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:

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

in boardrooms and business journals disintegrated completely. The man who had built his reputation on cold calculation covered his face with his hands,

a sympathetic stranger, she might have been

offered comfort,

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 now seemed like too little, too late–performance art for his own benefit rather than genuine

The woman sitting across

breakdown. He quickly wiped his eyes, embarrassment replacing vulnerability

completely inappropriate. Please, let me walk you back.”

restaurant into the hotel’s circular driveway, disaster

stand where they stood, its high

them both.

out!” Luigi shouted.

sending her

skidding across the

looked up just in time to see Luigi thrown several feet by the impact, his body crumpling against

the sharp wail of

Luigi’s focus remained singular. Despite the blood seeping through his shirt, his wide eyes fixed on her now–exposed

whispered, the name escaping like a prayer.

hand even as they wheeled him toward emergency surgery.

The thi

seemed oblivious to his

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

His fingers communicated what drugs and shock prevented him from articulating–abject terror that if he let go, she would vanish like morning mist.

a nurse insisted. “We

locked on Ariana’s face with desperate intensity. “Swear you won’t disappear again.”

overcome severe blood loss and pre–surgical sedation. As the medications took hold outside the operating room, his fingers

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

at the hotel and book a flight back to London. Her

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

she had no desire to revisit places now tainted with memories of a man who had used her love as a weapon against

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 the day’s tension.

seemed determined to stress–test her resolve.

nearly collided 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 carried across

surprise. She fumbled frantically in her bag, locating and securing her performance mask before

Chapter 16

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

gesturing to her casual attire of jeans and an

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