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:

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

journals disintegrated completely. The man who had built his reputation on

stranger, she might have been moved by this display

She might have offered comfort, reassurance, absolution.

humiliations, the calculated revenge for a crime she hadn’t committed. His tears now seemed like too little, too late–performance art

he believed. The woman sitting across from him now felt nothing beyond mild irritation at being trapped

his eyes, embarrassment replacing vulnerability as the mask of

said stiffly. “That was completely inappropriate. Please, let

hotel’s circular driveway,

valet stand where they stood, its high beams momentarily blinding

them both.

Luigi shouted.

sending her sprawling across the pavement as the vehicle

mask dislodged on impact, skidding across the

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

erupted instantly–screaming guests, running valets, the sharp

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

the name escaping like a

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

The thi

seemed oblivious to his physical condition.

his weakening state. “Please. If this is another dream, F’ll let them

him, the impossibile resurrection of the woman he had mourned outweighed his multiple fractures. and internal bleeding. His fingers communicated what drugs and shock

her,” a nurse insisted. “We need to get you into

here,” he pleaded, his eyes locked on Ariana’s face with desperate intensity. “Swear you

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

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

flight back to

company excitedly departed for a night tour of Boston’s historic waterfront,

garden, she had no desire to revisit places now

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

seemed determined

group of men in expensive suits exiting the lobby–at their center, Luigi Maggiore himself, apparently concluding some business

but before she could retreat, his voice carried across the short distance:

quickly overrode her surprise. She fumbled frantically in her bag, locating and securing her performance mask before reluctantly facing him.

Chapter 16

had dismissed his associates with a curt nod and approached her directly, studying her with that penetrating gaze she remembered

observed, gesturing to her casual attire of jeans

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