Page 93 of Twisted Addiction

“Let her out, boss,” he said, harder now. “She can’t handle that bleeding alone in that dark hole.”

I stared at him, expression empty, the words sinking in without moving me.

Giovanni’s voice lowered until it was almost a rasp. He didn’t posture now — the man who’d stood beside me for years was small with pleading. “You don’t want her dead, boss,” he said, each word like it cost him. “I’m begging you. She’s weak. She bled after the pills. If she’s left in that dark she’ll die slow and pointless. Let her out — for God’s sake, let her out so this doesn’t end with her on some slab.”

I felt the room tilt with his desperation.

He crawled the last inch toward me on his knees, hands splayed on the floor as if to anchor himself. “I’d keep my head in your debt for it,” he whispered. “I’ll take the blame, I’ll take whatever you want. Just—don’t bury her alive.”

Anger flared like hot iron, but beneath it something sharper tightened my throat. “So she can slip away?” I said, voice low. “So she can keep meeting my brothers, her ex, plotting to run?” I growled, the fury in my chest coiling like a spring.

My hands trembled despite my effort to control them.

“Now I see it,” Giovanni said, steady as a blade. “You didn’t lock her up only because she shot you. You locked her because you’re terrified she’ll slip from your fingers. What then—lock her forever?”

“You’re too concerned for my wife,” I said, voice cold as wire. “Is there something between you two, Giovanni? Answer me.”

His face didn’t betray him. He met my stare and spat, “Don’t insult me, boss. I’d sooner cut my own throat than touch what’s yours — not even in thought.”

His words landed like a fist. I hated the heat that rose in my neck, the way his defiance felt personal. “Bold,” I said. “Too bold.”

“I’m not bold,” he snapped. “But I’m not blind. I know what you are when you love — and when you break. I’m asking you not to bury her to prove a point.”

Silence stretched.

The chandelier ticked in the hush.

For the first time in a long while, the throne of control wobbled under me.

“You want her released?” I asked slowly, every word measured. “Propose a punishment that keeps her under my hand and not under the soil.”

Giovanni’s jaw tightened; he swallowed. “Public disgrace. House arrest under watch. Take away whatever comforts you want. But don’t starve her in the dark.”

I studied Giovanni until his silhouette blurred against the ledger of debts and favors I kept in my head.

His apology had teeth.

He’d put himself on the line for her. He’d lied for her. That was disloyalty baked with pity — and I could use it.

Strategy, not mercy, made me speak. Strategy was safer. Strategy kept me alive.

“Very well,” I said finally. The words were flat. “Leave me.”

Giovanni bowed his head once, relief so obvious it was almost obscene. “Don’t take too long, boss,” he said quietly. “She won’t last in that dark.”

Then he turned before I could change my mind.

The study closed in around me.

Her face, the gun, the blood, kept returning like a bad refracted thing at the edge of my vision.

I could devise punishments until dawn and drill them down into law. I had done it before. Rules were tools. Tools could be sharpened, or they could maim the wielder.

But the idea of her dying in that dark room, unseen, unwedged, was a risk I could not accept.

If she bled out and left me with nothing but a corpse and a legend, I would be the fool who’d finally mismanaged my own obsession.

I left the study and walked the corridor alone.