entries continue, each one more frantic than the last. His handwriting starts to break—still elegant, but the precision is cracking. The lines sharpen. The angles tighten. The human starts to leak through.
I scared him.
I realize, with a kind of quiet horror, that he’s filled this book. The once-empty ledger of my failures now overflowing with proof that Giovanni Bavga—of all men—came undone and tried to rebuild himself through me.
This is how Giovanni Bavga shows fear: buried in symmetry and ink. Each entry a negotiation with the universe, disguised as discipline. The man who calculates every move, who turns control into oxygen, sat here cataloging my body’s betrayals as if they were personal insults.
These aren’t demerits—they’re love letters written in code. Terror disguised as order.
The man who measures everything couldn’t measure the possibility of losing me. So he did what he always does. He built a system. A ritual. A religion of control. Trying to transform helplessness into something familiar—rules, consequences, order.
Even as my body shut down, he was bargaining with death through a leather-bound notebook and a fountain pen. As if he could intimidate my organs into compliance by sheer force of will.
Wow.
It feels… romantic.
God, I’m stupid.
I set the demerit book aside and reach for the second one. The reward system.
The leather is newer—sleeker, stiffer. Like it didn’t get as much use as the demerits.
I smile at this. Not because of my lack of cooperation, but because the rewards were never about behavior. They were about hope.
The emerald ribbon glints against the cream pages, matching his eyes with unsettling precision. Of course it does. Giovanni Bavga doesn’t do coincidence.
I open to the first page.
Reward: 50 points for involuntary eye movement at 7:42 p.m. You’re still in there. I can tell.
Reward: 50 points for increasing oxygen saturation to 96%. Keep breathing. That’s all you have to do.
Reward: 100 points for squeezing the doctor’s hand. Next time, squeeze mine.
The handwriting is exact—steady, deliberate, but there’s something else under the ink. A softness he doesn’t allow himself in speech.
Reward: 150 points for spike in brain activity when I read The Little Prince. I knew you were listening.
Reward: 200 points for maintaining stable vitals for six consecutive hours. You’re fighting. Good girl. I approve.
Reward: 250 points for murmuring something that sounded like “notebook.” Even unconscious, you’re fixated on the rules.
A small laugh escapes me. It hurts.
Of course he turned my recovery into a point system. Control disguised as affection. Affection disguised as control.
Then—halfway through the book—the handwriting shifts. Still elegant, but looser. The pressure lightens, the strokes wandering. He’s slipping. The man who never crosses out a word starts to hesitate.
And then I find it.
A page that doesn’t follow the pattern.
No numbered entries. No rewards.
Just a title—underlined twice.
Little Miss Take
The rest is verse. Terza rima. The pattern is unmistakable—he’s building a chain of rhyme and reason, trying to bind the world into order again.
I built you from the syllables of grace,
From pulse and ink and quiet disobedience.
You moved—my universe adjusted place.
Each breath a claim, each silence a convenience—
You taught me mercy, ruined every plan.
Control was just a myth of self-reliance.
If you return, I’ll write the rest, I swear.
Each line a breath, each breath a kind of prayer.
That’s where it stops. Mid-pattern.
As if he couldn’t finish without me.
My chest tightens.
He made me a ledger.
A ledger of faith.
Even his love obeys a form. Even his fear rhymes.