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)
This is some twisted corporate performance review conducted by a sociopath with a psychology degree and a hard-on for control.
The timestamps finally stop. Blessed silence fills the space behind me, and I can almost feel my shoulders drop half an inch in relief.
Then Giovanni's voice cuts through the quiet like a scalpel.
"Write down how you felt every time Master looked at you with desire."
“What?”
“Why do you ask your King to repeat himself when you heard me?”
“Because it’s… stupid.”
“Demerit.”
“Why stop now,” I huff, blowing hair up over my eyes. “I’ll take the times ten package for five hundred, Alex.”
Giovanni goes silent. This silence stretches. I get nervous and try and peek—
“Do not move, slave. Your King has not given you permission.”
I huff some air. So over it.
Then, footsteps. I catch him with his back to me, reaching for—
Oh, shit.
The key. He yanks it off the wall, walks over to me, slaps it down on the desk so hard, I jump, and points his finger in my face. “You may leave now.”
“No.”
“No? This is my house. This is my dungeon. You are here at my pleasure. I invited you in for a game. You’re mocking me. I won’t stand for it. Take the key and leave, you have forfeited—”
“No!” I say, more forcefully now. “I’ll write, okay? I’m… adjusting, Giovan—My King. I’m adjusting. I’m doing my best, I really am. That master of yours broke me today. I let him break me today. For you. Let me stay.” Then, because I’m pathetic and, apparently, a masochist—I end this begging with a promise. “I’ll behave, I swear. I’ll write down my feelings. I’ll tell you how I felt when Master looked at me with—” I pause. “Desire? That’s what you want—”
“Demerit.”
“I’m asking for clarification, okay! This isn’t rebellion, it’s confusion.”
I pick up the pen, press the tip to the page until it bleeds ink, and think. What the hell? Because I didn’t see any desire when Master was forcing me into muscle spasms.
"Every time he touched your nipple with the crop,” Giovanni clarifies, as if reading my mind.
Jesus Christ.
"Every time he talked about your pussy."
Heat floods my cheeks so fast I'm surprised I don't spontaneously combust. The clinical way he says it—like he's ordering coffee instead of demanding I write erotic fan fiction about my own humiliation—makes it somehow worse.
"Any hint of dishonesty will be met with severe consequences."
Of course it will. Because God forbid, I have one shred of privacy left in this psychological strip search.
"And by severe, I mean more circuits from Master. No sleep. No food. No bath."
Each threat lands with surgical precision, designed to remind me exactly how powerless I am down here. How utterly at his mercy.
"But most of all—no King."
The air leaves my lungs in a rush. No access to him. No Giovanni. Just endless hours with leather-pants-wearing Ski Mask Ken while the man I actually want sits upstairs playing puppet master through security cameras.
"You'll get no access to me at all as long as you resist my request for total control of your thoughts."
My spine goes rigid. Total control of my thoughts. Because apparently surrendering my body isn’t enough. Now he wants the inside of my head too—every shameful flutter, every unwanted response, every moment when my traitorous nervous system decided that fear and arousal are close enough cousins, marriage is illegal.
The anger hits me like a tidal wave. This isn't how it's supposed to be. This is supposed to be... I don't know. Sexy? Romantic in some deeply fucked up Fifty Shades fever dream kind of way?
Instead, I feel used. Dissected. Like a lab rat being observed for signs of Pavlovian conditioning.
"If you don't like it, slave, you’re free to leave."
Slave.
"Get up and go. I don't care either way. But if you stay, I'll treat you like every other slave I've had down here."
Every other slave? It's bad enough he's given me that title, it's humiliating. But to then elaborate with the fact I am far from the first woman he's subjugated this way… it's cruel. Just fucking cruel.
You mean nothing to me, that’s what he's really saying. How many others have sat at this exact desk, naked and shaking, writing confessions for his entertainment?
Is he worth it?
The question materializes in my brain without permission, stark and devastating in its simplicity. Is Giovanni Bavga—mobster, murderer, psychological terrorist—worth whatever piece of my soul this is going to cost?
Why am I doing this?
Why this man?
I don't know. I genuinely don't know, and that terrifies me more than the crop, or the demerits, or the fact that I'm currently sitting naked in a basement about to write pornographic diary entries for an audience of one.
I've always made bad choices when it comes to men. My ex wasn't my first mistake—just my most recent and most violent. Before him, there was Marcus, who convinced me to drop my advanced literature seminars because they made him feel intellectually inadequate. Before Marcus, there was Alex, who had a temper and hands that moved too fast when he'd been drinking.