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:

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

completely. The man who had built

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

She might have offered comfort,

the calculated revenge for a crime she hadn’t committed. His tears now

him had died in that fire, just as he believed. The woman sitting across from him now

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

said stiffly. “That was completely

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

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

them both.

Luigi

he shoved her forcefully sideways, the momentum sending her

dislodged on impact, skidding across the concrete with a

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

instantly–screaming guests, running valets, the sharp wail

singular. Despite the blood seeping through his shirt, his wide eyes fixed on her now–exposed face with an expression of pure

the name escaping like a

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

The thi

oblivious to his physical

this is another dream, F’ll let them hit me again if it means I get to see

had mourned outweighed his multiple fractures. and internal bleeding. His fingers communicated what drugs and shock prevented him from articulating–abject terror that if he let

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

Ariana’s face with desperate intensity. “Swear you won’t

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

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

and book a flight back to London. Her obligations to the company were secondary to maintaining the

tour

had no desire to revisit places now tainted with memories of a man who

bidding her colleagues goodnight, she settled into the town car headed back to their hotel, eager for

seemed determined to

from the vehicle at the hotel’s entrance, she nearly collided with a small group of men in expensive suits exiting the

could retreat, his

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

Chapter 16

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

her casual attire of jeans

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