Everyone Feared the Mafia Boss

Two days after Vance’s midnight visit, the town car returned.

It was parked at the curb outside the Chartres Street apartment at precisely two o'clock in the afternoon. The driver didn't come up the stairs this time; he simply stood by the rear door of the Maybach, his face expressionless, waiting.

Josie watched from the kitchen window, her eyes wide with alarm. "He's back, Marin. The black car of doom is downstairs. Are you actually going down there? After what that old creep Vance said to you?"

"Vance speaks for himself, not for August," Marin said calmly, smoothing down the front of her dark wool skirt and adjusting her collar in the mirror.

"August is the boss, Marin. Vance is his shadow. They're the same animal," Josie argued, wringing her hands. "If you go down there today, you're walking right back into the lion's den."

"I have a contract to service a Bösendorfer," Marin replied, picking up her white cane and snapping the sections together with a crisp snap. "Breaking a professional agreement is bad for business, Josie."

"Screw business! I want you alive!"

"I'll be fine," Marin said, offering her sister a reassuring smile she didn't entirely feel. "I know how to handle myself."

She walked out of the apartment, descended the stairs, and stepped out into the bright New Orleans afternoon. The sun was warm, cutting through the lingering humidity of the rainstorm, casting long shadows across the pavement.

The driver opened the door for her without a word.

Marin slid into the plush leather interior, the familiar scent of cedar and old paper immediately wrapping around her. The ride to Ursulines Street was short, silent, and entirely too smooth.

When the car stopped, the driver escorted her to the heavy oak front door of the townhouse, which swung open before she even raised her hand to knock.

It wasn't Vance standing in the foyer.

It was August.

She could feel his presence immediately—the massive, coiled tension of his frame, the subtle shift in the air, and that familiar, erratic drumbeat struggling beneath his ribs.

"You're late," August said.

"Your driver drives defensively," Marin retorted smoothly, stepping across the threshold and leaning her cane against the wainscoting. "And in New Orleans traffic, that adds ten minutes to any trip."

August didn't smile, but the tension in his shoulders seemed to ease by a fraction of an inch. "Vance visited you."

Marin stopped. She turned her sightless face toward him, her expression hardening. "So he told you."

"He told me he had a conversation with you about professional boundaries," August said, his voice low as he gestured for her to follow him down the hallway toward the music room. "He didn't tell me he threatened you."

"He didn't need to threaten me," Marin said, walking beside him, her footsteps falling in a steady rhythm against his heavier tread. "He just reminded me of the rules of your world. Secrets stay buried. Weakness stays hidden. And blind girls should stick to tuning strings instead of diagnosing hearts."

August stopped walking.

He didn't touch her, but she could feel him standing close—so close she could feel the heat coming off his chest.

"Vance is a dog guarding a gate that should have been torn down twenty years ago," August said, his voice dropping into a harsh, ragged whisper. "He thinks he's protecting me. He doesn't understand that the gate is the only thing keeping the dark out."

"No," Marin corrected softly, turning her face toward his voice. "The gate is what's keeping you in the dark, August."

August didn't reply. He reached out, his large, rough hand closing around her elbow, and guided her the rest of the way into the music room.

The Bösendorfer sat in the center of the space like a massive, sleeping beast.

"Play for me," August said.

Marin blinked, surprised. "I'm a tuner, August. Not a concert pianist."

"I didn't ask for a concert," he said, his fingers lingering on her elbow before slowly dropping away. "I asked you to play. I want to hear what this instrument sounds like when someone who isn't afraid of it touches the keys."

Marin stood before the keyboard for a long moment, listening to the vast, empty silence of the Ursulines townhouse. Slowly, deliberately, she sat down on the piano bench.

She lifted the fallboard.

Her fingers hovered over the ivory keys, feeling their cool, smooth surface beneath her pads. She closed her eyes—though it made no difference to the eternal blackness she lived in—and pressed a single chord.

F-minor. Rich, resonant, and dark.

The sound filled the high-ceilinged room, vibrating against the ancient brick walls, bouncing off the mahogany case, and washing over August Rail where he stood in the shadows.

Marin began to play—not a composed piece of sheet music, but an improvisation born of the rain, the Marigny, the weight of the city, and the erratic, beautiful rhythm of the dying heart standing ten feet away.