Page 33 of Lethal Obsession

The alarm on my phone goes off to remind me it’s time to practice. I set it years ago as a safeguard against losing myself in endless doomscrolling.

I put my headphones on and start my exercises on the electronic keyboard. I have a grand piano I practice on at the Conservatoire, and Papa wanted to rent me an apartment here large enough to have one of my own. But I quite like going to the Conservatoire every day. And it feels more normal to practice on a small keyboard in my cozy flat than to live in some vast penthouse, cut off from the world. Even if my broken elevator does drive Papa’s security detail nuts, as does my complete refusal to have cameras installed in every corner. I put up with the added alarms on all the external doors and the cameras covering every entry point to the building, but I draw the line at having eyes inside my flat itself. Darya thankfully backed me on that one, yet another of the many reasons I love my stepmother.

It’s midmorning when I head out to the Philharmonie, waving to the new security guy as I make my way through the streets to the Parc Villette. He follows at a respectful distance. I can’t help but smile to myself at his tense expression. I’m pretty sure today is his first time on active duty, and I can almost smell the poor guy’s nerves from here.

Lucky he’s not watching fourteen-year-old me, I think, remembering the savage delight I used to take in torturing every poor sucker tasked with guarding us. I was a very angry teenager back then, while Mickey, my younger brother, was the quiet computer nerd.

The tables have definitely turned in recent years. These days, Mickey runs a crew of his own and goes out drinking with Luis and Bryce rather than being guarded by them. And while most of Mickey’s crew might be computer geeks fighting keyboard battles rather than real ones, I know he’s no stranger to the darker side of our world. I see the gun he rarely leaves home without and the hard men who accompany him everywhere he goes. We’re at the age where the bratva world splinters off by gender: the girls into a cocoon of luxury, kept away from the business end, and the boys into the blood and violence it takes to maintain power in a world where everyone wants to take it from us.

I could fight it. If it weren’t for the blood and violence that I’ve seen, maybe I would. But the truth is that regardless of what Seline says about me allowing men to run my life, nothing can ever change the fact that I am Roman Borovsky’s daughter. I can’t run from the world I was born into. The trick is to find a way to live in that world while still remaining true to myself.

And playing, I think, feeling the familiar flutter of excitement as the angular silver roof of the Philharmonie comes into sight, is where my truth lives.

I enter the concert halls from the rear, inhaling the familiar backstage miasma of fear, sweat, and old perfume like I’m coming home.

“Bonjour, Ibrahim,” I greet the cleaner, who returns my smile and greets me by name. I step over cables and lighting boxes and head toward the sound of strings tuning up, bumping into the tearstained First Violin as I come into the wings.

“Fais attention,” she says, glancing fearfully at the stage behind her. “Today Dittorio is more Herr Direktor than Caro Maestro.”

“Are you okay?” I whisper.

She nods. “Dittorio is bastard,” she says, shrugging philosophically, “but also genius, you know? So what must we do?” She walks away, clearly not expecting an answer to what we both know is a rhetorical question.

Taking a deep breath, I walk onstage to quite literally face the music.

“You sit,” commands Director Klaus Dittorio, the principal conductor of the Orchestre, as I enter. He doesn’t so much as glance at me. “I no ready for you yet.” I sit obediently, waiting as he bellows at one cowering musician after another.

Members of the orchestra joke darkly that Dittorio was born with his German mother’s fierce discipline and lack of humor and his Italian father’s explosive temper. At almost seventy, he is still one of the most famous conductors in the world.

He’s definitely the most feared.

He insists on using English rather than French, due to the international talent in the orchestra, but his accent is so appallingly thick we all wish he’d stick to either of his native languages and let us do the translating.

But since he is, as the First Violin says, an undisputed genius, everyone tolerates his torrent of abuse, in the hope that they will find stardom under his masterful leadership.

At least, I think resignedly as he turns flashing eyes and a rather spiteful glare in my direction, that’s what we tell ourselves.

“Madam Russia,” he greets me sarcastically. “Now ve discover if you hit keys on piano vith same passion as keys on your phone. And—”

He raises his baton, and I brace myself for the last round of torture before the real thing begins tonight.

By the time I’m waiting in the wings for my actual performance, I’m mentally thanking Dittorio for every one of his brutal criticisms, hoping only that he was harsh enough.

I stare out at the packed auditorium, my stomach leaping into my throat.

Why the fuck did I ever want to be a concert pianist?

For someone who has spent her life hiding from the spotlight, choosing a career that puts me right at the center of it is odd at best and downright masochistic at worst.

It doesn’t even help to see my family seated patiently in the front row, although I do get a laugh when I see Papa stifle a yawn. Unlike Deda Sergei, Darya’s father, and Darya herself, who both possess an encyclopedic knowledge of classical music, my father is entirely tone-deaf. He also nurtures a healthy disdain for what might be termed cultured circles. Despite having been born to those same circles, he was forced onto the streets at a young age, raising himself amid blood and violence rather than in any kind of luxury. He spent more time washing up after the people who attend these kind of gatherings than mixing with them, a fact that only makes his faithful attendance at every one of my performances even more touching.

Deda Sergei glances toward the wings, clearly searching for me, and smiles briefly when I catch his eye and give a little wave. He covers his heart with his closed fist and gently hits it, his way of sending me strength. Darya, seeing this, nudges Papa. They both wave enthusiastically, along with Lourdes, Benny, Abby, and Dimitry, who nudges a rather bored-looking Masha to do the same.

Mickey and Lars, who are supposedly flying in from Scandinavia tonight after finalizing some cyber deal, aren’t in their seats yet.

I smile to myself. Papa will have Mickey’s head if he and Lars are out drinking somewhere tonight.

But I know my brother will be here. Mickey might be enjoying the freedom of his early twenties, but he’s also solid as a rock. Years of raising each other has made Mickey, Masha, and me closer than most siblings will ever be. Although I absolutely adore my new pack of infant brothers, they will never understand the life the three of us led before they came along.