The week ahead is going to be profitable.
She'll break, she'll heal, she'll leave, and I'll move on to the next.
The monster inside me opens another eye.
Taking interest in our little pawn…
4
My brain misfires—spastic neurons trying to decode the nightmare funhouse I've stumbled into. Stone walls. Flickering candles.
This isn't a basement. It's a production. A theater of psychological fuckery with me as the unwitting lead.
My throat constricts as the reality sinks in. Giovanni locked me down here. On purpose. With Leather Daddy Voldemort. After I watched him kill someone last week.
And that's when my one defense mechanism kicks in—words tumbling out before I can stop them.
"What is this? Who are you?—"
"Silence!"
His voice slices through the air—not a shout, but something worse. A command so absolute my vocal cords seize instantly. My spine straightens like it's been electrified, decades of social conditioning responding before my feminist brain can object.
"You do not speak to your Master unless spoken to."
Master? MASTER?
The laughter erupts from somewhere primal, a desperate burst of hysteria that's equal parts terror and disbelief. It's the kind of laugh that bubbles up at funerals and job interviews—inappropriate, uncontrollable, and absolutely the wrongresponse to a man in a ski mask calling himself "Master" in what is clearly a very expensive, very elaborate sex dungeon.
I can't stop it. The laughter spills out, high-pitched and frantic, bouncing off stone walls as the absurdity crashes over me in waves. Giovanni Bavga, mob boss and murderer, has locked me in a basement with a BDSM Winter Soldier. After I turned down his money. After I came back for more.
This is my punishment. My lesson. My "Week Two."
And I'm laughing because the alternative is screaming until my vocal cords shred.
"Silence!"
His command slices through my hysterical laughter like a guillotine. My vocal cords snap shut instantly, some primal part of my brain responding to the authority in his voice before my conscious mind can object.
The silence stretches between us, thick and suffocating. My own breathing sounds obscenely loud. One second. Five. Ten. The masked figure just... looms. Watching. Waiting. The riding crop taps against his palm in that maddening rhythm.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
My heartbeat syncs with it against my will. I feel observed, cataloged, measured. Like a specimen pinned to velvet.
Finally, he gestures with the crop toward a shadowed corner I hadn't noticed before. In the flickering candlelight sits the most incongruous object imaginable: a child's school desk. Small. Narrow. The wood worn smooth in patches from years of actual use. The kind of desk you'd find in an elementary school classroom, not a BDSM dungeon.
Something about the juxtaposition makes my stomach turn. Sweet meets sinister. Innocence meets whatever the fuck this is.
My feet move before my brain gives permission. The involuntary compliance makes my jaw clench so tight my molars might crack, but still, I find myself at the desk. Sitting. The chairis too small, forcing my knees up at an awkward angle. My body hunched and compressed. Diminished.
On the desktop sits a leather-bound book, the gilt lettering catching the candlelight.The Doctrine.
Oh for fuck's sake. Of course it has a title. Of course it's leather-bound. Probably written in virgin's blood on vellum made from sacrificed lambs.
The silence suffocates me, pressing against my eardrums. Words bubble up like a defense mechanism.
"So what is this exactly? Fifty Shades of Get-the-Fuck-out-of-My-Way? Because I didn't sign up for Torture Chamber Barbie, and whatever Giovanni thinks?—"