Chapter 12
The crash jolts me awake. My eyes fly open to chaos-acoustics—furniture smashing, bodies colliding, something glass shattering against a wall.
God, that's not just fighting. That's attempted murder with sound effects.
I sit bolt upright. The see-through nightgown Master dressed me in last night clings to my skin with a clammy intimacy that feels both violating and oddly reassuring. At least I'm not naked anymore.
Another crash. Then voices—muffled rage filtering through the ceiling in bass vibrations I feel more than hear. One voice definitely Giovanni's. The other, deeper. Master.
Then, silence. The kind of silence that follows someone getting knocked unconscious. Or worse.
What the fresh hell am I doing here?
I hug my knees to my chest, creating my own little fortress of flesh against whatever horror show is unfolding upstairs. The institutional mattress crinkles beneath me, its vinyl surface somehow both sweaty and freezing against my bare legs.
Twenty-four hours ago, I was leaving a women's shelter with dreams of financial independence. Now I'm in a basement sex dungeon while my mob boss employer cage-matches his BDSM instructor. Why am I such a disaster magnet?
But then there's last night. Master appearing like some leather-clad Florence Nightingale to bathe me after Giovanni stormed out.
The gentle way his hands moved over my skin.
How he whispered that Giovanni was "doing it wrong.
" The way his fingers lingered places they shouldn't. The small, surprising kiss.
It wasn't a fever dream. It happened.
And judging by the symphony of destruction upstairs, Giovanni knows it happened.
My stomach twists into origami shapes. How much of this is going to land on me? Giovanni isn't exactly the "let's talk about our feelings" type. He's more the "shove you off a platform and storm out" type. And now I've somehow wedged myself between him and his dungeon employee.
Family is everything to these people. I'm nothing. A disposable toy they're fighting over like dogs with a bone.
The sudden thunder of footsteps on the stairs freezes my blood. Heavy, deliberate steps. Not sneaking. Charging.
I scramble out of bed, bare feet slapping against cold concrete as I retreat until my back hits the wall. My hands splay against the rough surface, seeking purchase, stability, anything.
The footsteps get louder. Closer.
This is not the life of a well-adjusted twenty-something woman.
The door detonates inward like someone kicked a C4 charge.
Giovanni fills the doorway, a living anatomy chart of rage. Bare-chested, furious, breathing like he's just sprinted through hell with demons on his heels. His boxer briefs cling low enough to make me question my life choices, which—let's be honest—have been questionable enough already.
But it's his eyes that pin me against the wall. Two glacial green lasers set to vaporize, scanning me with such controlled fury that I swear I can feel my skin heating under their gaze. The usual calculation is gone, replaced by something rawer, something primal.
This isn't business Giovanni. This is personal Giovanni. The kind who shoots people.
Then Master steps into view behind him, and oh—oh wow—no mask.
So that's what's been hiding under all that leather and mystery.
Turns out, Satan's personal trainer is hot.
Like, "why am I noticing this when I might be about to die?
" hot. Split lip dripping blood. No shirt.
Just miles of tattooed muscle, ink sprawling across his chest and down his arms in intricate patterns that somehow look both sacred and profane in the dim light.
And his face. Jesus. He looks like Giovanni's more dangerous brother. Same bone structure, same predatory stillness, but rougher around the edges. A Giovanni who doesn't bother with designer suits and boardroom politics.
My brain decides this is the perfect moment to helpfully replay the memory of his hands sliding soap across my skin last night. Touching places only invited guests should touch. His lips brushing mine.
The two of them standing together creates a perfect visual for my predicament: caught between identical versions of breathtaking and dangerous.
My pulse does some gymnastic routine that would qualify for the Olympics. Whatever war started upstairs has just relocated. The venue has changed, but I'm pretty sure I'm the new battlefield.
Giovanni's arm snaps up, finger stabbing toward the floor in front of him. "Here. Now." Two words, loaded like bullets.
My legs turn to wet newspaper as I push off from the wall. One step. Another. The nightgown clings to my sweat-slicked skin, transparent enough that I might as well be naked. Five more steps across concrete that feels like miles of Arctic tundra under my bare feet.
I'm waiting for the explosion—for Giovanni to grab me, shake me, throw me against something. For accusations about Master's hands on me. For questions I can't answer without making this infinitely worse.
But he doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Just watches with that marble statue stillness that makes the Medici sculptures look fidgety.
His silence is worse than screaming. It's a void demanding to be filled, but whatever I say will be wrong. I've accumulated enough demerits to spend eternity in Position Three with my forehead kissing concrete.
I stop in front of him, close enough to count the bruises blooming across his chest, to smell the copper tang of blood and sweat. Close enough to see the muscle in his jaw twitch with restrained violence.
I've never felt smaller. Never felt more exposed. And what terrifies me most isn't his anger—it's how desperately I want to fix it, to erase that cold fire from his eyes. That's the real danger here: not what he might do to me, but what I might do to make him stop looking at me like I'm nothing.
The silence between us stretches so long I swear I can hear my own cells dividing. Giovanni's gaze has transformed me into a science experiment—a specimen pinned to a board, helplessly waiting to be dissected.
"What did he do to you last night?" Giovanni finally asks, his voice glacial as he points one long, elegant finger at Master.
I glance at Master, who seems about as concerned as someone checking the weather forecast for next Tuesday.
He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed over his tattooed chest, blood drying on his split lip like he's posing for the cover of Sociopaths Monthly.
The casual indifference in his posture tells me everything I need to know about where I stand in this little power triangle.
Of course.
They fought it out like animals upstairs, came to some kind of blood-soaked gentleman's agreement, and now I'm the sacrificial lamb.
Whatever happened in that silence after the fighting stopped, whatever words were exchanged—they've reached their male consensus.
And I'm just the chess piece they're moving around the board.
"He—I mean, I—" My tongue feels swollen, uncooperative. "I didn't bathe like you said to. That was my fault. I fell asleep instead, and then he came in and said I should have followed instructions and—"
The words tumble out of me like I'm reading from a bad script I've performed too many times before. The rhythm is familiar—minimize his actions, maximize my faults, preempt the anger before it escalates. Create a narrative where I deserve whatever's coming.
Wait.
Holy shit.
This is exactly what I did with my ex. The verbal dance before the storm. The careful recitation of my sins to justify the bruises that would follow.
My stomach lurches violently, acid climbing my throat. Black spots dance at the edges of my vision like evil little paratroopers invading my consciousness. The concrete floor beneath my feet seems to ripple and shift.
No. No, no, no. I will not faint. I will not collapse in front of these men. God knows what they'd do to my unconscious body. What new lessons in submission they'd teach while I couldn't even scream—
And just like that, the fear crystallizes into something harder, colder.
Something with edges.
What the fuck am I doing?
What do I think they’ll do to me if I faint? Rape me?
Because if that’s what I truly think, this is gone way beyond crazy.
This has become…a cancer. Something that needs to be cut out of me. A disease I might never recover from.
I blink, and the room snaps back into focus. The dizziness recedes like a tide pulling back from shore.
What the actual fuck am I doing?
This isn't who I am. This isn't who I promised myself I'd become after I left Cleveland. After the hospital. After the months of looking over my shoulder and jumping at shadows.
My posture straightens. My chin lifts. The words that come out of my mouth now have weight, substance.
"You know what? I'm done." The declaration lands between us like a brick. "This whole thing—the demerits, the positions, the mind games—I'm out."
I move forward, no longer a trembling leaf but something with purpose.
My shoulder brushes past Giovanni's, the contact sending electric currents through my skin that I refuse to acknowledge.
I push past Master next, not looking at his face, not giving him the satisfaction of my fear or my desire or whatever fucked-up cocktail of emotions he stirs in me.
The dungeon opens before me, its medieval horror-show layout now just furniture I need to navigate to reach my exit. My eyes lock on the key hanging on its hook—that small piece of metal that represents the end of this psychological torture chamber.
Freedom isn't found in escape, I remind myself as I stride toward it. But in the deliberate choice of which chains to wear.
And I choose… not theirs.
I snatch the key from its hook and whirl around, clutching it against my chest like it's the One Ring and I'm surrounded by Nazg?l. Both men have followed me into the dungeon proper—Giovanni with his glacial rage, Master with his professionally composed face.