Chapter 28
The applause was a distant roar.
Aurora Vitali heard it as if she were underwater. A hollow sound, thunder she felt more in her feet—vibrating through the stage’s wooden floor—than in her ears.
She walked out of the darkness of the wings into the light.
The light was a white-hot ocean. Blinding, impersonal. It transformed the first rows into an indistinct mass of pale faces and black tuxedos. The air was thick with the smell of velvet dust heated by the stage lights and the collective perfume of two thousand wealthy people.
The applause faltered.
She knew why. The moment she stepped out of the shadow, they saw her.
Not the “guest soloist.” Not the reclusive legend Maximilian Volkov was unveiling.
They saw the monster.
The matte-sequined black dress drank the light, but her face… oh, her face. Dark hair loose. Lips a blood-red slash. And the scar, naked and raw under the unforgiving light, gleamed like an ugly medal.
The applause diminished, grew weaker, uncertain. People clapped out of obligation, but their eyes were fixed on the puckered skin of her left cheek.
She didn’t care. She wanted them looking. She wanted them to see.
She walked, each step a deliberate click of her stilettos on the waxed wooden floor. Click. Clack. The sound of a clock counting down to detonation.
She looked to the right. The press. Exactly as Henrik Sokolov had promised. They weren’t applauding. They were leaning forward, pens ready. Wolves waiting.
She looked at the first row. Henrik. His blue eyes found hers. He wasn’t smiling. His face was a mask of solemn encouragement. A look that said: Do it. Now.
She looked to the left, toward the darkness of the wings she’d emerged from.
He was there.
Maximilian Volkov. A tall, motionless silhouette against the red emergency light. He didn’t mingle with the technicians. He stood alone, arms crossed, watching. The Master. The Owner. The Target.
The cold kiss he’d given her still burned on her red lips. “Don’t let them forget who you are.”
Oh, I won’t, she thought.
She reached the Fazioli. The great black gleaming coffin.
She placed her right hand on the lid, feeling the vibration of the cold wood.
She sat. The leather bench was cold.
She looked at her hands. The right, pale, ready. The left, the claw, her weapon forged in pain.
She looked at Maestro Tavares.
The man was pale. He looked like he’d aged ten years since the rehearsal. Sweat poured down his face under the lights. He knew the music he was about to conduct. He knew the horror he was about to unleash. He glanced at Volkov in the wings—a prisoner eyeing his executioner—then back at Aurora.
The applause finally died.
The silence that fell over the Teatro Municipal was absolute. A vacuum. Two thousand people held their breath as one, waiting to see what Volkov’s aberration would do.
The silence before the carnage.
Aurora took a deep breath. The smell of dust and velvet. The smell of the Academy.
She closed her eyes.
“Leave no survivors.”
The video. The voice. Sokolov’s proof.
She opened her eyes. The hatred was ice-cold clarity.
She nodded to Tavares.
The maestro raised his trembling arms. The baton hovered in the air for an eternity.
And descended.
The sound that began was not music. It was a shiver.
The violins. A dozen first violins playing in the highest possible register, sul ponticello, a tremolo that wasn’t a note but the sound of glass being scraped, of nerves laid bare. The sound of Hein’s white torture room.
The audience stirred. Uncomfortable.
And then, the piano.
Aurora’s right hand. Alone.
Five notes. Clear, cold, crystalline. Volkov’s theme. The melody of arrogance. The melody of a man who buys whatever he wants.
It sounded beautiful and dead in the vast theater.
For a moment, the audience relaxed. Ah, they thought. Modern music. Strange, but controlled.
And then her left hand fell.
THUMP.
It wasn’t a chord. It was an attack. The claw, forged through months of pain, struck the three lowest octaves of the Fazioli. The sound wasn’t musical. It was percussive. The sound of the academy roof collapsing. The sound of her bone breaking.
The audience jumped as one. The woman in the front row, next to Sokolov, brought her hand to her chest.
The entire orchestra responded. The timpani, the double basses, the cellos. THUMP. THUMP.
The Melody of My Revenge had begun.
She was the narrator. She was telling them a story.
The music was her pain. The right hand played the memory of lost beauty—rapid, broken passages that recalled Liszt, but never resolved, always fracturing into dissonance.
The left hand was reality. It was the fire. It was the hatred. It was the relentless pounding of her rage.
She played. She was not a musician. She was a conduit for hatred. She could feel the orchestra's eyes on her, playing their parts with reluctant terror. They weren't making music; they were participating in an exorcism.
She looked at Volkov. His silhouette didn't move. He was absorbing it all. He was, she presumed, savoring the sound of his creation. His arrogance was as vast as the theater's darkness.
Enjoy it, she thought, her fingers flying. Enjoy the first act.
She played the development section. The battle. The orchestra became his cold, relentless rhythm, and the piano became the soul screaming against the bars. The music became a cacophony of beauty and terror.
She could feel the audience. They were in agony. This wasn't Beethoven's Ninth. This was a nightmare. They couldn't look away. It was horrifying, but it was... hypnotic.
They were trapped.
She could see the three giant screens suspended above the stage.
They were showing what they were supposed to. A dramatic close-up of Tavares's pale, sweating face. A close-up of the violin bows, moving like a single monster.
It was time.
She finished the development section. She reached the bridge. The moment she and Sokolov had timed.
The signal.
She needed the most furious passage. The crescendo before the climax. The passage that Volkov, in his arrogance, had helped her perfect in rehearsal.
“Your fire is chaotic. Give me precision.”
She would give him precision. The precision of a guillotine.
She looked at Tavares. His eyes widened. He knew what passage was coming. He raised the baton.
Aurora unleashed her left hand.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
The rhythm of fire. The rhythm of hell's heartbeat. The sound of pursuit.
She hammered the chords. The orchestra roared behind her. The trombones entered, a sound like metal being torn.
She looked up.
The screens.
They flickered. Once, twice. Blue.
Miguel.
The close-up of Tavares's face disappeared.
The close-up of the violins disappeared.
In their place, on three giant screens ten meters high, a document appeared.
A momentary silence fell over the audience. The music continued, the relentless soundtrack.
The people in the front rows... they could read.
It began as a whisper. A confused shhh.
Aurora kept playing, the left hand hammering, the right playing high notes of panic. Glass breaking. Glass breaking.
She saw. The press.
The men in suits. They were no longer leaning back. They were standing. They were pointing.
The whisper became a murmur. A sound like a thousand insects.
The audience. What were they seeing?
They were seeing a contract. Black letters on a white background, as large as a car.
COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE PURCHASE AND SALE CONTRACT
The murmur grew louder. People were turning to each other. What is this? Is this part of the performance? Is it modern art?
Aurora kept playing, louder, higher. She was the engine of revelation.
The screen changed.
A new image.
SELLER: The Estate of António Silveira. BUYER: Volkov Global Holdings S.A.
The name. Volkov's name. Their patron's name.
The murmur grew louder. People were now looking toward the wings, toward the VIP areas, searching for him.
The screen changed again.
PROPERTY: The land and remaining assets located at...
The address of the Vivaldi Academy.
Now people were gasping. The scandal.
And Aurora's music... it was there, weaving the soundtrack to his greed, the sound of tragedy.
The screen changed. The last and most important piece.
DATE OF FIRE: October 17, 2020. DATE OF SIGNATURE: October 24, 2020.
And below:
TOTAL TRANSACTION VALUE: R$ 500,000.00
The theater exploded.
It wasn't applause. It was a collective scream.
The businessmen, the bankers, his rivals from the dinner... they understood. They knew what that land was worth. Fifty million. A hundred million.
And Volkov had bought it for nothing, a week after it burned.
“Thief!” someone shouted. “Murderer!” screamed another.
The press was in a frenzy. Camera flashes exploded, capturing the screens.
Aurora kept playing. Her hatred was the soundtrack to their truth.
She looked at Sokolov.
Henrik was on his feet. His face was a mask of righteous shock and fury. He was pointing at the screens. He was shouting at the Senator beside him. He was playing the role of his life.
And she looked at the wings.
He was still there.
The silhouette.
He didn't move. He didn't run. He didn't shout.
He was... watching. Watching the chaos he had allowed. Watching his empire begin to burn.
His calm. His unfathomable calm.
It enraged Aurora more than any scream would have.
You won't react? she thought. You'll just watch?
No. Not this time.
It was time for the finale. The next phase.
She looked at Tavares. The man was white as a sheet, his baton trembling, but he was trapped. The music hadn't stopped.
Aurora took a deep breath.
She finished the crescendo passage.
She launched into the final section. The climax.
The moment of the video.
She looked at the screens.
The documents disappeared. The screens went black.
The audience, now a chaotic mass of shouts and confusion, fell silent for an instant, waiting.
And Sokolov's video began.