Chapter 29 #2
He turns, slightly startled, then his mouth spreads into a genuine smile. “Macarthur!” He puts his hand out, gripping mine warmly. “Good lord, man. Didn’t take you for the piano recital type.”
That is hardly surprising, given that last time we met I was in full tactical gear, sitting atop Ambassador Rhys Stewart’s armored car with a machine gun, firing at the high-level Taliban leaders to whom we’d just paid a sickening sum of money.
“I take it you’ve left the foreign office, then?” I ask, my question covered by the clatter of those around us taking their seats.
“Oh, one never really leaves, exactly.” Rhys gives me a wry smile. “But I have left that particular post, yes.” He eyes me curiously. “I’m glad to see you again, Luke. I wasn’t entirely sure you’d make it home the last time I saw you.”
I smile, ignoring his question. Some topics are best not explored. “Are you here for the music or because of a personal interest?” I change the subject as the lights dim and the final bell rings to warn people to take their seats.
“Personal.” Rhys accepts the change of subject with the diplomacy that is his profession. “My son is playing.” He points to the first name on the program. “Top of the bill, actually.”
“Ah.” I nod, smiling. “You must be very proud.”
“And you?” He gives me a quizzical look.
“Third and final of the night.” I point to Ofelia’s name.
Rhys’s smile slowly fades. “Ofelia Borovsky,” he says slowly. It isn’t a question. His gaze slides past me, landing on Zinaida, and his eyes narrow. “You’re here with Zinaida Melikov?”
I nod curtly.
Rhys shakes his head. “Tell me you’re not running security for that woman. Or for Ofelia Borovsky’s family.”
“I could tell you that,” I say evenly, holding his eyes. “But I’d be lying.”
Rhys slowly shakes his head again. As the lights fade completely, he turns back to watch the stage, his mouth pressed into a thin line. I can almost feel his contempt.
And I couldn’t give a single fuck.
It’s the second strange, unsettling realization of the night.
I spent much of my career in rooms with men like Rhys Stewart. Listened to their cut-glass accents brief me on horrors they knew they’d never have to face themselves. Escorted them to ill-advised meetings any of my team could have told them were doomed to failure.
I used to be in awe of those men. To assume they knew more than I did about the people, places, and situations they sent us to meet. Time, and bitter experience, slowly wore that illusion away.
I learned the hard way that to Rhys and those of his ilk, my team and I were no more than tools to be deployed, no matter what lives the mission cost or whether or not it was pointless.
Men like Rhys play at war with other people’s money, and no matter how well-intentioned they may be, they don’t live or die according to the outcomes of those games.
Men like Mak, Roman, and Dimitry put their bodies on the line with their decisions and walk into the fire with those they ask to face it.
When it comes to war, there is no moral high ground, only the honor of those who face it beside you.
And somewhere over the past few years, I decided who I want beside me when there is war to be faced.
Zinaida’s hand slips into mine, and I turn to her in the darkness. Are you okay? she mouths, her eyes concerned as they flicker to Rhys’s stony profile and back to me.
Seized by some inner demon, I lean over and take her mouth, hard and deep, until we’re both breathless and the people in the row behind us clear their throats disapprovingly.
I shift my mouth to Zinaida’s ear. “With you, princess,” I murmur, “always.”
When the stage lights rise, Zinaida is wearing the secret smile that always makes me want to tear her clothes off, and Rhys Stewart looks even more pissed off than he did the day he realized he’d just handed Taliban fighters several million pounds in exchange for absolutely nothing of value in return.
An hour later, Rhys’s son has given a mediocre performance of what my program informs me is a Brahms sonata, to half-hearted applause, followed by another boy who sweats his way through a Rachmaninoff piece that even I can tell is overly ambitious.
As he’s given a sympathetic round of applause, I spot Ofelia in the wings, her face pale and terrified.
She scans the empty seats beside Zinaida, and the devastation in her eyes makes my heart clench. I glance at my phone, but there’s still no message. “Damn it,” I murmur in Zinaida’s ear, and she nods, giving me a pained look.
The lights dim, and the spotlight moves to the edge of the stage. The audience falls silent.
Ofelia emerges from behind the curtain. Head held high, she glides across the stage without any trace of the nerves I saw only a moment earlier.
She takes her seat at the piano and raises her eyes to stare into the darkened theater.
Despite her surface composure and undeniable beauty, I can sense bleak loneliness in every taut muscle.
She pauses for a moment, her hands held above the keys.
Then, like the sun suddenly appearing over a winter sea, her eyes widen, and color floods her face. A moment later, there’s an annoyed ripple through the people at the end of our row, as three tall figures shuffle past them and take the seats beside Zinaida.
Mickey, serious faced as ever, casts me an apologetic smile and gives his sister a small wave. Lars, the gangly blond man beside him, waves far more exuberantly, grinning at everyone around him with open good humor.
From his seat at the end of the row, Alexei Petrovsky nods curtly in my direction. His lone eye stares grimly at the stage, a patch covering the place his other eye once was. The many scars lining his lean, hawkish face gleam in the stage light.
I follow his eyes back to Ofelia.
She is staring at him over the piano, her eyes locked on his face as if an invisible string joins them, one to the other. Twin spots of high color stain her cheeks, and the feverish glitter in her eyes is unmistakable.
I think of Zinaida’s words earlier: “I’m not sure it’s Mickey she’s waiting on.”
Oh, I think, my eyes shifting between them with a growing sense of dread. This isn’t fucking good.
Zinaida glances at me, eyebrows raised, and I give a resigned shake of my head.
She grimaces in acknowledgment and squeezes my hand.
Before I can start to think about how, or even if, I might approach Roman on the sensitive subject of his daughter having clearly developed feelings for his wife’s brother—who also happens to be Miami’s most brutal, ruthless crime overlord—Ofelia lowers her hands and begins to play.
And just like that, I forget about Alexei Petrovsky.
Because, along with everyone else in the concert hall, I’m lost to anything but the spellbinding performance onstage.
According to the program, Ofelia is playing a piece by Liszt, Petrarch Sonnet 104 No. 5.
I have no idea what any of that means, and I haven’t read the description below it, but none of that matters, because the moment she begins to play, I know exactly what she’s trying to say.
Emotion bleeds from every keystroke. From the opening crash of chords to a delicate cascade of notes that trill through the room like birdsong, Ofelia’s heart permeates the room like an invisible spirit.
The piece winds around the audience like silk, binding us all in a collective trance, held spellbound from one note to the next.
But it isn’t us Ofelia is playing to.
Her eyes may be focused on the piano, her body swaying with every note as if she is part of the music rather than simply playing it, but every movement, every gesture, is performed for one person only.
Ofelia is playing for Alexei Petrovsky as if he’s the only person in the hall.
Every shift of her body, every glance from beneath slitted lids, is angled toward him.
Every emotional punctuation is directed to him.
And if he can’t read the longing hanging between every keystroke, then he’s a far stupider man than I know him to be.
Her hands drift up from the final note, and as it lingers on the air, the room is utterly silent.
Then suddenly it erupts in rapturous applause, the audience rising from the seats as one, whistling and stamping their feet, turning to their neighbors with tearstained faces and awed smiles.
“She’s astonishing . . .”
“Never seen a debut so masterful . . .”
“She’s the next Yuja Wang . . .”
“My God,” Zinaida breathes as Ofelia stands and shyly acknowledges the applause. “She’s extraordinary.”
I glance sideways, but Alexei Petrovsky is already gone.