I check on him in the bedroom, asleep in his Master’s bed, pale as a ghost and swallowed up by the pillows and blankets. Feeling his eyes upon me, I glance at the portrait and hear the echo of my brother’s voice, the first time he left Giovanni in my care.
“The important things for Giovanni to have are structure, stability, and rules. This is what I need you to provide for him in my absence, Silvio…”
“I’m trying,” I say, frustrated by my own impotence. “You certainly didn’t make it easy for me.”
He is silent, watchful. His shrewd eyes and stern mouth convey his disappointment.
I cannot relax under this scrutiny. In an effort to cleanse this bitterness from my soul, I head down to the beach, ruminating on how I might help to heal my grieving boy. I’m still angry at my brother for what he did—setting me up to fall in love with Giovanni, then giving me just enough of his preciousschiavoto make me want more. He kept me on a tight leash and refused to tell Giovanni the truth about his illness so that when Gio found out, he blamed me too, even though I’d been urging Valentin all along to be honest.
And now I’m left with a heartbroken young man whose whole world revolved around my brother, who couldn’t take a piss without Valentin’s permission, who looks at me with so much sadness and sometimes scorn because I am not his beloved Master. Valentin shaped him to be the perfect submissive—for himself but not for me. Theschiavois lost without his Master, pining for something I cannot give him.
I gaze out at the moonlit sea and listen to the waves, searching for answers in their quiet murmurings. I am not my brother, but for Giovanni, I must try.
2
We are at breakfast, engaged in a silent standoff. Giovanni will not eat the food he himself prepared. His poached eggs sit like two soggy eyeballs on his plate, staring at nothing. His toast is untouched.
“Are you going to eat that?” I ask.
“No, Sir,” he says with an edge of defiance in his voice, and I’ve already decided that I will not let it go this time. I will be firm.
“Come over here, Giovanni. And bring your plate with you.”
He makes his way over to me in his elegant, haughty stride, sets his plate down next to mine, then stands with one hip jutted and arms crossed, a bratty air. He was sometimes this way with Valentin, so I don’t take it too personally.
“Sit right here, princess.” I slide my hands along my thighs, and he softens to the name, then perches gingerly on my lap. I started calling him that because of his long hair and soft features, but it stuck around because he was also pampered like a princess by my brother. Valentin gave him whatever he wanted and, until recently, I’d thought that was their arrangement. But now I know Giovanni comes from money, which explains some of his entitled behaviors. I thought he was faking his snobby airs, but no. Someone was spoiling him long before Valentin.
But I like knowing Giovanni doesn’t have to settle, that he will demand excellence because it’s what he’s accustomed to. It is daunting, yes, but in this aspect at least, I’m up for the challenge. And his heart—when I’m able to get past his defenses—his heart is the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. That is perhaps the most painful thing about his grief, that he is hiding his heart from me.
“Tell me why you won’t eat your food,” I say.
“I’m not hungry,” he says, which may be true since his stomach has probably shrunk to the size of a walnut.
“Tell me, Giovanni, how did your Master get you to eat?”
This at least gets his attention. His eyes sweep mine cautiously as if it’s a trick. “Dimmi.” I urge with a soft nudge to the ribs.Tell me.“I want to know.”
“Master weighed me every week. He set athletic goals for me. And if I dropped below a certain weight, he had my nutritionist reconfigure my diet.”
“And when you were sharing a meal together, sitting across from each other at the table as you and I are now, and you weren’t hungry. What did he do then?”
“He’d say, ‘Mangia, Giovanni,’” he says in my brother’s manner of speaking, sounding wistful and forlorn.
“And why doesn’t this work for me?”
Giovanni licks his lips and stares at me with cold calculation. “Because you are not Master.”
Finalmente.It’s a relief to hear him say it. He watches for my reaction while I contemplate my next move, deciding on a different tack.
“Your body is a temple, no?” I ask, and he nods, lips parting ever so slightly. “For your Master to worship and defile?” He nods again, blinking rapidly. “And what about me, Giovanni? What about the passions of your Sir?”
He moistens his lips and says, “Sir has not made any physical demands of his boy. If there is no temple to worship, then the body ceases to exist.”
Could it have been this easy all along? If I had taken him to bed the day after my brother’s death, or even before, would he have submitted to me? Probably, but it wouldn’t have been right. He told me before Valentin’s passing that he could only serve one man. So, I backed off, hoping Giovanni would come around, that he would seek me for intimacy and sexual release, or even the sort of easy companionship we used to share. If that’s truly what he wanted—what he wants—he only needed to tell me.
But Giovanni does not ask for such things.
“Tell me, Giovanni, do you wish to be used by your Sir?”
