My pulse does some gymnastic routine that would qualify for the Olympics. Whatever war started upstairs has just relocated. The venue has changed, but I'm pretty sure I'm the new battlefield.
Giovanni's arm snaps up, finger stabbing toward the floor in front of him. "Here. Now." Two words, loaded like bullets.
My legs turn to wet newspaper as I push off from the wall. One step. Another. The nightgown clings to my sweat-slicked skin, transparent enough that I might as well be naked. Five more steps across concrete that feels like miles of Arctic tundra under my bare feet.
I'm waiting for the explosion—for Giovanni to grab me, shake me, throw me against something. For accusations about Master's hands on me. For questions I can't answer without making this infinitely worse.
But he doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Just watches with that marble statue stillness that makes the Medici sculptures look fidgety.
His silence is worse than screaming. It's a void demanding to be filled, but whatever I say will be wrong. I've accumulated enough demerits to spend eternity in Position Three with my forehead kissing concrete.
I stop in front of him, close enough to count the bruises blooming across his chest, to smell the copper tang of blood and sweat. Close enough to see the muscle in his jaw twitch with restrained violence.
I've never felt smaller. Never felt more exposed. And what terrifies me most isn't his anger—it's how desperately I want to fix it, to erase that cold fire from his eyes. That's the real danger here: not what he might do to me, but what I might do to make him stop looking at me like I'm nothing.
The silence between us stretches so long I swear I can hear my own cells dividing. Giovanni's gaze has transformed me into a science experiment—a specimen pinned to a board, helplessly waiting to be dissected.
"What did he do to you last night?" Giovanni finally asks, his voice glacial as he points one long, elegant finger at Master.
I glance at Master, who seems about as concerned as someone checking the weather forecast for next Tuesday. Heleans against the doorframe, arms crossed over his tattooed chest, blood drying on his split lip like he's posing for the cover ofSociopaths Monthly. The casual indifference in his posture tells me everything I need to know about where I stand in this little power triangle.
Of course.
They fought it out like animals upstairs, came to some kind of blood-soaked gentleman's agreement, and now I'm the sacrificial lamb. Whatever happened in that silence after the fighting stopped, whatever words were exchanged—they've reached their male consensus. And I'm just the chess piece they're moving around the board.
"He—I mean, I—" My tongue feels swollen, uncooperative. "I didn't bathe like you said to. That was my fault. I fell asleep instead, and then he came in and said I should have followed instructions and?—"
The words tumble out of me like I'm reading from a bad script I've performed too many times before. The rhythm is familiar—minimize his actions, maximize my faults, preempt the anger before it escalates. Create a narrative where I deserve whatever's coming.
Wait.
Holy shit.
This is exactly what I did with my ex. The verbal dance before the storm. The careful recitation of my sins to justify the bruises that would follow.
My stomach lurches violently, acid climbing my throat. Black spots dance at the edges of my vision like evil little paratroopers invading my consciousness. The concrete floor beneath my feet seems to ripple and shift.
No. No, no, no. I will not faint. I will not collapse in front of these men. God knows what they'd do to my unconscious body.What new lessons in submission they'd teach while I couldn't even scream?—
And just like that, the fear crystallizes into something harder, colder.
Something with edges.
What the fuck am I doing?
What do I think they’ll do to me if I faint? Rape me?
Because if that’s what I truly think, this is gone way beyond crazy.
This has become…a cancer. Something that needs to be cut out of me. A disease I might never recover from.
I blink, and the room snaps back into focus. The dizziness recedes like a tide pulling back from shore.
What the actual fuck am I doing?
This isn't who I am. This isn't who I promised myself I'd become after I left Cleveland. After the hospital. After the months of looking over my shoulder and jumping at shadows.
My posture straightens. My chin lifts. The words that come out of my mouth now have weight, substance.