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)
The irony doesn't escape me. Jino, who never endured the crucible that formed me, has become its perfect product. While I, who was shaped by those merciless hands, retain the ability to imagine something beyond its walls.
He continues his inventory, oblivious to my revelation. Measuring spaces between tools. Calculating angles of observation. Planning the methodical dismantling of a woman's will.
Jino believes salvation lies in perfect submission.
I'm no longer certain it exists at all.
Finally, he turns back to me, his inventory complete. His eyes are clear, focused. The room feels smaller with him standing in it, as if his certainty consumes oxygen the rest of us need to breathe.
"How do you want her to submit to you, Giovanni?" He places weight on submit like it's a cornerstone, the foundation everything else will rest upon. "What form should her surrender take?"
The question hangs between us. I don't answer.
"I've outlined the program," Jino continues, misreading my silence as contemplation rather than resistance. "You are the King. Untouchable. Ruling from a distance." He straightens, a soldier at inspection. "I am the Master. The craftsman. I'll handle the work of breaking her, shaping her resistance into compliance. When I'm finished, she'll be ready to serve your needs without question."
I remain silent. Not because I'm considering his proposition, but because I'm struggling to recognize the man before me. My cousin. The boy who cried at his dog's funeral. Now a clinical architect of psychological subjugation.
Jino interprets my silence as confusion.
"Perhaps I should clarify the distinction," he says, voice shifting into something formal and practiced. Each word precisely measured, as if reciting from a text I haven't read. "The King never trains. The King disciplines. The King receives only the improved product—an obedient subject who has been prepared to anticipate his desires."
He paces the length of the training platform, hands clasped behind his back like a professor delivering a crucial lecture.
"The Master, however, handles the messy transition. The resistance. The tears. The bargaining. The Master absorbs the subject's hatred, channels it into acceptance, and eventually, transforms it into devotion."
I watch him, half-listening as he continues his dissertation on submission hierarchies and power dynamics.
“Of course,” Jino says, looking me in the eyes, “you’ll be given dominion over her consequences. Every night I will deliver her to you. Each one, a slightly more perfect version than the night before. But I’ll make sure she fails. Don’t worry, you’ll get plenty of punishment time.”
My thoughts slide into a spiral of disbelief.
What the fuck am I doing?
This wasn't the plan. Not with Emmaleen. Not with anyone. The rules, the structure, the control—those were tools. Means to ends. Ways to navigate a chaotic world where power means survival. They weren't supposed to become this grotesque puppet theater, this laboratory of broken wills.
"The ritual elements are crucial," Jino is saying, gesturing to the kneeling mat. "When she addresses you as King, her body must already be in Position One. The psychological weight of physical submission compounds the verbal surrender."
His movements are precise, demonstrating the angles, the positions, the exact degrees of deference he intends to install in Emmaleen's mind. As if she's an operating system he's preparing to update with more efficient coding.
I study the meticulous array of tools he's arranged. The riding crop. The restraints. The notebook where he'll record her progress, her failures, her moments of resistance and surrender. Everything categorized. Everything controlled.
This is the doctrine taken to its logical conclusion. This is where all those rules lead if followed without question, without the tempering influence of something more human.
So ironic that I find myself the human in this equation.
How the hell did my cousin brood a monster equal—perhaps even surpassing—my own? Without even the benefit—benefit?—of a failed sacrificial kidnapping at age eight and the sadistic structure of Auggies in his teens?
He’s always been my mirror, but this is taking it to a whole new extreme.
And Jino expects me to nod along. To assume my position in this carefully orchestrated degradation. To sit on the throne while he does the work of breaking Emmaleen's spirit, only to present her to me afterward like a trophy he's polished to perfection.
He's mapped it all out. Every step. Every role. Mine. His. Hers. A trinity of power and submission that feels like religion to him.
The realization sits cold in my stomach.
This is where control leads when it becomes not just a means but an end in itself. This is what happens when discipline stops being a tool and becomes the purpose.
But is it really so different from what I've done? From what I planned to do? From what Auggies taught me was necessary?
The questions pile up, unanswerable. Doubt spreads through me, not like a wildfire but like frost—slow, crystalline, transforming the landscape it touches into something unrecognizable.
"It's a perfect system," Jino continues, his eyes bright with conviction.