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)
"To what?" Giovanni snaps. "Her pussy?"
"Her mind," I correct him. Then, because truth is sometimes the most effective bait—"The pussy just comes with it."
Giovanni's face contorts. "You want to brainwash her."
I shrug. Labels again. Meaningless. "I want to create what you need, not what you deserve. The goal is to preserve the King and his subjects—you, me, Emmaleen—through my sacred intervention." I pause, then add the weights to the scale. "Were Dom and Ricky in on this Rico killing?"
Giovanni doesn't answer, but he doesn't need to. The tightening of his jaw says enough.
"Leaving her alive puts everyone in danger," I continue. "If you hand me her mind—and remove all constraints so I can make it pliable and willing—I will craft her into something transcendent. I'll strip away resistance layer by layer, rebuild her perception until submission becomes her natural state. The crop, the feather, the baton—all instruments in a symphony of transformation. And you, Giovanni..." I let the promise hang between us like incense, "...you can keep your 'friend' forever, preserved in perfect obedience."
Giovanni goes silent. His breathing slows as he weighs my proposal. The calculation plays across his face like shadow and light.
While he considers, I allow myself to imagine the possibility. Emmaleen Rourke, fully under my control. No job constraints. None of Giovanni's amateur meddling. Just pure submission training conducted with proper protocol and precision.
I picture her in advanced poses—the ones I don't teach to dabblers. Her limbs arranged in silent supplication—body contorted into living prayer. The riding crop tracing the curve of her spine, not as punishment but as benediction. The way her breath would hitch when I found the precise pressure point between pleasure and pain.
She would learn to anticipate my commands before I spoke them. To read intention in the silence between words. To find freedom in the structure I would build around her like a cathedral.
I would condition her responses. Shape her pleasure. Map her limits and then redraw them.
The beauty of total control is not in breaking someone—any brute can do that. The artistry lies in reformation. In taking chaotic elements and arranging them into perfect harmony.
Giovanni sighs, and I can see the inevitability of his own surrender written in the silent spaces between us. This is the singular path forward. Nothing else will suffice.
He knows this.
I know this.
Finally… "How does it work?"
I smile… "Well," I say, leaning in. My words nearly a whisper. I begin with the meticulous deconstruction. "First, we will dissolve her defenses. Draw out her narrative like venom from a wound. We'll create the sacred space where confession becomes inevitable—where her story pours forth not by demand but by design. We’ll make her weep today, Giovanni. Those tears are baptismal. When the floodgates shatter, we'll stand as silent witnesses to her unraveling."
My voice drops to a reverent murmur. "Then comes the reconstruction. We'll gather each fragment she spills, honor her vulnerability with careful attention. This isn't mere comfort—it's strategic veneration. Her pain becomes the foundation upon which we'll build her transformation."
He's looking at me as I talk—unblinking. "You're… diabolical."
"Thank you."
"She's not gonna consent. And we must get consent."
"Of course, we’ll get consent." I laugh, the sound echoing against the stone walls. "What do you take me for? A monster?"
The question hangs between us, unanswered. I don't need his answer.
Consent is sacred, even in this profane arrangement we're constructing. Without it, the entire edifice collapses.
Besides, willing submission holds far more power than coercion.
A prisoner resists her chains.
A devotee polishes them.
Giovanni doesn't understand this distinction yet.
But he will.
They both will.
14
Jino murmurs to himself, circling the room like a priest inventorying his chapel. His fingertips brush the pillar as he passes, his eyes measuring distances between the bench and the mat. I catch fragments of his planning—"daily drills" and "timing exercises" and "resistance thresholds"—as he charts Emmaleen's deconstruction with the same precision he'd use to plan a wine list.
"The feather first," he mutters. "Then the crop. Graduated correction sequences..."
I watch him with fresh eyes, seeing not my cousin but something I've refused to recognize until now. Something carved from the same material as myself, but shaped by different hands.
The tattoos covering his skin aren't the random collection of a man who collects ink without purpose. They're a codex—a deliberate text written in bone and shadow. On his knuckles, Latin words I never bothered to translate. Across his forearms, the Archangel Michael rendered not in glory but in skeletal form, judgment stripped to its most essential architecture.
At the military academy I attended, the instructors taught me that the body was a temple. Not to be desecrated with ink or metal. I see now what Jino has done—turned his flesh into a cathedral of discipline, where even the angels have been reduced to their fundamental components. No softness and no mercy. Just bone and function.