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 silence between us is suffocating.
I should fire him. Void the contract. Throw him out of my house and finish this myself.
But I can't.
Because deep down—buried beneath the monster, beneath the rage, beneath the possessive need to own her completely—I know he's right.
Not about everything.
But about something.
"I'm keeping her," I say finally, and the words come out low, controlled, absolute. "Forever. She's never leaving this house. And you're going to help me make sure she doesn't want to."
Jino's expression doesn't change. "And if she does want to?"
"She won't."
"How do you know?"
"Because I'm going to make myself the only thing she needs."
Jino stares at me for a long moment. Then he exhales slowly, shaking his head. "You're not making yourself her need, Giovanni. You're making yourself her addiction."
"Same thing."
"It's really not."
I pull my hands from my pockets, straightening my cuffs with deliberate precision. The conversation is over. I've heard enough. "Where is she now?"
"Still in the basement bedroom. I haven’t been there all day.”
"Good." I check my watch. Nearly two-thirty in the afternoon. I turn toward the door, but Jino's voice stops me.
"Giovanni."
I don't turn around. "What?"
"Watch the footage."
I don't respond.
I walk out.
Inside the control room, dim blue light flickers against the Victorian molding like static electricity trapped in wood grain.
I should walk past the monitors. Keep moving. Get downstairs and finish what I started last night.
But as I cross the room, I notice that all twelve screens are frozen silent on the same timestamp. The same frame.
I stop.
The image is me. Standing over Emmaleen. The riding crop raised mid-strike, arm extended, wrist cocked at the precise angle to deliver the most pain.
But it's my face that holds my attention.
The expression.
Not rage. Not control.
Something else.
Something I don't recognize.
My jaw is tight, lips parted slightly, eyes locked on her body like I'm watching something burn and can't decide whether to put it out or let it consume everything.
I exhale slowly.
The monster whispers in the back of my skull, low and insistent.
Walk away. Go downstairs. Punish the slave for letting Jino touch her. Make her remember who she belongs to.
My feet don't move.
One step forward, and I'm in the stairwell. Down to the dungeon. Back to the throne where she'll kneel and apologize and take whatever I decide she's earned.
But instead of leaving, I sit.
The leather chair creaks as I settle into it. My hand finds the console and presses play.
The footage stutters into motion.
The sound comes first. The crack of leather against skin. Sharp. Precise. Too hard.
Then her voice. Weak, strained, hitching. "Twenty-two." Emmaleen's breathing is ragged, her wrists strain against the cuffs. Her knees tremble where they're locked open, spread wide, exposed.
I watch myself circle her.
The crop taps against my thigh in rhythm with her heartbeat—visible in the pulse at her throat, the way her chest rises and falls too fast, too shallow.
I'm talking.
My lips are moving.
Whispers spill out. Low and barely audible.
But I don't remember the words.
"You think this is punishment? This is mercy. You don't know what punishment looks like. But you will."
The crop strikes again.
Crack.
"Twenty-three." Her voice breaks on the number.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees, watching the screen with the same clinical focus I used to dissect case files at Wharton.
But this isn't a case file.
This is me.
And I barely recognize myself.
The memory surfaces unbidden.
Cold night. Junior year. Auggies, dead of February.
Lorcan and I, standing deep inside the woods, shovels in hand, breath fogging in the winter air.
The ground was frozen. Iron-hard. We took turns with the pickax, hacking through soil that didn't want to give.
She was already cold by the time we buried her.
We didn't speak. Didn't pray. Just dug until the hole was deep enough, then covered her over and walked away.
The dog story.
The other dog story.
I shove the memory down before it takes root.
On the screen, I'm still whispering.
"You're going to thank me for this. One day. When you understand."
Emmaleen's head drops forward, hair falling across her face. I don’t think she even hears me.
We’re on twenty-six now. The footage continues. Strike after strike. Her voice growing weaker. My expression growing stranger.
Then I stop.
I set the crop down on the floor beside her and kneel. My hands cup her face, tilting her head up so she has to look at me. I'm whispering something.
The audio is too low to catch it clearly, but I see my lips form the words.
"You're mine. You'll always be mine. No one else gets to break you. No one."
She's crying. Silent tears streaming down her cheeks.
And I'm... smiling. Not the controlled, calculated expression I wear in meetings. Not the smirk I use to unsettle people.
Something worse.
Something raw.
I look like a man who's finally found what he's been searching for and doesn't care that it's broken.
I take her into the dungeon bedroom, bathe her, dress her, put her to bed. All the while, talking. Not to her. Not to myself. To the monster.