51. The Pianist #2
He’s shaking his head like he doesn’t want to hear it. “I didn’t know who you were until they brought you here, but you have been my whole world ever since. A fucking decade locked up in these walls and suddenly you waltz in, and the moment you began to play I knew that we were the same.”
“No, Baz, we’re not. Not like this—”
He stalks closer to me again and I’m stricken by how beautiful he is, his dark lashes framing molten irises that can’t hide the sincerity in his words. He presses his free palm to his chest, rubbing at his sternum, like his heart aches.
“I would have killed Jason for you,” he says, “I would have saved you from ever having that on your conscience. But you already took care of him. And then when Reece figured you out—I couldn’t let him tell anyone.
I couldn’t let him take you from me. I did that for you.
You don’t have to get your hands dirty. Let me do this for you. ”
He’s inches away, close enough I could reach up and wind my fingers in his hair, pull him down to kiss me. It’s the only way I know how to get him to stop.
“We both have this urge, don’t we?” His breath fans my lips and I see the hunger in his eyes, too. “We’re both terrible people. They would think we’re terrible. But I’m very good at keeping secrets and soon I will be free.”
I expect Mariane to wail, to chant her pleas, to beg him to let her go just this once.
This is his final offer, I realize. His proposition. If he does this, he is beholden to no one.
No one but me.
He won’t be locked away in these walls anymore. He has a vessel for his music. A muse he would kill for. Unlimited resources. All of it, dangling before him.
But if I say no, reject his offer, what then?
We can’t reverse time. We can’t go back to how things were even a couple hours ago.
He can’t go back to life in these walls.
I can’t go back to the same menial life in the city. I won’t.
My lips are dry. “You want us to live like this? Moving around in secret while you… You can’t—kill—and have it all. What if you get caught? Isn’t that the opposite of what you’ve taught me? Isn’t a full life out there what you want?”
“We can still sate our urges and have everything. All we need to do is get rid of them.”
Mariane gasps the moment Baz turns in their direction, her face draining of all color again.
And then Baz tells his parents everything. Every thought he’s had these last fifteen years, every damning thing they’ve done to seal their fate. I don’t want to hear. I can’t.
I think of Henri, wonder where he is.
I think of that first day, the shy boy who could barely meet my eyes.
Bastien said Henri was doomed to follow in his footsteps, such is the nature of this family and their curse. Every patriarch dying strange deaths. Succumbing to follies. Making fatal mistakes.
What will it be for Bastien?
Maybe his faked death at the pond tricked Fate and cashed in this doomed luck.
Henri would never raise a hand to his parents.
He wouldn’t taunt them while his mother weeps, while his father finally spits vile threats that will never come to fruition.
He wouldn’t tell them his plans to disembowel them while they’re still alive, just so they could feel how empty he felt.
He wouldn’t describe every single second of agony they’ll feel in just a few minutes, when that rope tightens around their necks and he has the honor of pulling it tight.
Maybe Henri will outrun this family’s bad luck.
And then Baz is wrapping my fingers around the handle of a sharpened kitchen knife, its steel blade glinting in the golden light, shocking me out of my thoughts. His pupils are the size of pin pricks, gleaming with anticipation, as he turns me toward Leo.
“Go on,” Bastien says. “I know you want to.”
The knife is weighty in my palm, the handle worn but snug in my fingers.
“You know you want to.”
I glance at the man who’s supposed to be a ghost. “He hasn’t… he hasn’t done anything to me.”
“But you know he’s thought about it. He’s been thinking about it this whole time, hasn’t he?
You walked into this house, a sacrifice.
He just thought he had the right to take you for himself.
He would have, eventually. You know it. He would have tried to take you from me.
The moment he saw you—I know he was thinking about how he wanted to defile you, corner you somewhere and see how long it takes you to fight back. ”
He wraps his fingers around mine, around the knife’s handle, pointing the tip directly over his father’s throat. Leo arches his neck back as far as he can.
His skin looks too paper thin. This isn’t the self-assured man who kept trying to get in my space.
This is when they start to get desperate. This is when it starts to sink in, that there is no way out.
“Now the only question is, how angry are you? How unforgivable are his actions?”
Leo is glaring at us. Real, tangible fear, in the exposed whites of his eyes, his chest heaving. Each movement, each breath, digging the tip of the knife against the fragile flesh of his neck.
He is afraid of us.
He is afraid of what I may decide to do. He is afraid of me.
Is he remembering our conversation only hours ago?
Why don’t I escort you back?
What would he have done if I said ‘yes’? What would have happened to me in this house if Baz was not here to scare him off?
Perhaps Leo knew all along he would get what’s coming to him. Maybe he knew eventually Bastien would snap.
It would be so easy to just push the blade forward, slice his carotid right open. I know how easy it is to take a life. I’ve done it before. There’s power in it, the sort of power you can get addicted to.
“No.” I step back.
Bastien, arms wrapped around me from behind, nuzzles his face into the crook of my neck again. He exhales a groan, a delighted sound, rumbling deep in his chest. “Feeling nice today?”
“No,” I say again, turning in his arms.
Baz is still grinning. He’s enjoying this, eyelids heavy with the pleasure of their fear.
I hold the knife out to him. “He’s not worth it.”
Jason follows me everywhere. Crossing that threshold into murder, I did not know how the ghost of your victim, however accidental, would become your shadow.
I am haunted enough. I do not need more blood on my hands.
“Don’t worry,” Bastien says. “I’ll do this for you.”
He knew I wouldn’t have the spine for this. He knew the honor would fall to him.
Another crime I could stop.
“You know, Mallary’s kindness is rubbing off on me, I think.” The knife slips through his fingers, clattering to the floor. “I’ll give each of you a choice.”
Both of the Beauchenes deflate in place once the blade is out of his hands.
The doors crash open again.
Desmond comes through, eyeing us warily, his light hair is still mostly smoothed back, only a few strands hanging in his face. He still wears the black trousers from his suit, though his jacket is missing. He motions somebody in, and then two other men are carrying in a huge wooden crate.
And the crate is hissing.
“Des—!” Leo’s eyes go wide. He struggles against the ties around his wrists.
“No, don’t look at him.” Baz’s voice thunders through the empty ballroom. “Look at me.”
Leo’s breathing quickens as his son steps closer.
“He won’t help you now. I took one out of your book—I gave him an ultimatum. You should be proud, though, it wasn’t hard. Your entire staff can be bought, it seems.”
Leo winces. “Hold on. Let’s just talk about this—”
“Doesn’t it hurt, knowing you have no one left to save you?
” Baz taunts, bending at the waist so they’re eye to eye.
“You know, I wasn’t going to do anything tonight, until you threatened her.
I was content to let the music be the big event and give you one more chance.
You ruined the night. Des here sent all the guests home. ”
A deep red stains Leo’s teeth, his dried blood flaking on his chin. He glares at Baz with an absolute loathing.
“And in your arrogance, you assumed you were safe. All this time,” Baz says. “You were never safe in this house with me.”
Mariane can’t hold back the sob that wracks through her. “Arnie, we didn’t—”
“Don’t,” he cuts her off, whirling in her direction. “Years of silence, and now you say that name?”
More tears streak down her face, but she says nothing, trying to blink them away, to hide inside of herself.
“You can’t do this,” Leo begins rambling. “There are killswitches in our accounts, you’ll be locked out, you won’t get any of the money—Henri will lose his inheritance, you’ll lose the house, the estate, you’ll go to prison—”