Chapter 21 #3
This is the kind of ownership that answers to no one, that operates outside the bounds of Giovanni's permission, that exists in defiance of his authority.
Or half-ownership, perhaps. Which is still so far over the monster's blood-red line that it shouldn't even be a consideration.
Hell, now that the proposal sits between us, crystallizing into something real, I'm not even sure how Jino negotiated his way into this arrangement in the first place. The training sessions, the discipline, the touching—all of it required Giovanni's explicit permission. His blessing.
In fact, the more I turn it over in my mind, the clearer it becomes. This couldn't have been Jino's idea from the start.
It was Giovanni's.
All of it.
He wanted to get rid of me. To make me vanish from his life completely, without the mess of simply throwing me out.
And his method was elegant in its cruelty—he would withhold himself entirely.
Deny me his touch, his presence, his attention.
Make Jino into the instrument of my fear, the thing that would finally convince me to run.
But that carefully constructed plan crashed and burned spectacularly when Jino gave me aftercare that Giovanni withheld. When he touched me with gentleness instead of only severity. When he saw what Giovanni refused to see.
Jino was furious that Giovanni didn't perform aftercare that first night. So he did it himself, shattering whatever cold distance Giovanni had tried to maintain.
Oh.
Okay.
I guess… Jino actually likes me. More than likes me, maybe.
Which makes things infinitely harder, infinitely more complicated. Because if I've pieced it together lying here naked on this basement bed, then Giovanni—who sees everything, who calculates ten moves ahead before anyone else has even noticed the game has started—Giovanni already knows.
And jealousy, real jealousy—the kind that sinks claws into a man's chest and doesn't let go—makes monsters do truly monstrous things.
Is that why Giovanni went so brutally hard on me tonight? Why he punished me like he was trying to prove ownership? Why every strike felt like a brand, every command a reassertion of territory?
No.
No, it wasn't just that.
It was something much deeper, much darker than simple territorial jealousy over Jino's growing attachment. Something more fundamental to who Giovanni is, to whatever broken machinery drives him.
Which means… there might actually be a chance I could convince him. That I could find the right words, the right argument, the right approach to make him see that this doesn't have to end with everyone frustrated.
A very small chance, admittedly.
Microscopic, really.
But it exists.
"What if I can't?" My voice barely works—a whisper that cracks at the edges, raw and uncertain in the basement's heavy silence.
Then… slowly, Jino lowers his mouth down to mine. He kisses me with a deliberation that steals the air from my lungs—soft at first, almost tender in its precision, before deepening into something that tastes of possession and warning.
His lips move against mine with the kind of control he applies to everything else in this dungeon, each movement calculated to devastate.
And as he does this, as his mouth claims mine in a way that scrambles my thoughts into nonsense, he whispers his threats directly into the small space between us.
His voice is low and measured and utterly devoid of mercy.
"Then you'll get no more from me, little one.
Nothing." He pulls back just enough to let the words land.
"No comfort. No kisses. No finger fucks, no nipple teasing—none of the small mercies I've allowed you to depend on.
" His fingers trace along my jaw as he speaks, the skeletal stigmata tattoos on his palms catching the dim light.
"But even more than that, you won't get him, either. "
He pauses, letting that sink in. The silence is a weapon.
"Because Giovanni will wake up today and remember his monster.
Remember how it got a hold of him, how it consumed him when he wasn't paying attention.
He'll watch the footage of his punishments—every second of your broken body, every sound you made. He'll be watching this too. He’ll see what I did. How I made you come undone. How you whispered my name, not his. How you begged for more. He’ll watch me kiss you, watch how you respond. "
Jino's voice drops lower, intimate in its cruelty.
"And he'll realize the truth that's been sitting under his skin since the beginning.
He should've never given you a choice. He should've drugged you, put you on a plane, and sent you across the world.
Never to see you again. Safe. As long as the two of you are never together again. "
Jino releases my chin with deliberate slowness, his skeletal-tattooed fingers uncurling from my skin like he's setting down something sacred and forbidden at once.
He gets out of bed. The cold air rushes in where his body heat was, replacing warmth with the basement's perpetual chill—damp stone, and old shadows, and the faint scent of leather that clings to everything in this space.
He moves toward the door. Each step measured and methodical.
There's no anger in his movements, which somehow makes it worse.
Anger would suggest emotion, volatility, the possibility of reversal.
This is something else entirely—a man executing a decision he's already made, a ritual being performed to completion.
"Jino, wait—"
But my plea dissolves into the space between us, and he doesn't pause, doesn't turn, doesn't acknowledge that I've spoken.
The door closes.
The lock doesn't click—he doesn't lock me in—but it might as well be bolted shut with iron and intention.
I sit up on the edge of the bed, trembling. Naked. Covered in welts and the remnants of two men's desire. My body aches with a dull, spreading soreness—the kind that lives deeper than surface pain, that settles into muscle and bone and memory.
Alone.
Just me and the silence and the terrible, crystalline clarity that I've just watched something fracture.
Not break—not yet—but fracture.
And fractures, once they form, have a way of spreading until the whole structure collapses under its own weight.
Hours pass.
I count them by the way my skin cools and my muscles stiffen. By the way hunger creeps in, then fades, then returns sharper.
The door stays closed.
No footsteps on the stairs.
No crop tapping against leather.
No Giovanni filling the space like smoke.
Just silence.
The door stays closed.
Jino isn't coming back.
He won't come back.
Not until I convince Giovanni that he should learn how to share.