Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters Book 1)

by Lana Sky

  “I knew you had an interesting rap sheet, Vialle,” Van Hallen admits, “but getting on Stacatto’s shit list within a week is quite the feat to manage.”

  “I’ll expect my award in the mail,” I toss back.

  This time, Van Hallen doesn’t parry with a jab of his own. “Look...if your information is credible, it’s probably best if you contact me again through my direct number. If what you’re saying is true about the girls...then I think any prosecutor worth the paper his license is printed on would overlook a few murky details if a rogue detective launched his own counter investigation.”

  I don’t say anything. It’s his neck on the line, but the bastard seems eager to put it there just to nail Stacatto to the wall. Heroes. Or maybe it’s just plain, old stupidity.

  “Memorize this number,” he says, spouting off a round of digits. “Call it only when you have something tangible I can work with.”

  He hangs up, and I return to the bar counter and toss the phone to Arno. He catches it with a wary look—though if he overheard anything, he’s smart enough not to admit it out loud.

  “Mack won’t be up for a while,” he says, tucking the phone into his pocket. “The fucker went heavy on the drink...” He cracks a tired smile that almost reaches his eyes. “You must have showed him up good.”

  I feel a matching grin tug on the corners of my mouth for a second. “Just like old times.”

  I leave him there and head for the garage. I don’t know why I take my time mounting each step, my eyes on the door to the apartment. I can almost taste her beyond it. Nervous. Anxious. The little bitch probably thinks that Arno is right at my damn heels, and a part of me takes pleasure in that. If thunder didn’t choose that moment to rumble in the distance, I would have gone back to the bar and gotten the bastard just to prove...

  What? That her little pleas didn’t matter? That she didn’t matter? I could turn her over in a second and still fucking sleep at night.

  When I finally get the front door open, I don’t find her in the living room or the kitchen. For a second I entertain the notion that the little bitch wised up and ran, but I catch her scent lingering just beyond the doorway to the bedroom, and I find her seated on the edge of the mattress.

  Blank. Her expression registers nothing. She’s the same creature she was the night Arno’s man first brought her in. Empty. Distant. She’s ready for whatever I throw at her—and it wouldn’t fucking faze her.

  “Arno’s waiting downstairs,” I tell her as I enter the room. With one hand, I reach for her wrist, gripping her so tightly that I feel the bone underneath. “Come—”

  She waits until I drag her to her feet before she lashes out. Nails. Teeth. Hands. Feet. The little bitch comes to life kicking and screaming. “No!” Her wounded hand lands a blow across my cheek, and I taste her blood. She ripped the cut open again, but the pain doesn’t even seem to faze her. When I drag her closer, pinning her arms to her sides, I find terror in her eyes, but the fear isn’t directed at me. Oh no. The little bitch is afraid of herself. She doesn’t know why she’s fighting. Why she’s angry at the thought of me turning her over like a piece of meat. She would have never fought him like this, and it’s that realization that makes me shove her back so hard she lands face up on the mattress.

  “Stop.”

  She lies there, her teeth bared, her hair streaking the dark comforter like a shadow. Her face stands out in stark contrast, displaying a real, true emotion for once. Hatred—only the dumb bitch isn’t smart enough to direct it at me.

  She hates herself.

  “I’m not going to give you to him,” I say, flinging the words at her like punches.

  Her chest heaves. She sighs. She’s...relieved. Her eyes shut against the admission, but not before I catch sight of it. Stacatto’s little whore only has enough room in her bed for one monster, apparently. Realizing that pisses her off—as much as a little princess can be pissed off. Her teeth sink into her lower lip, and she bites down until it turns red.

  “Unless you want me to change my mind?” I add, but it’s a vicious taunt, and she winces as if I’d slapped her.

  Her mouth twitches anyway. Yes. She wants to say it. She wants to don her emotionless armor and take every evil thing dished out at her like a good, caged songbird. But she can’t. Her newfound will is too damn strong, even for her to resist.

  “N-No,” she croaks, wrenching her eyes open to stare me down. “No one else.” She drags herself upright, raising her freshly bloody palm as if she’s not quite sure why. “No one else...”

  I don’t move. That’s a promise that I won’t make—not to a bitch with another man’s name on her chest. Not to her.

  Her fingers flutter, dripping blood onto the bedspread, but she can’t seem to pull the hand back. Maybe she couldn’t bear to be used, even to piss off Stacatto. Deep down, maybe the little bitch didn’t want to die either. It’s a grim realization she can’t force herself to face, and I’m not sure what course of action she’ll take when a knock rattles the front door.

  My eyes cut to her. Cut through her. “Stay here.”

  She stiffens when I enter the hall again. I move slowly. Cautiously. My fingers flex, and I almost wish that I’d taken her knife. My hands have taken enough of a beating over the past few days.

  “Who is it?”

  The only response is another quiet knock. I shift my stance as I pull the door open, prepared to shove anyone right down the fucking staircase before they can make a move. I see a shadow. A hulking figure. Blue eyes.

  “Shit.” I pull back at the last second and brace my open palm against the nearest wall. “Espi?”

  The kid doesn’t acknowledge me with more than a flick of his eyes and a grunt. “She here?”

  She? Something tugs at the back of my mind. Her. She’s spoken to him, and who knew what the fuck she’d really told him.

  “She isn’t—”

  “Is she here or not?” Espi pushes his way past me, muscling through the door, dragging something behind him. It’s a case, oddly shaped. My mind is slow to place it as he pulls it into the living room, scanning the corners for Stacatto’s woman.

  “Danny? Danny, are you here?”

  When there’s no answer right away, Espi glares at me and seems about ready to hit me with whatever the fuck he has when she finally creeps to the doorway.

  “H...Hey.” She smiles, but her bruised lips undermine the expression. She does her best to move without wincing as she enters the hallway, and I know why. She’s suppressing every ounce of pain, humiliation, and abuse...for him.

  I can’t tell if Espi can see through the bullshit or if he chooses to believe the illusion instead. “I brought you something,” he grunts, manipulating the case so that she can see it.

  When she does, she stops moving. Her eyes widen. They fill—flood. Whatever has been done to her, Espi’s magic case is enough to erase it long enough for her to stagger forward and brush the length of it with a trembling finger. Without a word, he sets the case onto the floor and undoes the latches before flicking it open.

  I don’t know what I expect to find inside it. Gold? Money? Dope? Besides pussy, those were the things that seemed to matter wherever you looked. Most men—let alone most people—wouldn’t be brought to tears by the sight of a wooden instrument and her own words haunt me. Cello.

  She glances up at Espi, shaking her head. “How...how, why—”

  “I got it from a friend,” he says, gently cutting over her.

  Speechless, she caresses the body of the instrument like it’s glass. Like it’s the mother-fucking holy grail. For a second, I know she’s forgotten all about Vincent Stacatto, Arno, Mack...Dante Vialle. We’re just dust on her periphery, swept away by her one true passion. Right then, I understand why her precious Vinny was willing to kill her family as punishment for pursuing her dreams. Why he made her play while he killed. Why he held her captive for five years and forced her to bear his ring.

  He knew what I know now: not
hing in the world would ever matter to her as much as this.

  She would never look at another man the way she looked at a fucking piece of wood.

  It was the kind of knowledge that might drive some jealous fuck stupid enough to fall in love with her...insane.

  The first time I ever saw a cello being played, I froze in my tracks and stared. What an ugly instrument. It wasn’t beautiful and elegant like a harp or shiny like a flute. It was huge and ungainly, manipulated with a stick held at an awkward angle. When the cellist began to saw at the strings, I’d expected some harsh sound, like the kind made when you tugged on a taut rubber band.

  Instead...music poured out, more beautiful than anything I had ever heard. Bach, read the title of the booklet the player read from. I knew then that I would do whatever it took to master that big, hulking piece of wood. I would make it sing for me.

  The one Espi brought me is old. Scratches scar the body of the frame, and the bow is made of cheap fiberglass and plastic rather than the one of Pernambuco wood Vinny gave me. Touching them both, however, is like reconnecting with an old friend. I can’t stop myself from easing it from the case, holding the familiar weight of it balanced between both hands. Before I know it, I’m sitting on the end of the couch, the bow is in my hand, and...

  I play. I breathe. I feel. I’m Daniela again, and for as long as I manipulate the strings fear cannot touch me. The room fades. The pain dissipates.

  I’m whole again.

  The notes come before I can even register the song being played, not that it really matters. I let myself play, and I know deep in my heart that it could be for the last time.

  And...

  It isn’t enough. For the first time, the motion of my hands and the sweet melody they create doesn’t take me away—something keeps me tethered to this couch and this floor. Someone. I open my eyes and find him watching me, only the devil isn’t impressed by my song. He watches me try to fly, and he yanks me back down by my already broken wings. I’m anchored to him, no matter how hard I try to resist.

  My fingers move faster in defiance. My movements are stronger. I can barely hear the song, but I know that I’m playing better than I ever have in my life—and on an inferior instrument than the many Vinny supplied me with—but...it still isn’t enough.

  Lucifer keeps me here. He won’t let me go. Tears spill from my eyes, sliding down my cheeks and mingling with the feel of the tuning pegs against my neck, but the devil doesn’t give a damn. He watches me drown. He waits for the very moment that I realize I’m stuck, and then he storms out of the room and slams the door to the apartment in his wake.

  “Damn.” The artist’s voice fills the space the final note of music leaves behind, and I glance over to find him crouched down beside me, shaking his head. “Damn, Pyro. You definitely weren’t kidding about being one hell of a musician.”

  “I’m nothing,” I insist, gently tilting the cello back in its case. Vinny, for all his cruelty, was correct in his assessment of my talent, at least. I was raw. Rough. Untrained. Untested. It was the same assessment that every judge at every audition I performed would give. You are good now, but with some work, you could be...

  The term always varied, but the sentiment was the same. With training, I could be a true cellist, but at the moment I was nothing more than a finger painter compared to a serious musician.

  “I dunno,” Espi says, shaking his head. “That sounded damn good to me.”

  “Thank you.” I let myself smile while I wrestle the case shut. Only then can I think again. Vinny, Lucifer, his plan...those are the only things that matter now. Music is just one of the many things I’ll have to leave behind.

  But the thought hurts less than I would have thought. When I run my fingers along the side of the case...all I can see are piercing blue eyes, daring me to fight him—and I hate him so much that it burns.

  “I’ve gotta jet.” Espi rises to his feet again, swiping a hand through his hair. “I’ll try to stop in to see you later. Stay strong, Pyro Girl.”

  He heads for the door, but before he can even get it open, Lucifer returns. “We need to talk,” he starts, pushing his way in and a part of me suspects that he never truly left, but waited near the door, listening in.

  Espi looks past him. As slender as he is, he has no trouble slipping past the devil and darting down the stairs. “Bye, Danny,” he calls over his shoulder. I hear the door on the lower level slam shut, and I can’t help the question that trickles from my throat before I can reel it back in.

  “What happened between you two?”

  The devil whirls on his heel to stare me down with hellfire in his eyes. “Wouldn’t you like to fucking know?”

  His tone is a lashing whip, but some sick part of me relishes the sting. “I would.” I’m too tired to lie or cower from his rage the way I did around Vinny. He’s poisoned me with the truth, and even now he can’t resist stabbing me with another taste of it, I can see it in his eyes—but this time he holds back. “That’s none of your damn business.”

  I settle my hands on my lap and tilt my head to observe him carefully. Drawing this secret out of him will require another one of mine, I suspect. Our little game of tit for tat knows no end.

  “Do you want to know when I really hated Vinny? Truly hated him?” The devil remains motionless near the open doorway. He’s curious, but he won’t admit it out loud. “It wasn’t when he killed my family,” I add, though the words hurt to leave my throat. “It wasn’t even when he tortured my first few maids or kept me prisoner. I truly didn’t start to really hate him until nearly a year in, around the first anniversary of their d-deaths...” The memory tugs at my consciousness and it’s harder to speak. I try to. I need to...but it’s only when the devil shifts to face me fully that the words actually leave my lips again. “He signed me up for an audition. For fun, he’d said. Fun.” I shake my head at that.

  I can still remember the elegant theater. He had taken me himself that time, and he had sat in the audience, watching from beyond the judges. I still remember his smile. “I played, but when I was accepted into the next round, Vinny said nothing. Then the next, and he was silent. It was only when they offered me a job in the orchestra that he made me...” For a split-second, the room disappears. I see the interior of the theater and the rich backdrop of the ruby curtains that had shielded the stage. I see the face of the director who praised my talent and had offered me a spot.

  And I see Vinny, his gaze malicious as he made me turn them down.

  “I knew then,” I hear myself say as if Lucifer is there with me, watching four years into the past. “I could see it in his eyes, what he was. What he had become. A monster.”

  It feels so strange admitting it all out loud. Vinny could torture me for weeks, and I had still loved him. I had still recited that stupid list in my head: he likes to read, he likes the color green, he loves classical music. Only then had I seen what lurked within the shell of the man I once called my best friend.

  “He made me turn...turn them d-down. Every year after that, around the same time, he forced me to audition again—a different theater every time. Sometimes he watched me, sometimes he wouldn’t. This time...” My throat aches. I have to stop talking and gulp at the air just to keep from being swept under again. Pain has a different flavor here than it did with Vinny. It’s a potent, powerful drug, and once it hits...all I feel is rage. I can only see fire, hot and burning, licking at Vincent Stacatto’s skin. In Lucifer’s realm, pain is nothing more than hate, and I won’t survive the reckless high it brings.

  “This time I knew the theater. I had only been there once, five years previously...but I knew the general layout of the area. Vinny couldn’t accuse me of lying if I said that I wanted to take a walk home from the subway station. A week before that I had sold one of the pieces of clothing he gave me—a designer shawl. I used the money to pay off some thug I met on a street corner to have men waiting in an alley for a ‘young woman who looks like me,’ that night. They
...they could do whatever they wanted to her, just as long as they killed her. Slow. Quick. It didn’t matter. She merely needed to d-die.” My voice cracks. The room starts spinning. The shadows distort and become the two men whose death warrants I signed the moment I just laid there and let them try to get their bit of fun in before killing me. Maybe...I even felt like I deserved it—the pain, the humiliation, the brutality. Maybe I’d needed to feel it all just to erase the harsher ache of flirting with the only future I had ever envisioned for myself and having to walk away.

  Maybe...maybe.

  It’s only when a hand falls on my shoulder that I realize I’ve said all of that out loud. The fingers clench, gripping me down to the bone, but not because of what I’ve said. I’m choking. Tears spill down, blurring my vision, and I can’t keep up with whatever sound is leaving my mouth now. My ears cringe from it. At some points, it sounds like laughter, at others it sounds like sobs.

  The devil waits until I catch my breath and smother the sound, but for some reason, he doesn’t pull away.

  When I gather the nerve to look up, I catch the tail-end of a searching look. It’s confusing that I don’t find the things in his eyes that I expect to or should; no hate, no disgust, no pity. I look into his gaze and I see myself staring back, eyes wide, hair a mess.

  “I never hated him,” he tells me, his voice so gruff that I could have imagined it—but even my dark fantasies were never so twisted. “I never hated...him. You can’t hate an animal. You pity it. You fear it. You want to put a bullet in its brain to end its fucking misery, but hate? No...” He backs away, shaking his head, and my shoulder burns with the loss of his touch. “You don’t waste an emotion like hate on a creature that can’t even feel.” He flexes his fingers, and I think I understand what he means. A man who makes his living off violence can’t afford to be reckless with the tools of his trade: hate, pain, rage. They fuel him, making it easier for him to envision himself as merely another worthless animal fighting its way out of a cage.