The bruises on my hips were fading. I pressed my fingers into them in the dark—the four-point grip where his hands had held me open, held me still—and the pain was barely there anymore. I pressed harder, trying to bring them back, trying to recreate the sensation of his fingers digging into muscle and bone while he drove into me with a desperation that made us both more like animals than humans.
It didn't work. The marks were healing whether I wanted them to or not.
And I hated it. Hated that my body was erasing him while my mind couldn't stop replaying him. The weight of him over me. The sound he made against my throat when he came. The way he'd press his forehead to mine afterward, breathing hard, his pulse hammering against my palm where I held his jaw, and the whole world would narrow to the two of us, his body still inside mine, neither of us willing to be the first to let go.
I wanted more of that. Wanted it so badly my teeth ached.
Instead, I had an empty apartment and a couch that smelled like nothing and four fading bruises that proved he'd been real.
On the third day, he finally texted me.
I'm working on something. Just go about life as usual. If you don't, you just look more suspicious.
I didn't respond.
He called on the fourth. I let it ring. Not because I was angry, although I was, but because I didn't trust what would come out of my mouth if I answered. And the things building in my chest were the kind you couldn't unsay.
So instead, I went to work, as he'd told me to do.
I arrived early. My cane tapped its familiar cadence against the marble, the sound bouncing back to me in the empty restaurant. The espresso machine hissed. Silverware clinked as the waitstaff set the tables. Geoffrey's loafers squeaked somewhere near the host stand.
Normal sounds. Normal rhythms.
But underneath, the architecture of conversation had changed.
The back booths, which used to hum with low-frequency Russian at a volume I could parse from the piano if I tilted my head at the right angle—those conversations were gone. Now being held, I assumed, behind the closed office door or dropped to registers so low they dissolved into the ambient noise before reaching me.
They were being careful around me.
I played my first set on autopilot. The songs were wallpaper-thin and undemanding, the kind of music that let the room forget I existed. My hands knew the notes without consulting my brain, leaving the rest of me free to gather what was left to gather.
Which wasn't much.
I only heard Viktor's voice once. It was muffled, but I could hear him well enough to know he still spoke in that careful, measured cadence that stripped his authority down to something servile.
Which meant his boss was still here.
A moment later, I knew he'd entered the main dining room where I played. I tracked him by the pipe tobacco. The scent preceded him through the dining room like a slow-moving weather front, rich and sweet with the cherry undertone I'd logged alongside his deviated septum whistle and his left-heavy gait. He'd claimed the corner booth as his own, and during the rest of my sets, I felt his attention, studying me while I played the way I studied the room while I listened.
I finished Satie and moved into Ravel. More texture, more movement, enough harmonic complexity to justify the slight tilt of my head as I leaned into the upper register.
But I wasn't leaning into the register.
I was angling my right ear toward the bar, where someone had been standing for twelve minutes without ordering a drink or speaking to anyone.
He breathed through his mouth. Light, deliberate pulls. His shoes were leather, hard-soled, with a slight scuff on the left heel I'd been tracking since he'd crossed the dining room. He shifted his weight every ninety seconds, always with the same creak of the bar stool.
I felt him approach during the bridge of the Ravel. His footsteps were unhurried, casual, the walk of a man who wanted to seem like he was just wandering toward the restroom.
He stopped at the edge of the platform, and now I could smell his cologne. It was strong and cheap and didn't quite cover the slight scent of body odor.
"You play beautifully."
His English was accented but precise.
I finished the phrase before I responded. Let the notes settle. Then turned my face toward his voice with the composure I'd perfected for every man who'd ever leaned against this piano and assumed the blind girl was happy to chat.
"Thank you." The smile. The one Geoffrey got. The one Viktor got. The vapid, innocent curve of lips that saidI'm harmless, I'm grateful, I'm just the pianist.
