Chapter 13
“S ee, I promised I’d find you.” I lounged, one leg draped lazily over the other, in front of the two cowards who hadn’t respected my orders about my broken doll.
Kay fumbled to secure the door of the Tacticians common room, as Cillian remained unmoving behind them.
“We thought we’d bring her to you. We were all hammered,” the liar uttered straight to my face.
He and his friend fidgeted in their seats, their eyes darting around the room as if searching for an escape route. Beads of sweat formed on their foreheads. Eyes bulged out of their sockets.
“Sure,” I said, mustering a semblance of a smile. “You wanted a taste of that pussy, am I right? Did you get hard looking at her? Did you touch yourself that night thinking of her lips wrapped around your small dick?”
Obviously, those were rhetorical questions. One of them dared to offer a feeble smile, mistaking my apparent friendliness with how pissed I was on the inside. My blood boiled. It pounded against my temples like a relentless drumbeat. They all stared at each other, like fucking carps, hunching further into their seats.
“Please, Levi, we’re sorry. It was Hazing Night, and we just wanted to have fun.”
Have fun . Just this simple word was enough to dredge up the demons I had buried in my graveyard of fucked-up memories. Those bullies deserved to be wiped from this fucking earth. Them. Patrice. All of them.
“I think your time at this school and as Tacticians has ended. You’ll both leave today, or I’ll expose your darkest secrets: how you record and post your disgusting dicks online, getting inside all types of holes of your drunk victims, to how one of you cheated on the exam last year by taking performance-enhancing drugs, or how the most perverted of you jerked off by indulging in human-animal sex,” I threatened.
“You know who my dad is? If we’re expelled, he could close Pantheon!” the less depraved—the son of a five-star hotel chain mogul—complained.
I chuckled darkly. Everything leaves a digital trace, and despite this, they all seemed to think their electronic devices protected them. “Oh, I also know all about your daddy’s little gambling addiction and all the underage girls he fucks.”
His face turned ghastly white.
“I want you both out today,” I asserted.
Both of them lowered their heads, as they should. “What are we going to tell our parents?”
“Be creative,” I hissed and fixed my gaze on the worst of them—the one who drugs his victims and revels in animal sex. I slid Kay’s leather glove onto my hand. “You touched what was mine. I hope this will serve as a lesson.”
“I didn’t! We were doing this for you.” And here this pig was lying again.
“You had your disgusting hand all over her.” I closed in on him from behind, my breath against the nape of his shivering neck as I reached for his hand. “Ssh, don’t be afraid. Was it this one? I hope you’re not right-handed.”
What do I have to put myself through to finally make someone listen? Though the mere thought of touching him repulsed me—hence the glove—I steeled myself and seized his hand, twisting his fingers in a single, brutal snap. The satisfying crunch of his bones echoed through the air, sending a shiver coursing down my spine. His face contorted in agony, his screams muffled against my hand, his complexion flushing crimson.
“Levi, man, what are you doing?” Cillian let his conscience get the best of him.
“It wasn’t enough,” I growled through gritted teeth, allowing my darkness to take over.
My pupils dilated as my veins pulsated beneath my skin. I could feel it, the freak inside me thirsting to retaliate against the bullies I once felt powerless against. I prided myself on my emotional control, but an unsettled monster existed within me, a dark urge that hungered for violence and justice served on my terms.
Tears streamed down my victim’s face. He made no effort to conceal his anguish. He forewent any pretense of dignity, clutching his broken fingers in a futile attempt to alleviate the pain as his sobs echoed in the room. “Can we go now?”
“Yes.” Kay’s voice reverberated from the back as he forcefully swung the door open, allowing the second one to depart unscathed. “Pack your bags, fast.”
The two assholes bolted, and I slammed my fist on the wooden table like an idiot.
“You know we always have your back, but you lost your shit over here. What was that?” Cillian roared at me.
Even he had never seen my true face. But he was right. Only an imbecile would use his fist because physical violence was traceable. I’d never lost control that badly before.
“All of that trouble just for a girl you haven’t even fucked yet.” Kay shook his head. “Seriously, what are you even playing at with her? You want to fuck her, or do you want to ruin her? Because news flash, that’s not the same!”
I removed the glove, holding it between two fingers before tossing it aside like a used condom. “You should throw that nasty thing away. I’ll see you both later.”
The abrupt blaring of a phone’s alarm pulled me from sleep. I squinted, fumbling it to silence. The message flashed across the screen: It’s time for you to leave . I slumped onto the bed, likely Levi’s bed, enveloped by his pure satin sheets. A soft artificial sunrise gradually illuminated the room, and his coffee machine hummed to life as if already programmed for him to wake up at this time.
There was no denying it. I was at Levi’s place.
The alarm rang again with the sweet message: Get up, eat, don’t bother to say goodbye.
I followed the instructions and found my neatly folded uniform on the feet of his king-sized bed, a contrast to the ordinary beds of commoners like me. I didn’t even want to know how he managed to persuade the university into granting him a room all to himself.
I paced toward the small kitchen. Next to the coffee machine, in the middle of this very neat, almost compulsively clean place, he had left a protein bar, which I supposed was intended for me. It was almost thoughtful.
I decided to snoop around his dorm room. If he didn’t respect my boundaries, I didn’t see why his would be forbidden.
From his vantage point, Levi’s living space offered a panorama of the school’s spires and towers. He had no personal objects apart from computers and a chessboard. It caught my eye as it rested on the table near his bed. The worn chess pieces hinted at a history of countless games played by Levi over the years. Each crack and imperfection seemed to tell a story, meticulously etched into the black and white marble of the pawns. It was clear that this chess set wasn’t just a random one. No, this one was significant to him. It was a sneak peek into his world and battles.
I moved on to his closet, which only had a dash of purple from his Tacticians’ uniforms, but the rest was black and gray, with no artifice. I went to his bathroom and undressed before I covered myself, searching for any cameras.
“You better not see this. It’s against my consent!” I screamed just in case.
His bathroom was neat with black tiles. A peach and hibiscus shampoo was in the shower. It was unopened, and it was the same one I bought online. I was convinced Levi must be some kind of sociopath, but I didn’t even care right now. All I could think of were his words echoing in my mind.
I thought you would be a match for me, that you wouldn’t break so easily, but maybe I was wrong about you. If you think you’re weak, maybe you are.
As the water cascaded over me, I whispered the words with a newfound determination, a vow to myself that I refused to let my vulnerabilities define me. “I’m not weak.”
I had my place here. I’d already lost all the childhood memories Mom didn’t get the chance to tell me about. I had lots of questions about her life before I was born that would never have an answer. I couldn’t change our past, but I could feel close to Mom one last time if I held my promise to her.
I can’t give up and let them win.
I changed and went to explore Levi’s desk. He had done a few assignments. His handwriting was neat and rigid, compared to how messy mine was with doodles everywhere. I opened the top drawer and only found some pieces of electronics. But in the one below, I found a music score.
Lucie’s music score.
I would recognize her handwriting anywhere and her unique way of annotating her scores. Lucie had synesthesia, so she was always seeing colors alongside songs, letters, days, or even people. She used colors, shapes, and forms to draft the vision of her music score when she was creating them.
The frequency curve of the score was separated into four shades of color: the first part in dark violet trending to blue, with a “fast and powerful allegretto” as a reference handwritten on the side. The second part, light blue, has the annotations “disturbed unstable andante.” The third, a purple violet, “mysterious, faded, lento.” And the fourth, a metallic gray one, with “dark, sin tempo.”
I referred further to the score she had written below the sketch and frowned. It made no sense. This pattern didn’t match the melody. The music score itself was simply unplayable, with measures that did not follow each other, and the whole thing was out of tune. But why would Lucie, a musical genius, write something so complex and elaborate without any reason, devoid of meaning?
“Maybe it’s like a puzzle,” I whispered to myself.
Timing had never been my forte because the door slammed open at that exact moment.
“You’re still here. I told you to leave.” Levi strode into the room, lifting an eyebrow. “Are you snooping around my stuff?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “You did it to me, so it’s fair I do the same.”
“But life isn’t fair.” He sat on his desk, narrowing his eyes at me as if he didn’t know if he wanted to get rid of me or… continue what he started last night. “And behind my back. You’re wicked, Sherlock.”
My eyes dropped on the bruises on his knuckles. “What happened?”
“I had an encounter.”
“You fought someone?” I snapped my brows together. It seemed out of character for him. He typically exuded an aura of control, always impeccably groomed and composed. Yet this morning, he looked like he had been thrown underneath a bus.
“I punched a table. That was idiotic, and all because of you, for that matter. Now, can we move on to—”
I let out a laugh. “You punched a table? And it’s my fault?”
“It was either the table or someone’s face,” he said dryly. “While I’m all for breaking bones and indulging in some good old blackmail, it wasn’t my best thinking.”
That didn’t make any sense. What was he talking about? When his eyes dropped to mine, I found the need to switch subjects.
“I found Lucie’s music score and—”
“And what? You want to steal that from me too?”
“No,” I defended myself, taking a step back. “It’s not like that.”
“Not that it’d matter, but her gift is unplayable,” he said. “It’s a waste of time.”
“It’s a puzzle,” I insisted, unable to maintain a calm, detached tone in my voice. “If it’s not playable, it’s because we have to put the pieces back in order.”
“There’s no we, little doll. And you think I didn’t know that?” His lips turned into a thin, hard line. “I already divided each measure and ran them into a computer algorithm, but it didn’t work.”
“That’s because you think like you and not like Lucie. There must be a code or something. I think the answer lies in the sketch. Did you know your mother had synesthesia?”
“That’s right, you know my own mother better than I did,” he deadpanned. “You lacked one, so you feel the constant need to act like the perfect daughter, wishing others’ mothers would adopt you like a needless puppy seeking affection.”
I swallowed. I would not let his vile words get to me. Helping him solve Lucie’s music score was my chance. My redemption to keep a part of Lucie alive. I couldn’t return the Cigno Nero to Levi, but I’d give him the key to his mother’s score.
“I know you’re hurting me on purpose so I’ll give up. Lucie wasn’t my mother, but I knew her music better than anyone. If you let me—”
“Stop,” he asserted, a nerve working in his jaw. “This is just a bunch of crap, another of her twisted games to mess with me from her grave.”
I didn’t believe this. We both knew his mother had left him this music score for a reason. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have bothered to try to find a solution. But I’d learned by now that Levi was individualistic and wanted to accomplish everything by himself because needing anyone was a weakness to him.
“Why?” I said, not willing to give up on him. “Why keep the music score then, if you don’t want to know the truth?”
He let out a small laugh. “I already know the truth. I just want confirmation.”
“A confirmation for what?”
“It’s a family matter, and you’re not family.”
It sent a pang in my heart.“I-I’m sorry, you’re right.”
I was just her student. I gathered my belongings and headed toward the door.
“I’m sorry if I crossed a line. It’s not what you want to hear, but yes, Lucie was like a second mother to me, and she always will be. It’s how I feel. I can’t help it, but I know she loved you.” Something in his face twitched as if he didn’t believe me. “You’re right about what you said about me; I desperately want to redeem myself. I know I don’t have your mother’s talent, but I won’t give up, Levi. So hate me however you want; I’ll continue to fight back until you finally give me the chance to help you.”