Chapter 11
"About fucking time," I snap into the phone, my voice raw with barely controlled rage.
Lorcan's accent comes back at me. "Giovanni, listen—I know how this looks, right, but I was only tryna protect ya.
Uncle Fearghus, he sent me to yer place on orders from the LaRiccias, they wanted dirt on ya about Rico, evidence ya killed their boy or kidnapped him or—but I wasn't lookin' for anythin', I swear on Saint Patrick himself, I was never there to find things, I was there to report back that there was nothin' to find, that ya had nothin' to do with Rico goin' missin', that it was all just—"
"Lorcan."
He doesn't stop. The panic in his voice escalates.
"—and I know I shouldn't have been in yer house at all, shouldn't have used the codes from when I put your security in, but I thought if I just got in and out quick, filed the report sayin' everythin' was clean, the LaRiccias would drop it and ya'd be safe, and I never meant to—"
"Lorcan," I repeat, harder this time.
"—she just appeared, Giovanni, came walkin' out of yer library wearin' nothin' but that collar and I just—I lost time, I don't even remember decidin' to grab her, it just happened and now she's—"
"Lorcan."
Silence.
Then a shaky exhale on his end of the line.
My heart hammers against my ribs. Every muscle in my body coils tight, wound so taut that one wrong word will snap me in half.
The question forms before I can stop it, desperate and raw in a way I don't recognize. "Is Emmaleen okay?"
Lorcan hesitates.
That single beat of silence—maybe half a second, maybe less—detonates inside my chest like a grenade. My brain supplies images immediately. Scenarios. Each one worse than the last.
Emmaleen cuffed to Lorcan's bed, spiraling into that desperate place Jino described.
Begging for structure, for commands, for someone to fill the void I created when I trained her to need me.
Lorcan touching her. Lorcan's hands on her skin.
Lorcan's cock inside her while she cries and calls him Master because her broken brain doesn't know the difference anymore between the man who conditioned her and the man who kidnapped her.
Or worse.
Emmaleen hurt. Lorcan losing control the way he did thirteen years ago in that St. Augustine's bathroom, hand around a girl's throat, eyes glazed with something darker than lust. Emmaleen unconscious on his floor.
Emmaleen not breathing. Emmaleen gone because I trained her to submit to anyone who commanded her and then gave someone the chance.
"Giovanni—" Lorcan starts.
I can't breathe.
The monster inside me claws at my ribcage, roaring for blood, demanding I burn Boston to the ground until I find her.
But underneath that rage is something worse—something small and broken that sounds like the eight-year-old boy tied to a post in a warehouse, waiting for someone to save him when his father had no intention of ever doing so.
Jino moves.
I didn't hear him approach, but suddenly his hand is there, palm open, silently demanding the phone. His eyes lock onto mine—steady, clinical, completely devoid of the fury that was eating him alive two hours ago.
I hand him the phone without a word.
"Lorcan," Jino says, his voice dropping into that calm, detached register he uses when he's explaining submission protocols. "It's Jino. I need you to tell me exactly what's happening with Emmaleen right now. Don't summarize. Don't interpret. Just describe what you're seeing."
I can't hear Lorcan's response, but I watch Jino's face as he listens. His expression doesn't change—still that same clinical assessment, like he's cataloging symptoms for a diagnosis.
"How long has she been in that state?" Jino asks.
Pause.
"And before that? When you first restrained her?"
Another pause. Longer this time.
Jino's jaw tightens fractionally—the only sign he's processing something he doesn't like. "Did you touch her sexually? At any point?"
I stop breathing.
"No," Jino says after a moment, responding to whatever Lorcan answered.
"That's actually good. That's—listen to me, Lorcan.
What you're seeing right now is power-exchange withdrawal.
It's a documented psychological phenomenon that occurs when a heavily conditioned submissive is removed from their dominant without proper transitional support. "
He's talking to Lorcan, but he's looking at me.
Making me watch what I did to her.
What I did to all of them.
"Emmaleen has been in an intensive training environment for weeks," Jino continues, his tone never wavering from that steady, professorial cadence.
"Her nervous system adapted to a very specific feedback loop—commands, compliance, consequences, rewards.
Her brain chemistry literally restructured around those patterns.
Dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins—all of it tied to Giovanni's presence and the rituals we established.
When you removed her from that environment, you didn't just take her away from Giovanni.
You severed her from her entire regulatory system. "
Lorcan must ask something, because Jino's expression shifts slightly.
"She'll attach to any authority figure who demonstrates dominance," Jino explains.
"It's not a conscious choice—it's just neurological survival.
Her brain is desperately searching for someone to restore the structure it was trained to depend on.
And because her conditioning is sexual in nature, her body will respond sexually to anyone who triggers those cues.
Commands. Physical control. Restraints. Anything that mimics what we taught her to associate with safety and release. "
My stomach turns.
"Right now she's likely cycling between panic and desperate submission," Jino continues.
"Begging for her 'King' or her 'Master' because those are the frameworks her brain can access.
She might be nonverbal or stuck in mantras.
Her arousal responses are probably involuntary and distressing to her.
She can't regulate her own emotions anymore without external structure, so she'll spiral deeper until someone provides it—or until her system crashes completely. "
I can hear Lorcan saying something, his accent thick even through the phone's tinny speaker.
"Well…" Jino looks at me. "That's up to Giovanni."
"What?" I ask. "What's up to me?"
"Do you want him to release her? Or let her keep spiraling."
I actually snort. "Do I want him to release her? Are you fucking mad?"
Jino flips into dominant mode, speaking to me like I'm a child. "She's nine hours away, Giovanni. Even if it was safe to go to Boston and get her, it's nine fucking hours away. She needs relief."
Lorcan says something in response.
Jino nods. "The LaRiccia's are on to us. He's right, you need to take care of that."
"Take care of that how?" I snap. "Are you telling me I need to roll into fucking New York and take out the LaRiccia Crime Family?" I slap my own head. "Why didn't I think of that?"
"No," Jino says, his voice flat and clinical, like he's explaining a simple equation. "You need to make a call. Lorcan has figured out what happened—"
His hand shoots up before I can react, palm out, forestalling the explosion building in my chest. "No, Emmaleen didn't tell him. She refused to tell him. But there's a scar, Giovanni. And…" He blows out a breath. "His point is this—he'll help you kill DeepFake Rico."
The laugh that bursts out of me is short, sharp, and utterly humorless. It echoes off the empty walls of the living room, bouncing back at me like mockery.
"And then," Jino continues, ignoring my reaction entirely, his tone shifting into something softer, more persuasive, "we'll all be free of them. All of us. No more LaRiccia shadow hanging over your head. No more Rico. No more suspicions. Luca will have his answers and Emmaleen will be safe."
I stop pacing. My shoes scrape against the floor as I pivot on my heel, mind racing through implications, possibilities, traps.
Jino crosses the space between us and extends his hand, the phone resting in his open palm like an offering. Like a weapon. I stare at it for a moment—at the glowing screen, at the call timer ticking upward—before I snatch it from him.
"Yeah," I say into the receiver, my voice rough.
"Listen, G," Lorcan says, and I can hear the shift in his tone immediately.
He's calmer now, the manic edge from earlier smoothed away into something steadier, more deliberate.
His accent, which had been thick and nearly incomprehensible when he was spiraling, has settled into something easier to parse.
"I've got an entire team of deepfake guys.
Not on the payroll, mind you—it's just… shit we do on the side. Creative problem-solving, if you will."
I blink. "You cover up murders with deepfakes."
There's a pause, and I can practically hear the smirk spreading across his face three hundred miles away. "I can neither confirm nor deny that allegation," he says, his voice dripping with false solemnity, the kind of mockery you can only get away with when you're talking about felonies.
The chuckle bursts out of me before I can stop it, low and involuntary, scraping past the tightness in my throat. "I'm listening."
He proceeds to tell me how this is gonna go down.
But it's gonna take time.
"At least a week," he says.
Jino is shaking his head.
I ignore Jino.
"All right. What do I do?"
"If they're gonna send a hit," Lorcan continues, his voice steady, deliberate, "they need to be sure. And right now, Giovanni, they're not sure. They can't be. Ya've given them just enough confusion to hesitate. That hesitation buys us time."
I glance at Jino. He's still shaking his head, arms crossed, jaw locked. I turn away from him, focus on the phone.
"Meanwhile," Lorcan says, "a few days later—while they're still sittin' around some overpriced conference table in Little Italy, debatin' the viability of bringin' about your unnatural demise—I'll have my team kill deepfake Rico."