Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
I open to the first page and find immaculate handwriting. Flowing cursive that belongs in a calligraphy museum. Black ink. Fountain pen, obviously. Each letter is perfectly formed, like Giovanni attended some elite boarding school where they still teach penmanship as a core subject.
At the top of the page is what I assume to be a title: Sistema di Demerito.
Below it, a numbered list with formal-looking bullet points:
• Mancata puntualità
• Mancato rispetto del protocollo
• Comportamento non conforme
• Interruzioni non autorizzate
I stare at the words, trying to decipher them through sheer force of will. My four years of high school Spanish offer zero help. The Latin roots swim before my eyes, taunting me with their almost-familiarity. I catch what might be “punctuality” in the first line, which tracks with Giovanni’s obsession with timeliness. Non conforme is… breaking rules, maybe? The rest? Not sure.
I flip through a few more pages, each one more meticulously organized than the last. There are graphs. Charts. A scale that runs from one to ten. This isn’t just casual observation—it’s measurement. Scientific. Clinical. The kind of detailed analysis usually reserved for lab specimens or Olympic athletes.
I don’t need a translation app to understand what I’m looking at. This is a scoring system. A rubric. A methodical catalog of my failures, neatly categorized in a language I can’t understand—which feels like a metaphor so on the nose it would get rejected from a creative writing workshop.
“Man-cata pun-tual-ita,” I attempt, my tongue tripping over syllables it wasn’t built for. I sound like someone ordering at an Italian restaurant for the first time, determined to pronounce “bruschetta” correctly and failing spectacularly.
I snap the notebook shut, suddenly aware of the absurdity of my situation. I’m standing barefoot in a parking lot, holding stolen shoes, leaning into a car worth more than the building it’s parked next to, reading a performance evaluation I can’t understand, written by a man who’s probably watching me on camera right now.
For a job that involves fetching his dry cleaning.
And I still have to pee.
I pick up the second notebook. Same size. Same texture. Same expensive weight. The twin to its companion, yet somehow more ominous in its perfection. I hesitate before touching it, as if it might burn my fingers or trigger some invisible alarm.
But curiosity overwhelms caution. When I flip it open, the language barrier evaporates. This one’s in English. Crystal clear, devastatingly precise English that leaves no room for misinterpretation or plausible deniability.
Again, his penmanship... very surprising. The elegant script flows across the page with confident precision, each letter formed with the same meticulous care he seems to bring to everything else in his life. It’s not the hasty scrawl of a busy man, nor the utilitarian block letters I might have expected from someone so calculating. Instead, there’s an almost artistic quality to it—graceful loops and perfectly measured spacing that reveal yet another layer to the enigma that is Giovanni Bavga.
I find myself tracing the lines with my eyes, wondering if it’s another skill he cultivated to ensure absolute control over every aspect of his presentation. The contrast between the beautiful handwriting and the clinical system it describes only makes the whole thing more unsettling.
“Performance Incentives — Phase 1” stares back at me in elegant loops. The words sit centered on the page, perfectly aligned, the kind of visual that speaks of obsessive attention to detail.
I scan the contents, and my brain short-circuits like I’ve just stuck a fork in an electrical socket. The information refuses to process correctly the first time through.
This isn’t a punishment manual.
It’s a reward system.
A fucking doubling reward system that escalates with mathematical precision.
Day 1: $250 — For completing full day with 0 demerits.
The amount seems trivial compared to what follows, yet it’s still more than I made in a day at the bakery next door.
I would call myself speechless here, but my internal monologue is actually going crazy as I read down the rest of the list…
Day 2: $500 — Double the previous day’s reward for the same requirement. No demerits. Just follow whatever rules are hidden in that Italian notebook.
A deposit on a studio, right there.
And if I add in day one, that’s seven-fifty. Hell, in this town, that might get me a one-bedroom.
For two days of compliance. Forty-eight hours. Less, actually. Because I’m only here for eight hours each day. Sixteen hours. Seven-hundred-and-fifty dollars.
Wow.
I keep reading.
Day 3: $1000 — A grand. One thousand dollars for an extra day of whatever Giovanni Bavga expects from me. That’s a down payment on a car. Added up for a grand total of seventeen-fifty. This will get me utilities and groceries with enough left over for the luxury of not checking my account balance before every purchase.
Day 4: $2000 — The page continues its relentless upward trajectory. Two thousand dollars. That’s more than my whole one-month paycheck from the bakery compressed into a single perfect day under his watchful green eyes.