Chapter 15
I'm sitting on the edge of a mattress so thin it looks like it came out of a prison fire sale, having what can only be described as an existential meltdown about Giovanni and Master’s lack of commitment to my undying submission.
My thoughts are coming in fragments, like someone dropped my brain and it shattered on the cement floor.
What the actual hell am I doing here?
Two men just had a literal fistfight over how to best degrade me, and I'm... what? Still sitting here? In a nightgown that shows more than it covers, contemplating my life choices like this is some kind of weird self-help retreat and not a hostage situation with occasional orgasms?
God, the orgasms. That's part of the problem. I want them. Badly. Badly enough to stay.
The vinyl mattress squeaks as I shift, and I half-expect it to be wired to record that too. Everything monitored. Everything controlled. Everything a manipulation.
Just like with Tyler.
My stomach clenches at the thought of him. Tyler with his designer watch and his carefully cultivated stubble and his hand around my throat.
"You're nothing without me," he'd whisper. "You're lucky I even look at you."
And I'd believed him. For two years, I'd believed every word.
Until the stairs.
I trace my finger over the small scar near my eyebrow—my souvenir from that night. The night that should have killed me but instead woke me up.
I got out. I fucking survived Tyler. I should be popping champagne and living my best life, not signing up for Fifty Shades of Mob Boss down here in Giovanni's personal circle of hell.
What does that say about me? That I traded one prison for another? That I'm so fundamentally broken that I can't recognize a red flag when it's literally being slapped against a gloved palm?
But Giovanni is... different. Isn't he? He killed for me. Protected me.
Yeah, after putting you in danger in the first place. Gold star for murder, Emmaleen. Really raising the bar in your relationship standards.
I press my hands against my temples. My brain needs to shut up for five seconds so I can think.
But that's the problem. I'm thinking too much. Overthinking. Analyzing. Trying to make sense of feelings that don't make sense.
I should hate Giovanni. I should fear Jino. I should be clawing at the walls to escape.
Instead, I'm... what? Aroused? Intrigued? Willing to endure humiliation for a man who sees me as property?
"You're repeating patterns," I say out loud. Reciting self-help books lit up with pastel esthetic highlighters. "You're seeking what's familiar, not what's healthy."
There's something fundamentally broken in me that seeks out men who want to control me, hurt me, own me.
I get it. Some women are just like this.
But there's something else too. Something I don't want to admit.
I like the way Giovanni looks at me. Like I'm a puzzle he can't solve. Like I matter.
Tyler looked at me like I was nothing. Giovanni looks at me like I'm everything—even if that everything is just an object to possess.
Is that progress or delusion?
A soft knock interrupts my spiral. Not demanding. Almost... hesitant?
I could hear them earlier—Giovanni and Mas—Jino. God, I need to stop calling him Master in my head. It's like my brain is already capitulating.
I was too busy unraveling my own psyche to eavesdrop properly. Now I wish I had. Maybe then I'd know what's coming next in this sick little play.
What am I afraid of more? That they'll tell me to go? Or ask me to stay?
If I leave, I get my freedom and enough money to last a year. Not to mention a new name. I could start over. Somewhere warm, maybe. With palm trees and no basements.
If I stay... what? More humiliation? More confusion? More moments where I hate myself for wanting what I shouldn't want?
Or something else? Something I can't even name yet?
Another knock.
I sigh, loud enough to be heard through the door. "Come in," I call, my voice steadier than I feel.
Jino enters. Not Master, but Jino now—names matter when your dignity's in shreds.
I study his back as he walks to the end of my small room.
The tattoos across his shoulders shift with each step, a morbid animated flipbook of skeleton saints and Latin prayers I can't translate.
He stops at the bathtub, looking down into its empty basin.
The memory floods back unwanted—his hands on me last night. How careful he was. How methodical. The way his fingertips skimmed my skin like he was reading braille, finding every tension point and soothing it away. Clinical, almost. Except it wasn't clinical at all.
I asked him point blank why he was touching me like that.
His answer was so maddeningly honest, it stole my words away. To make you love me. To confuse your brain so you see your Master as love, not pain. If you were my sub, I'd be fucking you slowly tonight. Telling you sweet things. I'd make you come many times to take away the sting of the day.
The bath as behavior modification. Tenderness as tactical advantage. The care itself was part of the conditioning—he'd admitted it to my face, like it was the most natural thing in the world. And my body had responded exactly as programmed.
Jino turns to face me, his split lip from the fight with Giovanni adding a strange vulnerability to his otherwise controlled expression. His eyes lock on mine.
"Did you sleep well after I left?"
I pull my legs up, suddenly aware of how visible I must be through this nightgown. Then realize with horror, I'm flashing him my pussy. I quickly put my legs down. "Like a baby after its first exorcism."
"Did my presence in your room upset you?"
"Living in a sex dungeon upset me. You were just the cherry on top of my trauma sundae."
"Did the bath comfort you?"
"Are you seriously asking if your manipulation worked? That's next-level gaslighting, even for this place."
His expression doesn't change. "I'm guiding you through confusion. Nothing more."
"Well, consider me thoroughly guided into Stockholm Syndrome. What's next on the abuse itinerary?"
"That's your prerogative to interpret it that way," he says with infuriating calm.
"My prerogative?" My voice rises. "Was it my prerogative to be stripped naked? To be debased and humiliated? To be treated like an animal for training?"
Jino tilts his head slightly. "Did you feel humiliated last night after I put you to bed?"
The question stops me cold.
Did I? The bath had felt... good. Necessary. His hands had been gentle, his voice soothing. Even when his fingers slipped between my legs, I didn’t feel violated. It felt... inevitable. Right.
And that terrifies me more than any crop or command.
"Honesty sets you free, Emmaleen," he says, stepping closer. "If you would admit what you're so forcefully trying to deny, you'll find freedom in that truth."
"That I'm broken?" The words explode from me. "That I'm some pathetic submissive stereotype who gets wet when men treat me like garbage? Baby fuck me up and treat me like I’m nothing? That I'm so fucking damaged I'm addicted to pain?"
Jino considers this thoughtfully. "Maybe that's true. But it's not a threat."
"Not a threat?" I stand up. "All of this is a threat! The basement, the crop, the positions, the fucking see-through nightgown! It's all designed to threaten me into submission!"
"Then why are you still here?" His voice remains maddeningly calm.
The question lands like a slap. Why am I still here?
Because I'm a fucking disaster with daddy issues? Because I'm running toward the flame that already burned me once? Because I don't know how to want healthy things?
Because deep down, I want this. And that makes me the worst kind of cliché.
Tears start streaming down my face, hot and humiliating. "Because there's something wrong with me. Because all of this—" I gesture wildly at the room, the nightgown, him "—turns me on. And I hate myself for it."
Jino crosses the room and pulls me up from the bed and into his arms. I should fight. I should claw at his eyes. I should scream.
Instead, I melt against him as he strokes my hair.
"There's nothing wrong with you," he murmurs, his voice vibrating against my temple.
"This is your nature. Submissive. Written into your bones like a birthright.
" His fingers thread through my hair, each stroke deliberate and possessive.
"You can't change who you are, no matter how many times you run.
But you can change who you allow to see the real you—who you trust with that gift of surrender. "
His hands caress me, claiming territory like he did last night—without permission, without hesitation. Reading my body like it's already his.
As if sensing my thoughts, his voice drops to a whisper against my ear, each word deliberate and weighted with promise.
"You chose this path, Emmaleen. You walked through that door knowing what waited.
You're free to leave any time—the choice remains yours.
" His fingers trail across my shoulder blades, mapping territories yet unclaimed.
"But if you'd just surrender... just once.
.. give me a chance to show you..." His breath warms my skin as his hand settles possessively at the small of my back.
"I can teach your body how to sing with joy under my control.
How to find freedom in the chains you fear. "
I remain silent, my mind a pinball machine of conflicting thoughts.
Is this what I want? A life defined by submission, by kneeling and obeying another's will? Or am I simply falling into the same destructive pattern, mistaking control for care, convincing myself that abuse is love simply because the chains feel familiar against my skin?
The voice of self-preservation whispers warnings in my mind, reminding me how easily I once rationalized Tyler's escalating cruelty, how I reframed each violation as devotion until I couldn't recognize myself anymore.