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)
But it just keeps going. The prizes for my compliance become outrageous.
Day 5: $4000 — My fingertips tingle as I stare at this figure. Four thousand dollars is more than I’ve ever had in my checking account at one time.
Day 6: $8000 — Impossible money. The kind of sum that would make me feel rich, untouchable, secure in ways I’ve never experienced.
Day 7: $16,000 — A semester of college. A down payment on a condo. A reset button on my entire financial existence. My hands tremble slightly as I force myself to breathe normally, the zeros blurring before my eyes.
I blink. Read it again. Blink harder, like maybe I’ve developed some rare ocular condition that makes me hallucinate zeros. I even rub my eyes with my knuckles, childlike, as if that might reset my vision to something more believable.
My stomach does a complicated gymnastics routine that would score a perfect 10 at the Olympics. Heat flushes through my body in waves, making my palms sweat and my mouth go dry.
This isn’t fear. This is want. Raw, unfiltered economic desire crashing through my carefully maintained wall of dignity. The kind of visceral need that makes rational thought impossible.
$31,750. In one week.
That’s not a salary. That’s a fucking miracle. That’s rent for a year plus a security deposit plus furniture that doesn’t come pre-stained by strangers. That’s a used car that actually starts in winter. That’s the difference between surviving and actually living.
I’ve never seen that much money listed anywhere near my name—not on a bank statement, not on a tax return, not even in my most delusional daydreams where I somehow become a BookTok romance author and get a publishing deal. The closest I’ve come is calculating how much debt I owe, which is its own special form of financial nightmare.
I glance back at the demerit book, and suddenly its meticulous Italian takes on new meaning. The elegant script no longer seems merely judgmental—it’s the counterweight to this impossible bounty. One error—one single mistake—and the entire reward structure collapses like a house of cards in a hurricane. One moment of human weakness, one slip of concentration, one rebellious impulse, and it all vanishes.
The equation is brutally simple: perfection equals payment. Failure equals nothing. The mathematical progression makes the stakes higher with each passing day—each hour bringing me closer to either windfall or devastating disappointment.
And I’m standing barefoot in a parking lot, technically late for an errand, with shoes in my hand instead of on my feet where they’re supposed to be. The potential demerits hover over me like an executioner’s axe when you add in the ten I’ve already earned and not officially burned.
The stakes snap into place with the cold precision of a guillotine blade. One week. One rulebook. One reward. The game is rigged for failure, designed to tantalize with the impossibility of human perfection measured against Giovanni Bavga’s exacting standards.
$31,750 reasons to be perfect.
$31,750 reasons to ignore my bladder, my blistered feet, my wounded pride, my instinct for self-preservation.
$31,750 reasons to become whatever version of myself Giovanni Bavga wants to buy.
It’s not even a question of whether I’ll try.
It’s a question of whether I’ll survive this game with my dignity intact.
9
The game reveals itself in layers.
First the confusion, then the panic, then the inevitable surrender.
It’s a reliable sequence—one I’ve seen play out across boardrooms and bedrooms with equal predictability. The psychological progression never varies, only the setting and stakes change.
Little Miss Take’s performance is proceeding exactly as expected.
I settle back against the supple leather couch, the double espresso cooling untouched beside me on the glass table. The laptop screen divides into four quadrants of surveillance feeds, each capturing a different angle of her struggle with my Aventador.
The cabin cam provides the most entertainment—her face cycling through frustration, determination, and the particular brand of desperation that comes with being completely out of one’s depth. Those expressive pale green eyes widening then narrowing as she confronts each new obstacle.
She doesn’t know how to close the scissor door. Of course she doesn’t. How could she? These aren’t the pedestrian hinges found on economy cars and family sedans that litter the decaying streets of Riverview.
The Aventador demands reverence in every interaction, even something as fundamental as securing the cabin. The vertical door system is engineered to intimidate outsiders—to create a barrier between those who understand Italian automotive excellence and those who merely observe it from a distance.
The overhead cam tracks her slender hands as they search for something familiar, something intuitive. There’s nothing intuitive about a Lamborghini. That’s half the point. The car is designed to exclude the uninitiated, to separate those who belong from those who don’t. The learning curve is the entrance fee, the price of admission to a world most never glimpse.
Her fingers, with their chipped nail polish—another sign of her financial precarity—trace uncertain paths across surfaces meant to be mastered, not questioned.