Chapter 16: Chapter 16

hapter 16 Finally, Ariana set down her cutlery with deliberate precision and picked up her phone. She typed quickly and turned the screen toward him “Why do you keep staring at me like that?”

Caught in his scrutiny, Luigi seemed to return from somewhere distant. Every gesture she made–the particular way she tilted her head, how she held her fork, even how she dabbed her napkin at the corner of her mouth beneath the mask–intensified his growing certainty.

“You remind me of someone I lost,” he said, his voice barely audible Rather than typing, she gestured to a passing server for paper. When it arrived, she scrawled a single word Who?”

Luigi’s fingers tightened around his water glass until his knuckles went white. His voice, when it finally came, held a rawness she’d never heard before.

“My wife.”

Something in his expression–a naked vulnerability utterly foreign to the man she had known–seemed to break open a floodgate.

Without prompting, words began pouring out of him.

“I never told her I loved her,” he confessed, eyes fixed on the space just past her shoulder. “Not once, not properly. I had this...

this stupid idea that saying it would give her power over me. Now I’d give everything I own just to say it to her once.”

Ariana remained perfectly still, pen hovering over paper, as he continued speaking to her–or perhaps to the ghost he saw superimposed over her presence.

“She died thinking I hated her. Because of my pride and other people’s manipulation, I made choices that “his voice cracked, “that led directly to her death. There was a fire that should never have happened. That I helped create.”

His hands trembled slightly as he reached for his water.

“Every night, I have the same nightmare. I’m always able to reach her in the flames, but the moment I think we’re safe, she deliberately pulls away and walks back into the fire. She chooses death over me, and I can’t blame her.”

He laughed bitterly. “I’ve become the person I used to mock–desperate enough to consult psychics, 1723 The Black Sawan’s Linal Revenge Pinuell The 11.5%

Chapter 16:

mediums, even flew to a monastery in Tibet. They all tell me the same thing: her spirit refuses contact. She won’t forgive me.”

The composure that had defined Luigi Maggiore in boardrooms and business journals disintegrated completely. The man who had built his reputation on cold calculation covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking with silent, raw grief.

Had Ariana been merely a sympathetic stranger, she might have been moved by this display of apparent remorse. She might have offered comfort, reassurance, absolution.

But she knew exactly what he had conveniently omitted from his narrative–the deliberate cruelty, the ninety–eight humiliations, the calculated revenge for a crime she hadn’t committed. His tears now seemed like too little, too late–performance art for his own benefit rather than genuine repentance.

The Ariana who had loved him had died in that fire, just as he believed. The woman sitting across from him now felt nothing beyond mild irritation at being trapped in this unexpected confession.

Her continued silence eventually registered through his emotional breakdown. He quickly wiped his eyes, embarrassment replacing vulnerability as the mask of the businessman slid back into place.

“I apologize,” he said stiffly. “That was completely inappropriate. Please, let me walk you back.”

As they exited the restaurant into the hotel’s circular driveway, disaster struck without warning.

A car swerved wildly toward the valet stand where they stood, its high beams momentarily blinding them both.

“Look out!” Luigi shouted.

In a split–second decision, he shoved her forcefully sideways, the momentum sending her sprawling across the pavement as the vehicle struck him instead.

Her mask dislodged on impact, skidding across the concrete with a hollow clatter.

Disoriented and scraped, she looked up just in time to see Luigi thrown several feet by the impact, his body crumpling against a decorative planter.

Pandemonium erupted instantly–screaming guests, running valets, the sharp wail of car alarms.

But amid the chaos, Luigi’s focus remained singular. Despite the blood seeping through his shirt, his wide eyes fixed on her now–exposed face with an expression of pure disbelief.

“Ariana?” he whispered, the name escaping like a prayer.

In the hospital corridor thirty minutes later, Luigi refused to release her hand even as they wheeled him toward emergency surgery. Blood soaked through pressure bandages, his vitals dropping dangerously.

The thi but he seemed oblivious to his physical condition.

“Don’t disappear,” he kept murmuring his grip painfully tight despite his weakening state. “Please. If this is another dream, F’ll let them hit me again if it means I get to see you.”

For him, the impossibile resurrection of the woman he had mourned outweighed his multiple fractures. and internal bleeding. His fingers communicated what drugs and shock prevented him from articulating–abject terror that if he let go, she would vanish like morning mist.

“Sir, you need to release her,” a nurse insisted. “We need to get you into surgery now.”

“Promise you’ll be here,” he pleaded, his eyes locked on Ariana’s face with desperate intensity. “Swear you won’t disappear again.”

But even Luigi’s legendary determination couldn’t overcome severe blood loss and pre–surgical sedation. As the medications took hold outside the operating room, his fingers finally slackened their death grip.

Ariana massaged her reddened wrist, watching impassively as the surgical doors swung closed between them. This complication was the last thing she needed–her carefully constructed new life now threatened by an unwanted resurrection.

She glanced toward the exit, calculating how quickly she could pack her belongings at the hotel and book a flight back to London. Her obligations to the company were secondary to maintaining the freedom she had sacrificed so much to obtain.

Later that evening, while the rest of the company excitedly departed for a night tour of Boston’s historic waterfront, Ariana declined with a vague gesture toward her throat.

As a former resident who had spent years intimately familiar with every cobblestone and hidden garden, she had no desire to revisit places now tainted with memories of a man who had used her love as a weapon against her.

After bidding her colleagues goodnight, she settled into the town car headed back to their hotel, eager for the solitude of her room and a long, hot shower to wash away the day’s tension.

The universe, however, seemed determined to stress–test her resolve.

As she stepped from the vehicle at the hotel’s entrance, she nearly collided with a small group of men in expensive suits exiting the lobby–at their center, Luigi Maggiore himself, apparently concluding some business dinner.

Her instinct was immediate flight, but before she could retreat, his voice carried across the short distance: “Wait please.

The unexpected “please” almost made her turn, but panic quickly overrode her surprise. She fumbled frantically in her bag, locating and securing her performance mask before reluctantly facing him.

Chapter 16 By then, Luigi had dismissed his associates with a curt nod and approached her directly, studying her with that penetrating gaze she remembered too well.

“You’re off–duty now,” he observed, gesturing to her casual attire of jeans and an oversized sweater. “Why are you still hiding behind that?”

Ariana realized evasion was no longer possible, but she refused to risk him recognizing her voice. Instead, she pointed to her throat and made a negative gesture that any dancer would recognize as “vocal rest.”

Pulling out her phone, she quickly typed: “Doctor’s orders. Strained vocal cords.”

Luigi nodded with unexpected understanding. “Common in your profession, I imagine. Fifth position is murder on the ankles, too, isn’t it? Especially for principals who spend so much time en pointe.”

The casual reference to ballet terminology surprised her–she had spent countless evenings rambling about dance technique while he half–listened, never expecting him to retain such specific knowledge.

Before she could react, he continued with an apologetic tone she’d rarely heard from him: “I behaved inappropriately earlier. Let me make it up to you with dinner?”

He gestured toward the hotel’s restaurant. “You must be starving after that performance. All that glycogen depletion needs addressing”

Again, the specific physiological reference to a dancer’s nutrition needs caught her off guard. She had lectured him about proper post–performance refueling dozens of times, usually while he scrolled through his phone.

She hesitated, mentally calculating the risks of extended exposure versus the suspicion an outright refusal might create.

As if to undermine her resolve, her traitorous stomach growled audibly.

She pressed a hand against her abdomen, unable to hide the flush creeping up her neck.

Luigi’s lips curved into a genuine smile–one she hadn’t seen directed at her in years. “I promise not to interrogate you,” he said, a warmth in his voice that seemed alien compared to the cold, calculating man she had fled. “We can stay right here in the hotel.

No pressure.”

This polite, considerate approach was so at odds with the arrogant, entitled Luigi she remembered that she almost laughed at the irony. Was this the same man who had orchestrated ninety–eight humiliations? Who had ordered his friends to trap her in a burning building? His newfound courtesy seemed like the cruelest joke of all Recognizing that continued refusal would only intensify his interest, Ariana reluctantly nodded her greement. The sooner she could get through this meal, the sooner she could escape.

Chapter 16 Ther The restaurant’s subdued lighting created an intimate atmosphere that did nothing to ease her discomfort.

Despite claiming to be hungry himself, Luigi merely picked at his salmon, Instead attentively ensuring her water glass remained filled and even cutting her steak into precise, manageable pieces when he noticed her struggling to maintain her mask while eating.

“The fifth movement of your variation tonight,” he commented casually as she ate, “that arabesque penchée into the fouetté sequence–that was extraordinary. Most dancers telegraph that transition, but you made it seem like water flowing.”

Ariana nearly choked on her water. She had choreographed that transition sequence herself, adapting a phrase she had once practiced endlessly in their apartment while he supposedly worked on his laptop. She’d never imagined he was actually watching, much less that he would remember it a year later with such specificity.

single–minded She kept her gaze firmly fixed on her plate, methodically working through her meal with single minded focus. The sooner she finished, the sooner she could escape this surreal dinner with the ghost of a relationship that had never truly existed.

Chapter 17 Chapter 17