"I had every right. I'm her trainer. Her Master during the day. That's the agreement. And part of training is aftercare. Proper aftercare. Not whatever the fuck you did last night."
"I gave her a bath?—"
"While she was in subspace." Jino's voice rises slightly, the calm veneer cracking. "You whispered trauma into her ear while her brain was too fried to process it. You used her vulnerability as a confessional booth. That's not care, Giovanni. That's manipulation."
The guilt tries again. Pushing harder this time.
But the monster is already rewriting the narrative.
He's wrong. She needed to hear it. She needed to know.
He's jealous. He wants her for himself. That's all this is. He's trying to undermine you because he can't stand that she chose you.
"She chose me," I say aloud, and my voice is ice-cold now. "Not you.Me. She accepted my consequences, took my punishments, and didn't safeword. She submitted. Shewantsthis."
"She wantsyou," Jino admits. "But she doesn't know what that means yet. And you're not teaching her. You're just... breaking her. Over and over. Until there's nothing left to break."
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 aboutsomething.
"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.