Chapter 22 #2
She'll squirm. She'll try to press back against my hand.
I'll pull away. Deliver another strike. Sharper. A reprimand for her impatience.
By the fifteenth, she'll be shaking. Her ass will be crimson, hot to the touch, marked with the perfect outline of my palm. She'll be wet enough that I'll see it glistening on her thighs.
And she'll beg.
Please, Sir. Please.
But I won't give in. Not yet. I'll make her wait. Make her crave it. Make her understand that pleasure is a privilege I grant, not a right she's entitled to.
"Fuck," I hiss through clenched teeth as the first spurt of come hits the shower wall. My cock pulses again, another jet following the first. I stroke through it, milking every last drop, my breath coming in harsh pants.
When it's over, I stand there under the spray, breathing heavy as the water washes away the evidence of my weakness.
The monster in my head remains quiet for once.
Sated, perhaps.
Or planning.
Or maybe just… indifferent.
Because it knows me.
It knows that’s not how this ends.
How does it end?
The question enters my mind in my own voice. Innocent. The voice of a boy I left behind twenty-four years ago.
I scoff. We all know how this ends.
Dead? The boy inside me asks. He’s broken. Starving. Tired.
But not beaten.
Does it end with her dead, Giovanni?
It ends with… Suddenly words invade my mind. Her words, written in the journal I gave her. The poem that cut off just as it was getting interesting.
I wanted it to be you who—
Destroys her, the monster adds quickly. Awake and present as ever. That’s what she wants, Giovanni. She wants you to destroy her. To ruin her body and mind. To take what you want and throw the rest away.
Will you do it? the boy asks.
No. I’m not destroying her. I’m giving her structure. Boundaries. A framework she can rely on when everything else in her life has been chaos and loss. She will understand exactly what's expected of her. She will understand exactly what happens when she fails.
The boy sighs.
The monster claps.
This setup is perfect for Emmaleen. She's in good hands. My hands. Jino's hands.
Between the two of us, she'll have everything she needs. I'll give her the intensity, the fire, the absolute certainty of my control. Jino will give her the precision, the methodology, the reassurance that her submission is valued, not exploited.
It's balanced. It's fair.
I'll let him stay for a few weeks. Long enough to help us settle into the routine. Long enough to make sure she understands the rules so thoroughly they become instinct. Then he can return to his life, his other clients, whatever the fuck else he does when he's not here.
Jino will counteract any mistakes I make.
The thought surfaces like a corpse floating to the top of a lake—cold, unwanted, impossible to ignore.
The monster inside me shifts. You don't make mistakes, Giovanni. In her mind, you're perfect. She counts your strikes like prayers. She takes your pain like communion. You don't need Jino to balance you. You need him gone before he convinces her otherwise.
The monster is half right. Jino's presence is a problem. Not now—not yet—but eventually. He's already overstepping. The bath. The aftercare. The way he looked at her when he thought I wasn't watching. He's supposed to be a contractor, a professional, a tool I'm using to shape her properly.
But he's becoming something else.
He's becoming a reference point. A comparison. A voice in her head that suggests maybe Giovanni Bavga isn't the only way to experience this.
And that's unacceptable.
She's mine. The bruises on her ass are mine. The tears she cried last night were mine. The way her voice breaks when she calls me "Sir" or "my King"—that's mine.
The fantasy lingers.
Emmaleen. Permanent. Mine.
No Jino.
No distractions.
No mistakes.
Jino needs to go.
Soon.
I find Jino in the living room.
Reading the newspaper.
Not scrolling through his phone. Not watching the monitors. Not downstairs with Emmaleen where he's supposed to be.
Reading. The Newspaper.
He's seated in the leather armchair near the window, legs crossed, one tattooed hand holding the fold of newsprint like he's a retiree on a Sunday morning.
His face is bruised too—worse than mine, actually.
His split lip is healing crooked. There's a purple shadow along his jaw where I landed a solid hit.
But he looks calm.
Serene, even.
I stop in the doorway, cataloging the scene. The coffee table has a mug on it—espresso, based on the size—and a small plate with crumbs. He's eaten. Made himself at home. Comfortable.
Too comfortable.
"Where the hell did you get a newspaper?" I ask. My voice comes out flat. Cold. The kind of tone that makes people flinch.
Jino doesn’t flinch. He simply glances up, his ice-blue eyes meeting mine with that unreadable expression he's perfected over the years. "The coffee shop at the bottom of the hill."
"You went out?"
Jino pauses. Tilts his head. "Am I your prisoner or something? I wanted a fucking espresso and a paper. So fucking what?"
Is he angry? I step further into the room, hands sliding into my pockets. The fabric of my suit coat pulls across my shoulders. "Why aren't you downstairs?"
Jino folds the newspaper carefully, setting it on the armrest. He leans back, fingers laced over his stomach, studying me like I'm a problem he's still calculating the solution to.
"I gave her the day off."
"You what?"
"She still earned one demerit last night," Jino continues, his tone maddeningly even. "Came without permission. But otherwise, she needs rest. So I'm giving her rest."
"Last night?" I'm confused. But the monster in my chest isn't. It's doing more than stretching now. It's clawing against the inside of my ribs.
"She didn't get the full experience. So… I took care of it."
"You what?"
He touched her, the monster growls.
Again.
My gaze drops to the bruise on his jaw. The one I put there. The one that should remind him exactly where the line is.
"She doesn't need a break," I say. My voice is quieter now. Sharper. "She's experienced. She's had submissive training before. Two days shouldn't require recovery time."
Jino tilts his head again, the way he does when he's choosing his words with surgical precision. "Experienced doesn't mean conditioned. And conditioning requires pacing."
"She needs a push, not coddling."
"She needs consistency."
"She needs—"
"You should watch the footage from last night," Jino interrupts.
The shift in his tone is subtle, but I catch it. The calm veneer cracks just enough to let the edge show through. He's definitely angry.
Holding it in, but angry.
I take another step forward. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
Jino's jaw tightens. His fingers flex once, then still. "It means you should review your own session before questioning mine."
"I know what happened last night."
"Do you?"
The question hangs in the air, weighted with something I don't like. Accusation. Judgment. The kind of unspoken criticism that makes my skin crawl because it implies I fucked up.
I didn't fuck up.
I gave her exactly what she needed. Structure. Consequences. Pain that she could process and submit to. She took thirty strikes without using her safe word. She chose that. Chose me.
But Jino's looking at me like I'm the one who needs correcting.
"She didn't safeword," I say.
"No," Jino agrees. "She didn't."
"Then what's the problem?"
He stands slowly, unfolding from the chair with that controlled grace he's always had.
The tattoos on his arms shift as he moves—skeletal saints and devils locked in eternal struggle.
He crosses to the window, staring out at the grounds like he's trying to decide whether this conversation is worth having.
When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet. Measured. Clinical.
"You weren't training her last night, Giovanni. You were punishing yourself."
I don't respond.
Can't.
Because the monster is too busy clawing its way up my throat, screaming at me to throw him out. Get rid of him. He's not doing his job. He's undermining me. He's touching what's mine and then sitting in my living room reading a fucking newspaper like he owns the place.
Get. Rid. Of him.
"She's fine," I say instead, and the words come out strangled, defensive, sharp enough to cut. "She didn't break. She didn't use the safe word I gave her. She submitted beautifully—perfectly—exactly the way I needed her to."
Jino turns from the window to face me, and what I see in his ice-blue eyes stops me cold. It's not anger. Not judgment. Not even disappointment.
It's something worse.
Pity.
"She'll recover, yes," he says quietly, and his voice is soft in that way that makes grown men confess their sins. "The welts will fade. The bruises will heal. Her body will remember how to move without flinching. But it's not really her I'm worried about."
The silence stretches between us like a blade.
"What?" I finally respond.
"It's you, Giovanni." He exhales slowly, shaking his head. "You're becoming... I don't even know what to call it. A stranger, maybe. Someone I don't recognize anymore."
The rage detonates.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" I snap, my voice rising despite every instinct screaming at me to stay controlled.
"What is this, a bullshit psychotherapy session?
Since when do you play counselor? I didn't ask for your fucking opinion about me.
I asked you to train her. That's it. That's all. "
"Watch the footage."
"I don't need to watch the fucking footage—"
"Watch it."
The command in his voice stops me cold.
Jino Moretti doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't need to. But right now, standing there with his bruised face and his skeletal saints and his unshakable certainty, he sounds exactly like what he is.
A man who knows more about this than I do.
And that infuriates me more than anything else.