Chapter 19
Hesitation was a poison.
It had infiltrated her, slowly and methodically, since the night of the duet. Each day was a battle fought in the silence of her mind.
Henrik Sokolov’s explanation should have been the antidote. He had taken the confusing pieces—Volkov’s scars, his nightmare—and forced them into the narrative of Fact A.
He’s an incompetent arsonist. A coward who burned himself fleeing his own crime.
It made sense. It was logical. The hatred should have returned, pure and simple.
But logic was at war with memory.
Logic couldn’t explain the feel of his arm beside hers on the piano bench.
Logic couldn’t explain how their rhythms—his cold control and her chaotic passion—had fused into something…
perfect. Logic couldn’t erase the memory of that almost-kiss, that moment of absolute silence when he saw her, not as property, but as an equal.
She was paralyzed.
Volkov, for his part, seemed to be in a similar state of…
distance. Since the duet, he had withdrawn.
The intimate cruelty of his training had become clinical again.
He no longer watched Hein’s torture sessions.
He no longer sat at the piano with her. He gave his orders through the Shadow or through notes left on the Fazioli.
“Your arpeggio in F minor is weak. Practice.”
He was hiding. Just as afraid of that connection as she was.
That distance should have strengthened her, but it only confused her more. Sokolov’s plan—the Gala, the public exposure—suddenly seemed crude. It was an ambush, and she was no longer a willing pawn in his cause. She was a conspirator riddled with doubt.
She was in the music room, sitting in front of the Fazioli, but not playing. The Melody of My Vengeance had stalled. How could she write the climax when she was no longer sure who the villain was?
She was about to reconsider everything.
She thought about the phone. Maybe she should call Sokolov. Tell him she was out. That he should find another way to ruin his rival. She couldn’t be the weapon. She couldn’t be the bait.
She couldn’t destroy the only man who understood her music.
She rose from the bench. The decision left her feeling weak, like a traitor to her own pain, but also… relieved. She wouldn’t do it. She couldn’t.
That’s when she heard it.
A buzzing. Faint, coming from her room.
The phone.
Her heart sank. Sokolov. He must have sensed her hesitation. He was calling to pressure her.
She walked slowly, as if toward her own execution. She went to the bathroom. The ritual. The door. The fan.
She pulled out the box of tampons. The phone was there, vibrating like an irritating insect.
It wasn’t a call. It was a message.
She opened it.
I HAVE IT. THE FINAL PROOF. LOOK NOW.
Below the message, a loading icon. A media file.
The blood drained from Aurora’s face. Proof. Sokolov was too confident. His logic hadn’t been enough to convince her; now he was sending… what? More documents? Another bank statement?
The file finished downloading. It was a video clip. A “play” icon pulsed in the center of the screen.
She stared at that icon for a full minute.
Don’t press it.
The voice in her head was a whisper. If you press it, there’s no going back. The comfortable doubt you have now will disappear.
But you need to know.
The other voice. The voice of the victim. The voice of the girl who burned.
She needed to. The hesitation was worse torture than Hein’s. She needed certainty. One way or another.
Her hands, the good one and the crippled one, trembled. She held the phone in her right hand and pressed “play” with her thumb.
The small screen filled with darkness.
Green. Digital letters in the upper corner: EAST WING SECURITY - 2020-10-17 22:04:15
The date. The night.
The quality was terrible. Grainy. It looked like it had been filmed from a security camera in a building across the street, maybe from the roof. The street was visible, wet from recent rain, along with the facade of the Vivaldi Academy.
Her academy.
Her heart stopped.
22:04:15. She was in there. She was in the Main Hall, playing Liszt, minutes before…
In the video, a car stopped. A black sedan. A car she knew all too well.
A man got out.
He was too far away for her to see his face. But the silhouette…
Aurora gasped, dropping the phone. It hit the marble sink with a clack.
She grabbed it.
The silhouette. It was him. Tall. Broad shoulders. The way he moved, with that predatory economy of motion. The silhouette burned into her memory.
He didn't enter the academy. He stood beside the car, in the dark, staring at the building.
He raised a phone to his ear.
In the video, the building was still dark. No fire.
The audio was almost nonexistent. Just the hum of distant traffic.
The man in the video spoke into the phone. He gestured toward the building.
And then, the audio changed.
It became… clear. As if someone had placed a microphone on him. It was obviously dubbed, tampered with, but Aurora, in her panic, in her desperate need for answers, didn't notice.
She heard the voice.
It wasn't exactly Volkov's voice. It was deeper, distorted. But it had his rhythm. The cadence of his commands.
“…doesn't matter if old Silveira is inside. Just do it.”
A hiss.
Aurora brought her hand to her mouth, her fingers (the good ones) pressing against her lips to stifle a cry.
The man in the video looked up, toward the windows of the Main Hall. Where she had been.
And then, his voice came again. Clear. Cold.
“Yes, it's done. Begin.”
In the video, a small orange light flickered in a ground-floor window. The beginning.
The voice on the phone continued.
“Burn it all.”
Aurora closed her eyes. The word. The word from his nightmare. Fire.
She opened her eyes. The man in the video laughed. A short, distorted, cold sound.
“Leave no survivors. I want the ground cleared by dawn.”
The air.
There was no air in the bathroom.
Aurora couldn't breathe.
Leave no survivors.
She was a survivor.
He hadn't left her there by accident. He hadn't “failed” to save her.
He had tried to kill her.
She was unfinished business.
In the video, the man hung up the phone, got into the black sedan, and drove away, just as flames began licking up the side of the building.
The video went black.
Silence.
The only sounds in the bathroom were the hum of the fan and Aurora Vitali vomiting into the immaculate black marble sink.
She vomited until her stomach was empty, and then she vomited bile. It was a violent, full-body convulsion.
Everything. Every moment of doubt. Every second of confusion. It was all a lie.
The duet? A manipulation. A sick way to toy with his victim.
The almost-kiss? A farce.
The nightmare? It wasn't terror. It was guilt. Guilt for not finishing the job.
His scars? Sokolov's explanation was right. A coward who got caught in his own inferno and blamed the world for it.
The training? The obsession?
The final horror settled in. He wasn't “fixing” her because she was a reflection of him.
He was fixing her, keeping her close, like a killer who keeps a trophy from his kills.
She was the survivor he'd failed to kill.
And his obsession was keeping her in a cage, where she couldn't tell anyone what she'd seen.
But I didn't see anything, she thought, her mind racing. I didn't see him.
No. But he didn't know that. He thought she might have seen. So he kept her close, under the pretense of “art,” to control her.
Leave no survivors.
The hatred that returned wasn't the hot flame from before. It wasn't the calculating ice of her composition.
It was a vacuum. A black hole. It was the cold, absolute certainty of death.
She wasn’t just going to expose him. She wasn’t just going to ruin him.
She wanted him to suffer. She wanted him to burn, just as he had wanted her dead.
Her hands, which had been shaking violently, suddenly stopped.
She went perfectly still.
She washed her face. She cleaned the sink. With terrifying calm, she dried the phone.
The hatred wasn’t making her tremble. It was giving her focus.
She looked at her left hand. The hand Hein had tortured and forged. The hand she would use to play her music.
The Gala. The Gala was no longer just revenge. It was a trap.
She picked up the phone. She typed a message to Sokolov.
I saw it.
The response was instant.
Now do you understand the monster you’re dealing with?
Yes. she typed.
The plan. Are you in? No more hesitation?
Aurora looked at her own reflection in the dark bathroom mirror. The pale face. The wide eyes—not from fear, but from terrible clarity. And the scar, the mark he had failed to turn to ash.
She typed.
I’ll talk to him tomorrow. I’ll convince him. I’ll beg to be on that stage.
That’s my girl. Just get him to agree. I’ll take care of the rest.
She turned off the phone. She put it away. Not hiding it in fear. She stowed it with the precision of a soldier cleaning her weapon after confirming her target.
She turned off the fan. She unlocked the door.
She walked out of the bathroom.
She didn’t go to her bedroom. She didn’t go to hide.
She walked barefoot across the cold marble, through the darkness. She entered the music room.
She sat at the Fazioli.
She raised her hands. Perfectly steady.
She began to play her Melody of My Revenge.
There was no more confusion. No more hesitation.
The music pouring from the piano was no longer about pain or confusion. It was no longer a duet.
It was a monologue.
It was the sound of a verdict being read. It was the sound of nails being hammered into a coffin. It was the darkest, ugliest, most powerful music she had ever played.
She knew exactly how it ended now. It ended with fire.