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)
What is going on here? This page is chaos unleashed. It makes no sense. Not in the context of Giovanni Bavga.
I flip to the first page. It looks completely different. Structured, orderly, neat. His handwriting, a testament to years of elite prep-school expectation. Each entry is numbered. Boxed. Ruled off with straight, deliberate lines.
Demerit: Blood pressure dropped to 82/45 at 3:17 a.m.
Explanation: This is unacceptable. I did not give you permission to die, Miss Rourke.
Demerit: Erratic brain waves during hour seven.
Explanation: Your thoughts should be more orderly. This is simply sloppy.
I snort, which makes my head throb. Even unconscious, I can’t meet his standards.
Demerit: Required second blood transfusion.
Explanation: Wasteful. One should have been sufficient.
Demerit: Developed fever of 102.3.
Explanation: Drama queen.
Demerit: Left pupil unresponsive to light.
Explanation: Insubordination.
Demerit: Heart rate dropped to 42 BPM at 2:06 a.m.
Explanation: You are deliberately trying to terrify me. It’s working.
Demerit: Failed to respond to verbal commands.
Explanation: Selective hearing is not an attractive quality, Miss Rourke.
Demerit: Required intubation for seventeen hours.
Explanation: Breathing is not optional.
My fingers tremble as I turn the page. The entries continue, each one more frantic than the last. His handwriting starts to break—still elegant, but the precision is cracking. The lines sharpen. The angles tighten. The human starts to leak through.
I scared him.
I realize, with a kind of quiet horror, that he’s filled this book. The once-empty ledger of my failures now overflowing with proof that Giovanni Bavga—of all men—came undone and tried to rebuild himself through me.
This is how Giovanni Bavga shows fear: buried in symmetry and ink. Each entry a negotiation with the universe, disguised as discipline. The man who calculates every move, who turns control into oxygen, sat here cataloging my body’s betrayals as if they were personal insults.
These aren’t demerits—they’re love letters written in code. Terror disguised as order.
The man who measures everything couldn’t measure the possibility of losing me. So he did what he always does. He built a system. A ritual. A religion of control. Trying to transform helplessness into something familiar—rules, consequences, order.
Even as my body shut down, he was bargaining with death through a leather-bound notebook and a fountain pen. As if he could intimidate my organs into compliance by sheer force of will.
Wow.
It feels… romantic.
God, I’m stupid.
I set the demerit book aside and reach for the second one. The reward system.
The leather is newer—sleeker, stiffer. Like it didn’t get as much use as the demerits.
I smile at this. Not because of my lack of cooperation, but because the rewards were never about behavior. They were about hope.
The emerald ribbon glints against the cream pages, matching his eyes with unsettling precision. Of course it does. Giovanni Bavga doesn’t do coincidence.
I open to the first page.
Reward: 50 points for involuntary eye movement at 7:42 p.m. You’re still in there. I can tell.
Reward: 50 points for increasing oxygen saturation to 96%. Keep breathing. That’s all you have to do.
Reward: 100 points for squeezing the doctor’s hand. Next time, squeeze mine.
The handwriting is exact—steady, deliberate, but there’s something else under the ink. A softness he doesn’t allow himself in speech.
Reward: 150 points for spike in brain activity when I read The Little Prince. I knew you were listening.
Reward: 200 points for maintaining stable vitals for six consecutive hours. You’re fighting. Good girl. I approve.
Reward: 250 points for murmuring something that sounded like “notebook.” Even unconscious, you’re fixated on the rules.
A small laugh escapes me. It hurts.
Of course he turned my recovery into a point system. Control disguised as affection. Affection disguised as control.
Then—halfway through the book—the handwriting shifts. Still elegant, but looser. The pressure lightens, the strokes wandering. He’s slipping. The man who never crosses out a word starts to hesitate.
And then I find it.
A page that doesn’t follow the pattern.
No numbered entries. No rewards.
Just a title—underlined twice.
Little Miss Take
The rest is verse. Terza rima. The pattern is unmistakable—he’s building a chain of rhyme and reason, trying to bind the world into order again.
I built you from the syllables of grace,
From pulse and ink and quiet disobedience.
You moved—my universe adjusted place.
Each breath a claim, each silence a convenience—
You taught me mercy, ruined every plan.
Control was just a myth of self-reliance.
If you return, I’ll write the rest, I swear.
Each line a breath, each breath a kind of prayer.
That’s where it stops. Mid-pattern.
As if he couldn’t finish without me.
My chest tightens.
He made me a ledger.
A ledger of faith.
Even his love obeys a form. Even his fear rhymes.
Reward: 500 points for the first natural breath after extubation. I’ve never heard anything so beautiful.
Reward: 30,000 points for opening your eyes. You looked at me. You’re still here.
My vision blurs. Must be the concussion.
“He was here the whole time?” I ask, voice still sandpaper.
The nurse nods, fluffing my pillow with unnecessary enthusiasm. “Six days straight. Wouldn’t leave that chair except when they made him. Just sat there, writing in those books, talking to you. Threatened to buy the hospital when they enforced visiting hours.”