Chapter 10
Night fell over the penthouse like a shroud.
Aurora didn’t practice. She didn’t play Bach. She didn’t play Mozart. She didn’t even play her own secret melody.
She just sat.
The hum of Maximilian Volkov’s private elevator, rising from the abyss of the garage, was the only sound in the marble vastness. The sound of her jailer coming home.
She waited for him in the music room.
She didn’t turn on the lights. She sat on the Fazioli’s bench in the darkness, illuminated only by the cold, distant glow of the city below. The dress she wore—a simple black cashmere tunic—looked like mourning clothes.
She heard his footsteps. Methodical, heavy, the sound of expensive shoes on marble. He wasn’t in a hurry. He never was.
He stopped in the doorway of the music room. His tall silhouette blocked what little light came from the hallway. He watched her in the darkness for a long moment.
“You’re not practicing.”
His voice was calm. A statement, not a question.
“I was waiting for you.” Her voice came out low, but it didn’t tremble. It was dead.
He entered the room. He didn’t turn on the light. He seemed to prefer the shadows. He walked to the other side of the piano, the ebony monster between them.
“You’re different,” he said. He was close enough that she could smell him—ozone, expensive wool, and the chill of the night air outside.
She stood up. Slowly.
“Project Phoenix.”
The words fell into the silence like a stone into a deep well.
She saw, even in the dimness, his body go rigid. A stillness that wasn’t calm, but alert. Like a wolf hearing a branch snap.
“What did you say?”
“Project Phoenix,” she repeated, her voice louder. “The name you gave to your... acquisition. The Vivaldi Academy land.”
He didn’t move. His gray eyes were pools of darkness, unreadable.
“You’ve been snooping,” he said. His voice was dangerously soft.
“Five hundred thousand reais,” she spat the number like it was poison. “Seven days. Seven days after you burned it down. You didn’t even wait for the ashes to cool.”
She circled the piano, moving toward him. The prey, approaching the predator.
“Master Silveira. He killed himself. Did you know that? Of course you did. You drove him to it. A good man, a man who dedicated his life to music... and you crushed him for a piece of land.”
He watched her approach. He didn’t back away. He seemed... curious.
“You’re smarter than I thought,” he murmured.
The cold response, the casual disdain, the absence of denial... that was what broke her.
She’d expected him to yell. To deny it. To punish her for her insolence. But he just watched her, as if she were entertainment.
The “proof” burned in her mind. The silhouette in the doorway. His face.
“You,” she hissed. “You were there. You watched me burn. You watched me...” Her voice failed, the pain of the memory too strong. “You did that. You ordered everything burned. And you left me there.”
He tilted his head. “And yet, here you are.”
The arrogance. The absolute calm in the face of an accusation of murder, of destruction...
The rage she’d been cultivating exploded. It was no longer cold. It was white fire.
“I’m going to kill you!”
She attacked him.
It wasn’t a calculated attack. It was the primal scream of a cornered animal.
She used her right hand, the good one. She struck him across the face. The sound of her palm hitting his cheek was a sharp crack that echoed through the room.
He didn’t even blink. The impact barely moved his head.
The sharp pain in her hand shocked her, but fury drove her on. She attacked him again, with both hands, hitting his chest, his shoulders. Useless blows against a granite wall.
“You destroyed me!” she screamed, tears of hatred streaming down her face. “You took everything from me!”
And then she used it. She used her left hand. The claw. The thing he had kissed. She raised it, the twisted fingers like an ugly weapon, and tried to scratch his face.
That’s when he moved.
He caught her. Not with anger. With lazy speed.
His hand wrapped around her left wrist in midair. His fingers were a steel trap. He squeezed. The pain in the fragile bones and scarred skin was so intense she screamed.
He caught her other wrist, the right one. He immobilized her.
He pushed her backward with relentless force until her back slammed against the Fazioli. The piano let out a low, dissonant thrum from the impact.
She was trapped. Her body pinned against the instrument, arms stretched wide, his hands crushing her wrists. She was crucified against her own music.
“Let me go!” She struggled, but it was useless. He was far too strong.
He leaned in. His face was inches from hers. In the dim light, she could see his eyes. They weren’t angry.
They were blazing.
He was aroused.
“All this hatred,” he whispered. His breath was hot against her cold face. “It’s magnificent. Louder than the Appassionata. I finally found it. The real music.”
“You’re a monster,” she choked, the pain in her wrists blinding.
“And you’re mine,” he said.
He didn’t kiss her. He took her.
He crushed his mouth against hers. It wasn’t a kiss. It was an act of conquest. His lips were hard, demanding. She kept her mouth closed, teeth clenched. He bit her lower lip. Hard.
She cried out in pain, and the moment her mouth opened, his tongue invaded.
It was a violation. He tasted her, explored her with brutal hunger. She could taste the metallic tang of her own blood where he had cut her.
She kicked him. She tried to hit his knee, his groin.
He absorbed the blow. He just pressed his hip against hers, pinning her legs, grinding his body against hers. She could feel the hardness of his cock against her stomach.
Disgust and panic suffocated her.
He released her right wrist. She thought about hitting him, but before she could act, his hand was in her hair. He grabbed a fistful at the nape of her neck and pulled her head back, exposing her throat.
“Fight me, Aurora,” he growled against her skin. “Show me the fire you think I started.”
His lips trailed down her neck, biting, sucking, leaving marks. She struggled, but he still held her left wrist—the claw—crushing it against the piano’s wood.
His other hand, the one not in her hair, went to the cashmere at her chest.
He tore it.
The sound of expensive fabric ripping was like a second slap. Cold air hit her bare skin.
“No! Please, don’t!”
“Please?” he mocked, his voice vibrating against her collarbone. “You didn’t beg when you accused me. Don’t beg now.”
He pushed her, and she fell. Not to the floor. He pushed her onto the piano bench.
He threw her over it, face down. So fast she had no time to react.
She was lying on the leather bench, face turned toward the keys, ass toward him. The humiliation was so absolute she stopped fighting, paralyzed by shock.
He didn’t wait. He wasn’t gentle.
He pulled the cashmere tunic up, exposing her back. He yanked her panties down with one hand, the gesture rough, impatient.
“You wanted my attention,” he said, his voice low and guttural. “You wanted to know what happens when you touch my things.”
She heard the sound of his belt.
And then he invaded her.
Dry. Hard.
A scream was torn from her throat. The pain was white and blinding. Like being split in two. There was nothing sensual about it. It was punishment. It was possession.
He grabbed her hips, fingers digging into her skin, and began to move.
Each thrust was a blow. An act of domination.
She was crying now. Silent, desperate sobs of pain and humiliation. She gripped the legs of the piano bench, the nails of her right hand digging into the leather.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
She couldn’t. She was face down.
He grabbed her hair again and wrenched her head to the side, forcing her to look at him over her shoulder.
His eyes were black with desire. A desire that had nothing to do with love. It was about power. It was about breaking.
“You…” she choked, each word an effort against his brutal rhythm. “You’re… an… animal…”
“And you like it,” he hissed.
And that was the worst part. The part that made her hate herself.
Her body. The damned traitor.
Beneath the pain, beneath the humiliation, the relentless friction, the adrenaline of fear and rage... something was happening. A sick tension, a heat that had nothing to do with passion, was building low in her belly.
She hated him. She hated him so much she wanted him dead. And her body was responding to him.
“No...” she moaned, the “no” as much for him as for her own betrayal.
“Yes,” he growled, sensing the change in her. He quickened his pace.
It was violent. It was desperate. It was her trying to escape and him pinning her down. It was the sound of his ragged breathing, the sound of her sobs, the sound of skin against skin.
He wasn't trying to give her pleasure. He was trying to possess her, mark her from the inside.
He was using her. Consuming her hatred and transforming it into his own pleasure.
The tension in her exploded. It hit at the exact moment he found a deeper, harder rhythm. An orgasm that felt like a scream. An involuntary release that made her arch against him, her body shattering into a million pieces.
She hated herself for it.
The sound of her surrender seemed to push him over the edge.
With a low, deep growl, he buried himself in her one last time, his body rigid. He spilled his heat inside her, a final act of possession.
For a moment, he remained still, his weight on her, his breath hot on her neck.
And then, he withdrew. Abruptly.
The cold air hit her sweaty, violated skin.
She collapsed on the bench, barely able to hold herself up, trembling violently.
She heard him. The sound of a zipper. The sound of him adjusting his clothes. So calm. So controlled.
She turned slowly, falling from the bench to the cold marble floor. She pulled the remains of her tunic to cover herself, a futile gesture.
She was on the floor. Destroyed.
He stood above her, perfectly composed, as if he had just finished a business meeting. The only evidence of what had happened was his chest rising and falling slightly, and the red mark on his cheek where she had struck him.
The monster she'd accused him of being.
He looked down at her, fallen at his feet. His face was calm, but his gray eyes were satisfied.
“Now you know,” he said, his voice low.
“What?” she whispered, her throat raw.
He crouched down, not to help her, but so she could see his face.
“That your hatred means nothing,” he said. “That your 'proof' means nothing. You can hate me all you want. You can scream. You can fight.”
He reached out and, with his thumb, wiped a tear of rage from her cheek. The caress was more violent than the rape.
“But in the end... your body knows who it belongs to. You're still mine.”
He stood up.
He walked out of the music room, leaving her alone in the darkness, on the cold marble, with the smell of him on her skin and the taste of her own blood in her mouth.
Act I was over. She had confronted the dragon. And the dragon had devoured her.