Chapter 18 - The Broken Key
Josie walked up the carpeted steps of the stage, her emerald dress trailing behind her like a queen's mantle.
The whispers cut through the air like daggers, but as she sat down on the leather bench before the magnificent nine-foot Steinway, the entire ballroom seemed to evaporate.
Her calloused fingers hovered over the keys.
She didn't play a delicate, polite Chopin nocturne for the socialites. She struck the keys with the explosive, thunderous fury of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp minor.
The first three notes fell like heavy artillery shells, vibrating the floorboards of the Plaza Hotel, silencing every breath, freezing every glass of champagne halfway to an open mouth.
Josie played with everything she had ever lost. The poverty, the hunger, the long nights in hospital waiting rooms listening to Poppy’s shallow breath, the blood on Julian’s floor, the impossible, terrifying love that was tearing her apart. Her hands flew across the ivory, an unstoppable storm of precision and raw, untamed passion.
In the middle of the crescendo, her sharp eyes caught a movement in the balcony above.
A waiter. Moving toward an emergency exit. Pulling an automatic pistol with an extended suppressor from beneath a silver serving tray.
He was aiming directly at the back of Julian’s head.
Josie didn't stop playing. But as she struck the crashing cadence of the bridge, she deliberately slammed her left forearm down across the lowest octave, creating a dissonant, deafening roar of thunder from the piano's iron heart.
The jarring sound echoed like an explosion.
Julian’s combat instincts reacted in a millisecond. He dropped to one knee just as a bullet shattered the marble pillar behind where his head had been an instant before.
Screams erupted. Panic tore through the ballroom as socialites trampled each other toward the exits.
Julian drew his weapon from beneath his cape, fired two shots toward the upper balcony, and the assassin tumbled over the railing, crashing onto a crystal buffet table below.
Dante and four armed Moretti soldiers swarmed the stage, surrounding Josie.
"The girl!" Dante screamed over the chaos, his radio blaring static and frantic shouting. "Boss! Safehouse perimeter is breached! They diverted our security—they’re hitting the estate!"
Josie shot up from the piano bench, the world turning instantly to ice.
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"Poppy," she screamed.
***
