Page 125 of His Game His Rules
"She didn't safeword," I say.
"No," Jino agrees. "She didn't."
"Then what's the problem?"
He stands slowly, unfolding from the chair with that controlled grace he's always had. The tattoos on his arms shift as he moves—skeletal saints and devils locked in eternal struggle. He crosses to the window, staring out at the grounds like he's trying to decide whether this conversation is worth having.
When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet. Measured. Clinical.
"You weren't training her last night, Giovanni. You were punishing yourself."
I don't respond.
Can't.
Because the monster is too busy clawing its way up my throat, screaming at me to throw him out. Get rid of him. He's not doing his job. He's undermining me. He's touching what's mine and then sitting in my living room reading a fucking newspaper like he owns the place.
Get. Rid. Of him.
"She's fine," I say instead, and the words come out strangled, defensive, sharp enough to cut. "She didn't break. She didn't use the safe word I gave her. She submitted beautifully—perfectly—exactly the way I needed her to."
Jino turns from the window to face me, and what I see in his ice-blue eyes stops me cold. It's not anger. Not judgment. Not even disappointment.
It's something worse.
Pity.
"She'll recover, yes," he says quietly, and his voice is soft in that way that makes grown men confess their sins. "The welts will fade. The bruises will heal. Her body will remember how to move without flinching. But it's not really her I'm worried about."
The silence stretches between us like a blade.
"What?" I finally respond.
"It's you, Giovanni." He exhales slowly, shaking his head. "You're becoming... I don't even know what to call it. A stranger, maybe. Someone I don't recognize anymore."
The rage detonates.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" I snap, my voice rising despite every instinct screaming at me to stay controlled. "What is this, a bullshit psychotherapy session? Since when do you play counselor? I didn't ask for your fucking opinion aboutme. I asked you to train her. That's it. That's all."
"Watch the footage."
"I don't need to watch the fucking footage?—"
"Watch it."
The command in his voice stops me cold.
Jino Moretti doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't need to. But right now, standing there with his bruised face and his skeletal saints and his unshakable certainty, he sounds exactly like what he is.
A man who knows more about this than I do.
And that infuriates me more than anything else.
"She needs structure," I say, forcing the words out through clenched teeth. Boundaries. Discipline. That's what I'm giving her."
"You're giving her chaos dressed up as control," Jino counters. "And she's accepting it because she doesn't know the difference yet."
"She'smine?—"
