Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 102375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Emmaleen
Thirty-seven day-one demerits.
One double or nothing dare.
And zero chance I'm leaving this dungeon, like... ever.
I’m the world's most inconvenient Word Collector. Giovanni Bavga’s biggest liability. I won the last game… technically.
But this one isn’t meant to make me stay.
It’s meant to make me leave.
His game, his rules... until surrendering to him became the only way to win.
Giovanni
Control isn't something you keep—it's something you lose the moment you care.
Little Miss Take recites her penance like prayers and writes poetry that destroys me. Now I'm the one unraveling while she kneels between my legs like she was made for my throne.
Emmaleen Rouke needs to break.
In half.
In pieces.
In a hurry if she wants to stay alive.
I need her in love with her chains and the lock on the door.
My crown, my kingdom... until keeping her became the only way to save her life.
The Last to Fall series is an intense deep dive into the psyche of possession, obsession, and what one man will do to keep the woman he loves alive
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
The contrast is obscene. The Aventador—alien spacecraft, alien predator, alien perfection—sits gleaming against brick returning to dust. Nero Nemesis matte black against urban decay.
Rain beads on the windshield, soft and persistent. I don't turn on the wipers. Let it accumulate. Let it blur my view of this place she's been hiding.
It's 7:07. I've been here since 6:45.
I tap my fingers against the steering wheel, counting the twenty-three minutes I've wasted. Twenty-three minutes I could have spent dealing with the LaRiccia fallout. Twenty-three minutes I could have spent making arrangements to contain Rico's disappearance. Instead, I'm parked outside a women's shelter that looks like it should have been condemned during the Reagan administration.
"Double or nothing." The memory of her voice makes my jaw clench. A throwaway line from a woman who doesn't understand that some gambles can't be taken back. Some antes are paid in blood, not cash.
I shouldn't have kept those fucking notebooks at her bedside. Shouldn't have written down every fluctuation in her breathing, every spike in her fever, every word the doctors said. Shouldn't have documented my own pathetic fear when her oxygen levels dropped.
Definitely shouldn't have stayed awake for seventy-two hours straight watching the monitors.
But I did.
What did I expect when I left them behind as evidence that I care?
That she'd just take the money, the passport, and private jet to anywhere-but-here?
That she'd just… play by the rules?
Why the hell would Emmaleen Rourke play by the rules when she can torment me with her weaponized cuteness?
I’m so fucked.
The weeds pushing through the cracks in the parking lot catch my eye. Life finding a way through concrete. Annoying. Persistent.
Like her.
Rico's face flashes in my mind—the shock in his eyes when the bullet hit him. Not fear or anger. Just... surprise. Like it never occurred to him that I'd actually pull the trigger. That his power over me wasn’t infinite. That I’d choose a woman over decades of LaRiccia-Bavga diplomacy.
He miscalculated everything.
The rain falls harder now. Summer is over. The drizzle builds to a steady drum against the carbon-fiber roof. October has arrived with its slate-gray skies and bitter promise of winter. The trees around the shelter's cracked parking lot are tinged with yellow and orange—a transition I didn't notice happening until it was already done.
I check my watch—7:12 now.
Two weeks since Dom and Ricky buried Rico in the woods out in Bucks County. Two weeks of carefully constructed digital breadcrumbs leading to Bangkok, where Deepfake Rico is currently enjoying a vacation complete with Instagram stories and location tags.
Two weeks of preparing for the inevitable moment when Luca LaRiccia realizes his son isn't coming home.
The digital clock on my dash clicks to 7:20. Suddenly, the shelter door flies open and Emmaleen bursts out like she's been launched from a cannon.
She takes the concrete steps two at a time, her lips moving in frantic conversation with herself, hands gesturing wildly at nothing. Classic Emmaleen Rourke crisis mode—all raw nerve endings and no strategy. The woman exists in a perpetual state of last-minute panic, yet somehow survives it every time.
She has no fucking idea where she's supposed to be at 8:00 a.m.
Because I didn't tell her.
The realization settles in my chest like a warm drink on a cold night. This little punishment—withholding the location of our meeting—was calculated. Petty, perhaps, but necessary. Watching her scramble now confirms what I already knew: she's tangled in my game. A fish hooked and fighting, but ultimately dragged along at my convenience and mercy.
I let my gaze catalog every detail of her outfit, an assessment as brutal as a coroner's report.
That blazer. Jesus Christ. Neon pink with shoulder pads the size of dinner plates, like she looted the wardrobe department of a canceled 1987 sitcom. The fabric puckers at the seams, shiny where it shouldn't be, the buttons mismatched as if collected from different garments over decades of neglect.
Below it, a denim skirt hangs like depressed drapery, the hem uneven and fraying. The fabric has that distinctive gray-blue fade of something that's been washed in industrial machines at church basement charity drives for longer than she's been alive.
Her sneakers—I hesitate to even dignify them with that term—appear to have been white once, in the distant past. Now they're a study in urban archaeology, layered with stains telling stories of every puddle she's misjudged. They squeak with each step, announcing her chaotic presence like some kind of deranged metronome.
The outfit isn't just bad. It's a deliberate middle finger. A visual manifestation of "fuck you and your Italian leather shoes." Last week's farmer's market ensemble at least had accidental bohemian charm—this is just sartorial terrorism.
Me: Milan runway, tailored precision, fabrics selected by people who understand the weight and drape of textiles.
Her: whatever fell off the donation truck after being rejected by the third-tier thrift store.
The absurdity compounds as she continues her frantic monologue, completely oblivious to my presence. A $300,000 machine—Italian engineering at its apex, 6.5-liter V12 heart—sits gleaming in this depressing parking lot, and she doesn't even register it.