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

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Chapter 16:

all tell me the same thing: her spirit refuses

composure that had defined Luigi Maggiore in boardrooms and business journals disintegrated completely. The man who had built his reputation on

sympathetic stranger, she might have been moved by this display of

offered comfort, reassurance,

knew exactly what he had conveniently omitted from his narrative–the deliberate cruelty, the ninety–eight humiliations, the calculated revenge for a crime she hadn’t committed. His tears

woman sitting across from him now felt nothing beyond mild irritation at being

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

said stiffly. “That was completely inappropriate. Please,

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

car swerved wildly toward the valet stand where they stood,

them both.

out!” Luigi shouted.

the momentum sending her sprawling across the pavement

on impact, skidding across the

Luigi thrown several feet by the impact, his body crumpling against a decorative planter.

valets, the sharp wail of car alarms.

blood seeping through his shirt, his wide eyes fixed on

name escaping

hospital corridor thirty minutes later, Luigi refused to release her hand even as they wheeled him toward emergency surgery. Blood soaked through

The thi

oblivious to his physical condition.

tight despite his weakening state. “Please. If this is another dream, F’ll let them hit me again if it

outweighed his multiple fractures. and internal bleeding. His fingers communicated what drugs and shock prevented him from articulating–abject terror that if he let go, she would vanish

insisted. “We need to get you

be here,” he pleaded, his eyes locked on Ariana’s face with desperate intensity. “Swear you won’t disappear again.”

determination couldn’t overcome severe blood loss and pre–surgical sedation. As the medications took hold outside the operating room, his fingers finally slackened their death grip.

swung closed between them. This complication was the last thing she needed–her carefully constructed new life now

she could pack her belongings at the hotel and book a flight back to London. Her obligations to the company were secondary

for a night tour of Boston’s historic waterfront, Ariana declined

spent years intimately familiar with every cobblestone and hidden garden, she had no desire to revisit places now tainted with memories of a man who had used

their hotel, eager for the solitude of her room and a long, hot shower to

seemed determined to stress–test her resolve.

vehicle at the hotel’s entrance, she nearly collided with a small group of men in expensive suits exiting the lobby–at their

could retreat, his voice carried across the short

made her turn, but panic quickly overrode her surprise. She fumbled frantically in her bag,

Chapter 16

then, Luigi had dismissed his associates with a curt nod and approached

casual attire of jeans and an oversized sweater. “Why are you still

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