I obey.
Because that's what good girls do.
And I am, above all else, Giovanni Bavga's good girl.
I wake up on the concrete mattress from hell with the usual disorientation—that liminal moment where my brain does the whole "Am I in the women's shelter? My old apartment? The hospital?" routine before landing on the correct answer.
Giovanni Bavga's sex dungeon.
Home sweet home.
The darkness is absolute. Subterranean darkness. The kind that makes you understand why people used to believe in hell. No windows, no clock, no concept of time beyond theroutines Jino and Giovanni establish. My personal chronology now divided into Before Giovanni and After Giovanni, with days measured in orgasms and demerits.
I stretch, feeling the delicious ache between my thighs, the tender spots on my hips where Giovanni's fingers dug in. My body is a map of ownership now, every bruise and mark a territory claimed and reclaimed.
But the basement is empty.
Silent.
Which means they're not here, which means—Sunday dinner.
Right.
The weekly migration back to the mothership.
I slide off the mattress and stand, feeling my way around the darkness with practiced ease. My fingers find the small night light and click it on, casting the dungeon in a dim, ghostly glow. Enough to see by. Not enough to feel normal.
The expanse of the school room spreads before me, every implement and station precisely where it belongs.
I wander toward the cabinet, running my fingers over the polished wood. Inside are tools designed exclusively for my education. For my pleasure. For my pain. The thought sends a ripple of heat through me that has no business being there after the thorough fucking I've already received today.
What is wrong with me?
How many orgasms would it take to make this hunger stop?
This place is rewiring me. Each day, the circuit board of my brain gets another adjustment. Another crossed wire. Another burned-out resistor. And I'm helping them do it, eagerly soldering the connections myself.
It should terrify me. It doesn't.
My eyes drift to the far wall, landing on something I've somehow managed to overlook for days now.
The key.
The skeleton key that opens the dungeon door, still hanging there on its little hook, like a dare. Like a test.
How did I forget it existed? It's been there this entire time, offering freedom, and I just...stopped seeing it. Psychological blindness or selective attention or whatever fancy term you'd use for someone who could walk out but chooses a cage.
I stare at it now, and something rebellious flutters in my chest. Not the desire to escape—God, no. I'm exactly where I want to be, where I need to be. But perhaps...
The library. Upstairs. All those books. Giovanni's house has a massive library that I glimpsed briefly on my first day of work. Floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with stories I haven't read. Words I haven't collected.
The sudden craving for a book hits me with such force that my hand is reaching for the key before I've even decided to move. It's like a physical hunger—sharper and more insistent than the dinner I skipped.
I need a book. A story. Something that isn't just the Bavga Doctrine or my training journal.
I grab the key, feeling its cold weight in my palm.
This is against the rules.