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No Encore for My Ex-Fiancé
Novelix
已完結
"The day I ran into my ex-fiancé again, I had a knife in my hand. I slit the fish open, cleaned it out, slid it across the counter. ""Fourteen bucks. Cash or Venmo?"" A scale flicked past Julian Font...
章節（3）
第1章
The day I ran into my ex-fiancé again, I had a knife in my hand.
I slit the fish open, cleaned it out, slid it across the counter.
"Fourteen bucks. Cash or Venmo?"
A scale flicked past Julian Fontaine's gold-rimmed glasses.
He flinched and pressed a handkerchief to his nose, looking like he wanted to throw up.
"Really, Lila? This?"
"Striped bass is twelve a pound. Black sea bass is eighteen. Which one?"
I didn't look up. I grabbed the next fish and started scaling.
My brother Ethan's hand slammed down on mine.
"It's been three years. Chloe's a world-class pianist now."
"The prediction in that phone call isn't going to come true. Not anymore."
"Come home."
His index finger pressed down right on one of the stumps where my fingers used to be.
Three years ago, at the International Piano Competition in Warsaw, Julian and Ethan got a phone call.
A voice claimed that if I won, Chloe would jump off a building afterward.
They did everything they could think of to force me to withdraw. When I refused, they cut off two of my fingers.
A dull itch spread through the stump.
I drove the knife into the cutting board.
I pointed at Chloe, tucked behind Julian like she was six years old, and smiled.
"You want me to come home? Fine."
"Cut off two of her fingers. Then I'll come home."
...
"Lila!"
Ethan knocked my hand down.
"Three years and you still haven't grown up."
My hands had been in ice water so long the knuckles were red and swollen. The fresh print from his slap barely showed.
Julian's eyes caught on my scarred hand. His gaze lingered on the missing fingers two seconds too long.
Then he looked away, swallowing hard.
I'd gotten that look plenty in three years.
Didn't bother me. Long as it didn't cost me the sale.
Though the market did feel colder than usual today.
I grabbed a bucket and sluiced bloody water across the counter.
Pink droplets splattered Chloe's spotless white dress.
She shrieked and jumped behind Julian like a startled deer.
"Lila."
Julian crouched down and dabbed carefully at her hem.
He looked up at me, exasperated.
"There's a limit, Lila."
"Chloe came all this way to bring you home. And this is what she gets?"
I laughed and tapped the chalkboard price list.
"I think you've got the wrong idea. I sell fish. I don't sell smiles."
"You want polite service? Pay for it."
Ethan's jaw tightened.
"You were raised a Shaw. When did you turn into this?"
My phone chimed.
Venmo: $4,200 received.
Julian lifted his own phone.
"Can we have a civil conversation now?"
Four thousand two hundred dollars.
Exactly enough to clear last month's hospital bill for my mother.
Julian stepped around the dirty water and came closer. He'd always hated the smell of fish. His brow creased.
"I know your mother needs surgery."
"How long do you think it'll take, gutting fish?"
My hand stilled on the scales.
Three years ago, he was the one who bankrupted the Shaws to force me out of the competition.
Now he was the one playing concerned ex.
My eyes stung. I couldn't tell if it was the cold or the hate.
"If I don't go back, are you going to cut off two more of my fingers, Mr. Fontaine?"
"Lila."
His voice sharpened.
"That's in the past. You just won't let it go."
"You haven't changed. Still arrogant. Still spoiled."
Every word was meant to cut. But he wouldn't meet my eyes.
Chloe stepped forward and, out of nowhere, gave me a little bow.
"Lila. I know you hate me. But wasn't that fire enough to satisfy you?"
Her eyes welled up as she pushed up her sleeve to show a palm-sized burn scar.
"I don't blame you. I swear."
"Julian hasn't slept right since you left. He misses you. I can tell."
"Please. Come home with us."
Her voice was small and sweet.
Julian's hand tightened at his side.
Ethan looked away. His knuckles were white.
The fire three years ago had come out of nowhere. The blame had landed on me with surgical precision.
Just like this little performance.
And they'd eaten it up. Both of them. Every word.
I bit down hard and kept my voice level.
"I'm not going."
"Lila. I'm giving you one more chance."
Ethan pulled out his phone and opened my mother's chart. His voice was flat, like he was reading about a stranger.
"Her surgeon's an old college friend of mine. Operation's next week. You wouldn't want anything to go wrong, would you?"
"She's your mother too!"
"Not since she married your father and had you."
第2章
I knew Ethan resented my mother for marrying my father. He resented her even more for having me.
Why else would he have helped Julian bankrupt the Shaws and take everything for himself?
Why else would he have thrown me and my mother out onto the street for a housekeeper's daughter, in the middle of a Boston winter?
I just hadn't realized how deep it ran.
"Fine. I'll go."
Nobody knew Julian like I did. Nobody knew what he was capable of.
My mother only had one life. I couldn't gamble with it.
The Shaw estate had a different name on the deed now.
Chloe and her mother, our former housekeepers, had risen all the way to the top. They were the ladies of the house.
"There's no guest room. Just the maid's quarters off the kitchen."
"Hope that's not too much of a step down for the Shaw heiress."
Diane Lane swirled her wine, draped in the cashmere wrap my mother had left behind.
Ethan laughed.
"The Shaws fell a long time ago. She should be grateful she has a roof over her head."
"Isn't that right, Lila?"
I bit down on my lip until I tasted copper.
"Her attitude's improved, I'll give her that."
"But since she's here, she can earn her keep."
"Ethan, Julian—don't you think?"
Nobody argued. Diane snapped her fingers for a basin of hot water. She settled into a chair and tapped the rim with her toe.
"Well? Didn't they tell you? I can't fall asleep without a foot soak."
Years ago, when she'd been our housekeeper, my mother had always treated her with respect. Even after she realized Diane was making eyes at my father, she'd kept quiet to spare her the humiliation.
Diane had thrown her dignity in the trash.
Julian frowned.
Then Chloe spoke up.
"Mom. Don't tease her."
"Lila's a guest. You can't ask a guest to do the help's work."
She hooked her arm through mine and gagged theatrically.
"Oh—I'm sorry, Lila. I didn't mean to. It's just that smell. Why don't you go wash up first?"
Only when I was back in the maid's room did I unclench my fists. My nails had drawn blood.
I lay in bed, wide awake. I pulled up a photo of my mother on my phone and traced her face until the pillow was soaked.
At one in the morning, piano music drifted through the door.
A piece I knew.
Julian was at the Steinway in the living room, playing the half-finished composition I'd written three years ago for the competition.
He heard me and stopped.
He turned, calm as anything.
"You remember it, don't you?"
How could I forget?
I'd written it as a love letter to the two of us. I'd been going to play it at the competition and propose to him on stage.
Now it was a sick joke.
"Finish it, Lila."
He pressed the sheet music into my hand. For a second his face was so gentle I almost forgot where I was.
Then he spoke again, and I was back.
"Chloe has the International Piano Competition in three days."
"This piece is perfect for her."
So that was it. That was why they'd dragged me back.
Whatever stupid flicker had come to life in my chest went out.
I tore the sheet music to pieces and dropped them in the trash.
"You want to use my piece as a stepping stone for her? Not a chance."
"You sure about that?"
Julian sighed and held up his phone, showing me hospital security footage. He spoke in the gentle voice people use with difficult children.
"Lila. Enough. Be a good girl and finish the piece."
"We'll call it even. All of it."
第3章
I'd lost count of how many times I'd tried to explain to Julian that the fire had nothing to do with me.
He always threw that anonymous phone call back at me like it was proof I was guilty.
"Lila. This is the problem. We spoiled you, and now you think the rules don't apply to you."
"You say you did nothing wrong—fine. What did Chloe do wrong, then?"
"You had everything. We showed her a little kindness, and you couldn't even stand that."
That was the day I realized talking to Julian was a waste of breath.
Today was no different.
I turned my back on him.
"Remember what you said. I finish the piece, you pay for my mother's surgery, and you let me go."
I walked out before he could answer.
After that night, I was a prisoner in the maid's room.
Ethan said I wasn't leaving until the piece was done. My meals were brought in. He took my phone. I wasn't even allowed to call my mother.
The house I'd grown up in had turned into a cage.
Then came Chloe's birthday.
Julian and Ethan threw her a lavish party at the estate. Half of Boston's classical scene showed up.
They dragged me out of bed before dawn and put me in a catering uniform. Short-staffed for Miss Lane's party, they said.
The old me would have torn the place down.
But three years of this had worn whatever pride I had left clean off, like scales rinsed down a drain.
Julian stood beside Chloe all evening, smiling. Ethan drifted over now and then to fix the hem of her dress.
Chloe was the industry's rising darling and she was eating it up.
Before Chloe blew out the candles, Julian tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
"Chloe. What's your birthday wish?"
"Julian—I want to marry—"
"Shh. Make a real wish."
He cut her off, voice indulgent, eyes flicking to me.
She bit her lip, swallowed the disappointment, and when she looked up again her smile was dazzling.
"My wish has to do with someone very special."
She walked straight toward me.
My breath caught.
I turned to leave and someone shoved me hard from behind.
Chloe caught me, right on cue.
"Careful, Lila."
She winked at me. The next second she lifted my right hand high, displaying the two missing fingers to every guest in the room.
"Lila taught me piano. My wish is for her to play something for me tonight."
A murmur rolled through the crowd.
"Isn't that the Shaw girl? The prodigy? What happened to her hand?"
"Don't fall for the sweet face. That bitch tried to burn Chloe alive. Lost those fingers in an accident afterward. Karma, if you ask me."
"God, she stinks. Can you smell it?"
The looks got uglier.
Julian frowned.
"Enough. Chloe, pick a different—"
Before he could finish, I walked to the piano and sat down.
I laid my ruined hand on the keys.
Julian took a sharp step forward.
I pressed the first note.
An entry-level piece. A child could play it. I butchered every bar.
The notes came out dead and off-rhythm.
Someone laughed. Then another. The laughter grew until it drowned out the piano.
I played the whole piece through, mechanical, blank.
Julian's face had gone to stone.