Bought by the Dark Maestro (Auctions, Purchases & Captives)

Chapter 1

The note broke.

It wasn’t a timing error or a bad choice; it was mechanical failure.

A dull c-r-a-c-k from the piano’s old wood mixed with the snap of bone in her own hand, protesting the pressure.

The sound died in the heavy air of the “Silver Swan”—a poetic name for a dive that reeked of sour beer, mildew, and the cheap pine disinfectant the owner, Beto, used to mop up Saturday’s vomit.

Aurora Vitali stopped for a fraction of a second. The silence that followed was louder than the broken chord. No one noticed.

At the corner table, a man in a grease-stained jumpsuit snored with his head down. At the bar, two figures mumbled about soccer, their voices a low, slurred drone. The Silver Swan wasn’t a place for music; it was a waiting room for oblivion, and Aurora was just the soundtrack to their failure.

She took a deep breath, the stale air scratching her throat, and forced her fingers to continue.

It was Liszt. Or at least, what was left of Liszt after she’d dissected it. La Campanella. A piece that demanded the lightness of a fairy, a speed her teachers used to call “aerodynamic.” Now she played it with the brute force of a butcher.

Her right hand, her good hand, still flew.

The pale, slender fingers—the only remnants of the life she’d once had—raced across the yellowed ivory keys, many of them chipped, some sticky with a liquid she preferred not to identify.

They did the work of two, covering the fastest arpeggios, trying to make up for what the other hand couldn’t do.

The left hand was the problem. It was her anchor, her shackle.

Aurora kept her hair long, a lifeless brown, always draped over the left side of her face.

It was a veil. A curtain. Beneath it, the skin was a ruined map.

The fire had licked from her cheek to her jawline, and the scar tissue pulled at the corner of her left eye, giving her a permanent expression of pained surprise that she hated.

But the face was just aesthetics. The hand... the hand had been her soul.

The fire had melted the tendons. The botched surgeries, paid for with what remained of her savings, had left her with nothing but a claw.

The ring and pinky fingers were permanently curved inward, almost fused to the palm.

The thumb barely moved. The index and middle fingers worked, but with a stiffness that turned the most delicate pianissimo into a clumsy forte.

Playing La Campanella like this was blasphemy.

She couldn’t reach full octaves with her left.

She had to simplify the chords, reducing Liszt’s rich foundation to monotonous, percussive beats.

The pain was constant. Not sharp, but a dull throb that climbed her wrist, passed through her elbow, and settled in her shoulder like a rat gnawing at bone.

She played with anger.

The music was no longer an expression of beauty.

It was an act of defiance. Every note she managed to play was a middle finger to the fate that had put her there.

The anger made her music technically brilliant—she wouldn’t miss a note her hand could reach—but it was cold.

Precision like a blade, without warmth, without life.

It was a musical execution, in every sense of the word.

The smell of cheap whiskey and cigarette smoke (smoking was banned, but Beto didn’t care) was so thick she could taste it. The upright piano sat against the moisture-stained wall, beneath the only stage light—a bare bulb that buzzed and drew small moths.

She felt it.

A change in air pressure. A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold seeping through the poorly sealed door.

It was a gaze.

Aurora was used to being watched. Drunk men stared at her, some with pity, others with morbid curiosity when they caught a glimpse of the red, wrinkled skin beneath her hair. She ignored them. They were part of the decaying furniture.

But this was different.

This gaze wasn’t drunk. It wasn’t curious. It wasn’t fleeting.

It was heavy. It had a physical quality, like the weight of a hand on her shoulder.

She kept her eyes on the keys, but her awareness expanded. The bar had twelve tables. Eight were empty. Three were occupied by the usual drunks. The twelfth, in the darkest corner, far from the bar’s sickly light and almost swallowed by the shadows near the blocked emergency exit, was occupied.

She couldn’t see a face. Just a silhouette.

It was a man. Large, or at least he seemed so, by the way he filled the booth. He was perfectly still. No glass on his table. No plate. He wasn’t looking at a phone or talking to anyone.

He was just... watching.

His gaze was fixed on her. Not on her body, not on her breasts, as was usually the case. It was on her hands. Specifically, her left hand.

Aurora felt her stomach turn. Bile rose. The intensity of that attention was predatory. It was the stillness of a wolf watching a rabbit caught in a trap. A stillness that wasn’t calm, but the pause before the strike.

She missed a note. An F-sharp where there should have been a G. The sound was jarring.

The man in the shadows didn’t move.

Her anger, once a dull ember, flared into a cold flame. Who was he to judge her? To sit there in his expensive suit—she could see the faint sheen of the fabric, so out of place in this dump—and dissect her with his eyes?

She switched pieces. Without pause, she plunged from Liszt into something darker.

Rachmaninoff. The Prelude in C-sharp Minor.

The piece was a lament, a funeral march.

She played it not as a lament, but as an accusation.

She pounded the keys, forcing her crippled left hand to produce the heavy, resonant chords.

Pain shot up her arm, sharp as broken glass. She clenched her teeth, the muscle in her jaw—the good side—jumping. The scar tissue on her cheek pulled at her eye so hard that tears welled up, but they were from physical pain, not sadness.

She could feel his gaze tracing the outline of her hidden face. As if he could see through her hair. As if he could see the scars no one else saw. He was cataloging her flaws.

The Silver Swan had gone unbearably silent. The drunks at the bar had stopped murmuring. Even the man in coveralls seemed to stop snoring. The only sounds were the piano and the buzz of the light bulb.

The music became a duel. She was playing against him. She poured all her frustration, all her humiliation, all her hatred for the hand that had betrayed her, into the instrument. Her right fingers were blades, and her left hand was a hammer.

The man remained motionless.

He wasn’t intimidated. He didn’t seem impressed. He didn’t seem bored. He just… absorbed.

The tension was so thick the air seemed to vibrate. She felt a drop of sweat trickle from her temple—the good one—tracing a cold path down her neck. She never sweated there.

She wanted to stop. Wanted to scream at him to stop looking at her. Wanted to throw a bottle at him. But she was paid—miserably—to play until eleven, and there were ten minutes left. And more than that, stopping would mean admitting defeat.

So she played. She played with a fury that made the old, tired piano tremble. She was flaying herself alive, exposing every raw nerve through the music.

And he watched.

At ten minutes to eleven, she felt a change. He moved.

It was subtle. A slight shift in the shadows. He wasn’t leaving. He was… settling in. As if getting comfortable for a long wait.

The realization hit her with the force of a punch to the stomach: he wasn’t a customer. He wasn’t there for the drink or the music. He was there for her.

Fear—a feeling she thought had been cauterized by the fire along with her skin—rose in her throat. It was a cold, primitive fear. The fear of prey.

She finished the prelude with a final chord that was more a roar than a note.

The sound echoed and died.

In the silence that followed, for the first time, someone applauded. A single, slow clap from the bar. Beto, the owner, drying a glass.

“Good, Aurora,” he said, his voice hoarse.

The man in the shadows didn’t applaud.

Eleven o’clock. Her set was over.

Her fingers hurt so much they trembled. She flexed her left hand, a grimace of pain distorting her face. She carefully pulled her hair to cover even more of the left side, an automatic, defensive gesture.

She stood up from the bench. The old wooden bench creaked in protest.

She grabbed her worn bag, hanging from the piano hook, and her thin coat, which would do nothing against the November cold outside. She avoided looking at the corner. If she didn’t look, he wasn’t real.

She walked to the bar. Beto already had her payment set aside. A small pile of crumpled bills and some coins. Enough for the rent on her rathole and maybe some bread and soup for the next two days.

“Same time tomorrow?” he asked, without looking at her, his eyes on the small TV hanging in the corner, showing an old soccer game.

“Yes, Beto.” Her voice came out low, scratchy.

She stuffed the money in her coat pocket. She had to pass his table to get to the exit.

There was no way to avoid it.

She took a deep breath, the smell of mold and pine filling her lungs for the last time that night. She gripped the bag strap with her good hand.

She started walking.

Each step toward the door was an effort. The floor seemed sticky, trying to hold her back. She kept her eyes fixed on the red glow of the “EXIT” sign.

She passed his table.

She didn’t look. She didn’t dare.

But she could feel him. The cold that emanated from him was palpable, like passing an open refrigerator door. She could smell him—a scent that didn’t belong there. Not cheap whiskey or sweat. Something clean, metallic, and expensive. Ozone and fine wool.

And she could feel his eyes. They weren't on her hands anymore. They were on the back of her head.

She reached the door. Her hand—the right one—was on the latch.

Behind her, a sound. The creak of expensive leather against the cracked vinyl of the booth.

He was getting up.

Panic rose like ice water. She didn't run. She forced herself to open the door with a calm she didn't feel.

She stepped out into the dark, cold alley. The damp air hit her face like a slap. The door of the Silver Swan closed behind her with a soft click.

She stood still for a second, trembling—not just from the cold.

She didn't look back. She walked fast, her worn shoes clicking on the wet pavement. The alley reeked of garbage and urine.

She didn't hear footsteps behind her.

But the sensation didn't leave her. That gaze was still on her, as if it had clung to her clothes. It was no longer just observation.

It was a hunt. And she was the only prey in the field. The music had only been the bell, calling the hunter.