Chapter4

It was two in the morning, and the hallway of the Juilliard Pre-College building was dead silent.

I leaned against the wall as I walked out. The medical tape on my left index finger had already turned a sickly white, saturated with my own blood. As I rounded the corner by the lounge, a shadow blocked my path.

I stopped in my tracks.

Julian was leaning against a vending machine. He had obviously been waiting for a while.

"Still killing yourself over that piece of trash?" He looked me up and down, casually tossing a crisp new stack of sheet music onto the nearby table.

Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. The accompaniment score.

"This is the score I'm using for the preliminaries tomorrow. Chloe’s sense of rhythm is absolute garbage. She can't support me at all."

Julian kept one hand tucked into his pocket. "Look, since it's just the two of us right now, stop throwing a tantrum. Come back to the practice room with me, we’ll run through it twice, and you'll go straight on stage tomorrow."

I stared at the sheet music. Even now, at a time like this, he still had the audacity to treat me as his personal stepping stone—someone he could just summon at will.

"Are you out of your damn mind?" I coldly met his gaze. "I already told you. Find your own accompanist."

I shoved past his shoulder to leave, but Julian was fast. He lunged and clamped his hand violently around my left wrist.

"Aria! Are you seriously trying to piss me off?!" His grip was crushing, sending a sudden, agonizing jolt of pain shooting up my arm.

"Let go." I tried to yank my hand back.

Instead, he shoved me hard, pinning my entire body against the wall.

"How much longer are you going to keep up this act?!" he demanded, leaning in close. "You think I don't know? I’ve heard you in the practice rooms these past few days—you sound like you're sawing through wood! Those hands of yours haven't played in three years. They’re completely ruined! If you force yourself on stage, you’re just going to make yourself the laughingstock of the whole school!"

As he closed in inch by inch, the stifling scent of his cologne triggered something in me, pulling a brutal memory from my past life to the surface.

The basement. Him staring down at me, his foot pressing heavily onto my bleeding palm as he smiled. "For the rest of your life, you'll be nothing but a cripple."

My legs went weak, and thick beads of cold sweat broke out on my forehead.

Julian keenly sensed my loss of control and overwhelming weakness. A flicker of malicious triumph flashed in his eyes.

"That's a good girl, Aria," he said, softening his voice and letting his left hand slide up to grip my shoulder. "There's no need to be afraid. As long as you play the piano for me, my spotlight will always protect you. Without me, you wouldn't survive a second on that stage..."

Crash!

A brutal, dissonant piano chord suddenly exploded from the slightly ajar doors of the recital hall.

The fake, sickening sweetness on Julian’s face instantly froze, and he released my wrist as if burned. I slumped against the wall, gasping for air.

Adrian stood silhouetted in the light slipping through the doorway. He was wearing nothing but a thin black dress shirt, but the suffocating aura of dominance radiating from his eyes was ten times more terrifying than usual.

He walked straight toward us. When Julian saw who it was, his expression shifted immediately. At Juilliard, no one dared to cross Adrian—a volatile, borderline-psychotic genius who could flip at any moment.

"Adrian." Julian forced a polite smile. "Still practicing this late? Sorry for the noise, we were just sorting out a private matter..."

"Get out of my way." Adrian didn't even give Julian a passing glance.

Julian’s smile completely solidified on his face. "Excuse me? What did you just say?"

"I said, take your garbage accompaniment score and get out of my sight. Now."

Adrian stared coldly at Julian’s face before dropping his gaze to Julian's right hand—the same hand that had just grabbed me. "And don't ever use that half-crippled hand of yours to touch my violinist again. It's disgusting."

Julian stared daggers at Adrian. "Violinist?! You're making her your accompanist? Adrian, have you completely lost your mind?! She hasn't touched a violin in three years! She’s going to drag you down with her!"

"Accompanist?" Adrian tilted his head slightly. "Who told you she was the accompanist?"

Julian froze.

"For tomorrow's preliminaries, she is the lead. I am her supporting pianist."

Adrian raised a hand, pointing aggressively right at Julian's nose. "Listen to me very carefully. From this moment on, her notes, her perfect pitch, her everything—it all belongs to me. A half-crippled hack like you isn't even fit to carry her case."

The color drained from Julian’s face, turning a livid, sickly pale.

"Fine." Julian laughed, utterly consumed by rage. He pointed a finger at me. "You’ve really outdone yourself, Aria. I can't wait to see you up on that stage tomorrow, humiliating yourself trying to scrape together some pathetic, out-of-tune piece of garbage!"

He snatched his sheet music off the table and stormed off in a furious huff, without so much as a backward glance.

Dead silence returned to the hallway.

Adrian crouched down directly in front of me. "What, are you scared?" His voice mercilessly ripped right through my facade. "Because if you're going to stand on that stage tomorrow and shake like a pathetic loser the second he looks at you, then not only will I drop you right now, but I will personally smash your violin to pieces."

I bit down hard on the tip of my tongue.

"I'm not scared." I raised my head, meeting his gaze head-on, staring right into those violent, turbulent eyes. "He's the one who should be terrified."

Adrian stared at me in silence for five full seconds.

Suddenly, he reached out, tightly gripping my still-trembling right hand, and hauled me up from the floor.

"Then stand your ground," he commanded, pulling me closer. There was a manic, thrilling edge of excitement bleeding into his voice. "Go back and sleep for three hours. Tomorrow, even if your fingers bleed out on those steel strings, you are going to nail that final high-register slide in the Devil's Trill Sonata. If you dare embarrass me in front of him, I'll kill you myself."

I didn't struggle, letting his iron grip remain on my wrist. "Don't worry. Tomorrow, I'm playing it all the way through. I'm going to drag him right off his little pedestal."

I looked up toward the pitch-black night sky beyond the window. Eight hours left.

On the performance roster for the preliminaries, Julian’s slot was right before mine.

Which meant he would have to stay on stage and watch. He would have to witness firsthand exactly how I was going to use an infamously hellish piece of music to torch every last ounce of his pride to ash.

The only question was: could my throbbing fingertips actually survive fifteen relentless minutes of devil's staccato?