The next time I look at Jino, he's smiling. He sees it. The change in me.
I'm a believer.
"Let's go over the initial presentation," Jino says. He comes towards me, hooking an arm around my shoulder, directing me back to the various dungeon stations.
Then he leans in close and begins to explain…
15
I'm sitting on the edge of a mattress so thin it looks like it came out of a prison fire sale, having what can only be described as an existential meltdown about Giovanni and Master’s lack of commitment to my undying submission. My thoughts are coming in fragments, like someone dropped my brain and it shattered on the cement floor.
What the actual hell am I doing here?
Two men just had a literal fistfight over how to best degrade me, and I'm... what? Still sitting here? In a nightgown that shows more than it covers, contemplating my life choices like this is some kind of weird self-help retreat and not a hostage situation with occasional orgasms?
God, the orgasms. That's part of the problem. I want them. Badly. Badly enough to stay.
The vinyl mattress squeaks as I shift, and I half-expect it to be wired to record that too. Everything monitored. Everything controlled. Everything a manipulation.
Just like with Tyler.
My stomach clenches at the thought of him. Tyler with his designer watch and his carefully cultivated stubble and his hand around my throat.
"You're nothing without me," he'd whisper. "You're lucky I even look at you."
And I'd believed him. For two years, I'd believed every word.
Until the stairs.
I trace my finger over the small scar near my eyebrow—my souvenir from that night. The night that should have killed me but instead woke me up.
I got out. I fuckingsurvivedTyler. I should be popping champagne and living my best life, not signing up for Fifty Shades of Mob Boss down here in Giovanni's personal circle of hell.
What does that say about me? That I traded one prison for another? That I'm so fundamentally broken that I can't recognize a red flag when it's literally being slapped against a gloved palm?
But Giovanni is... different. Isn't he? He killed for me. Protected me.
Yeah, after putting you in danger in the first place. Gold star for murder, Emmaleen. Really raising the bar in your relationship standards.
I press my hands against my temples. My brain needs to shut up for five seconds so I can think.
But that's the problem. I'm thinking too much. Overthinking. Analyzing. Trying to make sense of feelings that don't make sense.
I should hate Giovanni. I should fear Jino. I should be clawing at the walls to escape.
Instead, I'm... what? Aroused? Intrigued? Willing to endure humiliation for a man who sees me as property?
"You're repeating patterns," I say out loud. Reciting self-help books lit up with pastel esthetic highlighters. "You're seeking what's familiar, not what's healthy."
There's something fundamentally broken in me that seeks out men who want to control me, hurt me, own me.
I get it. Some women are just like this.
But there's something else too. Something I don't want to admit.
Ilikethe way Giovanni looks at me. Like I'm a puzzle he can't solve. Like I matter.
Tyler looked at me like I was nothing. Giovanni looks at me like I'm everything—even if that everything is just an object to possess.