That's coercion with better packaging.
My reflection stares back from the monitors—jaw tight, eyes dark, tattooed hands still pressed against the desk as though I'm holding myself in place.
Maybe I am.
Because the alternative is confronting Giovanni. Voiding the contract. Walking away from Emmaleen entirely and letting her sink or swim in waters I know she can't navigate alone.
Or worse.
Admitting that I want to be the one holding her right now.
Want to be the one she turns to when the pain becomes too much.
Want to undo every mark Giovanni left and replace them with my own—carefully measured, properly contextualized, designed to build rather than destroy.
The thought tastes like treason.
Giovanni's voice drifts through the dungeon speakers, low and rhythmic. Soothing.
I lean forward, adjusting the audio gain. The words are muffled by distance, by the acoustics of that concrete chamber, by Emmaleen's ragged breathing.
But fragments surface.
"...not real... just a voice..."
"...won't hurt you..."
"...the monster..."
My spine straightens.Monster.
"...don't be afraid of him..."
The phrase settles over me like ice water.
Don't be afraid of him.
Notme.NotI won't hurt you.
Him.
Third person. Dissociation. Giovanni is talking about himself the way you'd discuss a stranger. A threat. An entity separate from the man holding her.
I stand, blood rushing in my ears.
Giovanni and I were close once. Closer than brothers. We trained together—Krav Maga at eight years old, jiu-jitsu at ten. By twelve, we were sparring partners who could read each other's movements before they happened. We ran the same drills, bled on the same mats, pushed each other until our bodies gave out and then pushed further.
Summers meant road trips. Winters meant snowboarding in the Poconos. Spring breaks, we'd disappear into the woods behind Mama Bavga's estate, building forts, shooting cans, pretending we were soldiers instead of mob heirs.
But that was before.
Before St. Augustine's Military Academy swallowed him whole at thirteen.
I calculate the years. Nearly two decades since Auggies. Nearly twenty years of separate lives, separate trajectories, separate traumas I never witnessed.
How did I not notice?
How did I not see the distance accumulating like snow—silent, incremental, until suddenly you're buried and can't remember what warmth felt like?