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:

in Tibet. They all tell me the same thing: her spirit refuses contact. She won’t

journals disintegrated completely. The man who had built his reputation

been merely a sympathetic stranger, she might have been moved

might have offered comfort,

the ninety–eight humiliations, the calculated revenge for a crime she hadn’t committed.

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

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

stiffly. “That was completely

hotel’s circular driveway, disaster struck without

where they stood, its high beams momentarily

them both.

out!” Luigi

a split–second decision, he shoved her forcefully sideways, the momentum sending her sprawling across the pavement

skidding across the concrete

to see Luigi thrown

valets, the

blood seeping through his shirt, his wide eyes fixed on her now–exposed face with

name escaping

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

The thi

to his physical condition.

is another dream, F’ll let

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

nurse insisted. “We need to

eyes locked on Ariana’s

even Luigi’s legendary determination couldn’t overcome severe blood loss and pre–surgical sedation. As the medications took hold outside the operating

massaged her reddened wrist, watching impassively as the surgical doors swung closed between them. This complication was the last

book a flight back to London. Her obligations to the company

a night tour of Boston’s historic waterfront, Ariana declined with a vague gesture toward

she had no desire to revisit places now tainted

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

universe, however, seemed determined

a small group of men in expensive suits exiting the lobby–at their center, Luigi Maggiore himself,

flight, but before she could retreat, his voice carried

her surprise. She fumbled frantically in her

Chapter 16

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

jeans

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