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:

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

completely. The man who had built

Ariana been merely a sympathetic stranger, she might have been moved by this display

have offered comfort, reassurance, absolution.

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

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 trapped in

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

was completely inappropriate.

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

wildly toward the valet stand where they

them both.

out!” Luigi shouted.

her forcefully sideways, the momentum sending her sprawling

mask dislodged on impact, skidding across the concrete with a hollow

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

valets, the

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

whispered, the name

corridor thirty minutes later, Luigi refused to release her hand even as they

The thi

seemed oblivious to his physical condition.

is

resurrection of the woman he had mourned outweighed his multiple fractures. and internal bleeding. His fingers communicated

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

on Ariana’s face with desperate

Luigi’s legendary 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

closed between them. This complication was the last thing she needed–her carefully

glanced toward the exit, calculating how quickly she could pack her belongings at the hotel and book a flight back to London. Her obligations to the

while the rest of the company excitedly departed for a night tour of Boston’s historic waterfront, Ariana declined with

every cobblestone and hidden garden, she had no desire to revisit places now tainted with memories

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

determined to

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

flight, but before she could retreat, his voice

panic quickly overrode her surprise. She fumbled frantically in her bag, locating and securing her performance mask

Chapter 16

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

jeans and

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