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

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Chapter 16:

flew to a monastery in Tibet. They all tell me the same thing: her spirit

completely. The man who had built his reputation on cold calculation covered his face

been merely a sympathetic stranger, she might have been

offered comfort, reassurance, absolution.

he had conveniently omitted from his narrative–the deliberate cruelty, the ninety–eight humiliations, the calculated revenge for a crime

who had loved him had died in that fire, just as he believed. The woman sitting across from him now felt nothing beyond mild irritation at being

eyes, embarrassment replacing vulnerability as

“That was completely inappropriate. Please, let me

the restaurant into the hotel’s circular driveway, disaster struck

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

them both.

out!” Luigi

sending

impact, skidding across

just in time to see Luigi thrown several feet by the impact, his body crumpling against a decorative planter.

valets, the

Despite the blood seeping through his shirt, his wide eyes fixed on her

whispered, the name escaping like a

release her hand even as they wheeled him toward emergency surgery.

The thi

oblivious to his physical condition.

kept murmuring his grip painfully tight despite his weakening state. “Please. If this is another dream, F’ll let

mourned outweighed his multiple fractures. and internal bleeding. His fingers communicated what drugs and

a nurse insisted. “We need to get

be here,” he pleaded, his eyes locked on Ariana’s

and pre–surgical sedation. As the medications took hold outside the operating room, his fingers finally slackened their

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

and book a flight back to London. Her obligations

night tour of Boston’s historic waterfront, Ariana declined

hidden garden, she had no desire to revisit places now tainted with memories of

goodnight, she settled into the town car headed back to their hotel, eager for the solitude of

seemed determined

stepped from the vehicle at the hotel’s entrance, she nearly collided with a small group of men in expensive suits exiting the lobby–at their center, Luigi Maggiore himself, apparently concluding

was immediate flight, but before she could retreat, his

fumbled frantically in her bag, locating and securing her performance mask before reluctantly facing

Chapter 16

and approached her

off–duty now,” he observed, gesturing to her casual attire of jeans and an oversized sweater. “Why are you still hiding behind

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