Page 102 of His Game His Rules
He’ssomewhere else.
I watch as he sits on the floor beside the bed, back against the wall, head tipped back, eyes closed.
Staying the night, I guess. Keeping vigil.
Protecting her from the monster he believes lives inside him.
Giovanni is unraveling, and he's taking Emmaleen down with him. Using her as a vessel for his trauma, a mirror for his self-hatred, a proof that even broken things can be possessed.
But that's not training.
That's not even control.
That's just mutual destruction dressed in protocol.
I sit down in the control room chair. Settle in. Wait.
On the monitor, his lips move again. Soundless now, the audio too distant.
But I can read the shape of the words.
I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry.
Please don't be afraid.
Maybe an hour later, the back stairwell groans.
Footsteps—heavy, deliberate—ascending from the dungeon below.
I straighten in the control chair, forcing my mind into stillness. Knuckles still raw from our earlier fight. The split in my lip throbs, a reminder of how that confrontation ended—bloody and unresolved.
I should stand. Should meet him at the door. Should demand an accounting for what I just witnessed—the violation of every protocol, the weaponization of aftercare, the confession to an unconscious girl who couldn't consent to hearing his trauma.
Should. Should. Should.
But I don't move.
The door opens. Giovanni enters, and the air shifts—charged, electric, wrong.
His eyes are too bright. Pupils dilated despite the dim lighting. Energy radiates off him in waves, manic and uncontained. He's shirtless, dried blood—Emmaleen's? His own?—smeared across his ribs.
"Jino." My name comes out breathless. Excited. "You should have seen her."
I remain still. Watching. Cataloging.
"The way she took it. Every strike. Counted them perfectly—no hesitation, no begging." He paces, three steps left, pivot, three steps right. Caged animal energy. "She never once used her safe word. Not once. She's ready for more. Shewantsmore."
The fuck? "Giovanni?—"
"No, listen." He cuts me off, hands moving now, gesturing wildly. "I know what you're thinking. That I went too hard, too fast. But you didn't see her face. The way she looked at me after. Trust. Pure fucking trust. She enjoyed it, Jino. The pain, the submission, all of it."
Enjoyed it.
The words land like a sickness.
She cried. She trembled. Not because her muscles were being put through paces to make them strong, but because she has been conditioned to accept violence as inevitable. To equate pain with love.
