The Black Swan's Final Revenge Pirouette: The 99th Game Was Mine All Along by Kylie Homme

Chapter 16

hapter 16

Finally, Ariana set down her cutlery with deliberate precision and picked up her phone. She typed quickly and turned the screen toward him

“Why do you keep staring at me like that?”

Caught in his scrutiny, Luigi seemed to return from somewhere distant. Every gesture she made–the particular way she tilted her head, how she held her fork, even how she dabbed her napkin at the corner of her mouth beneath the mask–intensified his growing certainty.

“You remind me of someone I lost,” he said, his voice barely audible

Rather than typing, she gestured to a passing server for paper. When it arrived, she scrawled a single word

Who?”

Luigi’s fingers tightened around his water glass until his knuckles went white. His voice, when it finally came, held a rawness she’d never heard before.

“My wife.”

Something in his expression–a naked vulnerability utterly foreign to the man she had known–seemed to break open a floodgate. Without prompting, words began pouring out of him.

“I never told her I loved her,” he confessed, eyes fixed on the space just past her shoulder. “Not once, not properly. I had this… this stupid idea that saying it would give her power over me. Now I’d give everything I own just to say it to her once.”

Ariana remained perfectly still, pen hovering over paper, as he continued speaking to her–or perhaps to the ghost he saw superimposed over her presence.

“She died thinking I hated her. Because of my pride and other people’s manipulation, I made choices that “his voice cracked, “that led directly to her death. There was a fire that should never have happened. That I helped create.”

His hands trembled slightly as he reached for his water.

“Every night, I have the same nightmare. I’m always able to reach her in the flames, but the moment I think we’re safe, she deliberately pulls away and walks back into the fire. She chooses death over me, and

I can’t blame her.”

He laughed bitterly. “I’ve become the person I used to mock–desperate enough to consult psychics,

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The Black Sawan’s Linal Revenge Pinuell

The

11.5%

Chapter 16:

Tibet. They all tell me

The man who had built his reputation on cold calculation covered his face with his hands, his shoulders

sympathetic stranger, she might have been

have offered comfort, reassurance, absolution.

deliberate cruelty, the ninety–eight humiliations, the calculated revenge for a crime she hadn’t committed. His tears now seemed like too little, too late–performance art for his own benefit rather than

had loved him had died in that fire, just as he believed. The woman sitting across from him now

He quickly wiped his eyes, embarrassment replacing vulnerability as the mask of the businessman slid back

stiffly. “That was completely inappropriate. Please, let me walk you

the restaurant into the hotel’s circular driveway, disaster struck without

swerved wildly toward the valet stand where they stood, its high beams momentarily

them both.

Luigi shouted.

shoved her forcefully sideways, the momentum sending her sprawling across the pavement as the vehicle struck

on impact, skidding across

in time to see Luigi thrown several feet by the impact, his body crumpling against

valets, the sharp wail

Luigi’s focus remained singular. Despite the blood seeping through his shirt, his wide

the name escaping

to release her hand even as they wheeled him toward emergency surgery. Blood soaked through pressure bandages, his vitals dropping dangerously.

The thi

oblivious to his

this is another dream, F’ll let them hit me again if it means I get to

bleeding. His fingers communicated what drugs and

insisted. “We need to get

Ariana’s face

couldn’t overcome severe blood loss and pre–surgical sedation. As the medications took hold

her reddened wrist, watching impassively as the surgical doors swung closed between them. This complication was the last thing she needed–her carefully constructed new life now

back to London. Her obligations to the

a night tour of

with every cobblestone and hidden garden, she had no desire to revisit places now tainted with memories of a man who had used her love as

hotel, eager for the solitude of

however, seemed determined

entrance, she nearly collided with a small group of men in expensive suits exiting the lobby–at

retreat, his voice carried across the short distance: “Wait please.

fumbled frantically in her

Chapter 16

a curt nod and approached her directly, studying her with that penetrating gaze she remembered too

gesturing to her casual attire of jeans and an

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