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Chapter1
“You must know this isn’t personal, Jules. It may be art, but it’s also a business, darling, and keeping you around just isn’t worth it.”
There was rage, and then there was the emotion I was feeling deep in my gut like I was about to transform into a dragon and unleash hellfire on the smug bastard standing in front of me. And it would have been massively satisfying to watch the skin and muscle melt from his bones. I would have done a little cha-cha on his blackened corpse if I could.
But I couldn’t.
Not just because I was tragically human in a world where dragons didn’t exist but also because Nicholas Ivanov happened to be beloved.
Respected.
Adored.
Everyone within the modern classical community kissed his ass like he was Mozart reborn. He was everything I was not. I’d come from nothing and from nowhere. No family name to rely on, no trust fund, no background.
Nicolai was a rich asshole with a family line that could allegedly be traced back to Vivaldi. He was a mediocre, self-important little shit who was put on a piano bench at the tender age of ten months and grew up with parents constantly feeding into his self-delusion that he was a genius. His works were prosaic at best, and if it wasn’t for his team of tragically undervalued students from the local music school, he’d be nothing.
Unfortunately, they were happy to do it for the scraps of attention he paid them and no credit at all because he was just that charming. At first anyway. And, something I knew far too intimately, if they gave any sort of pushback, he’d destroy them. Slowly, systematically, thoroughly.
Until they had nothing.
I wished I could sit them all down and show them a reel of my life, especially the few I’d seen him start to focus on. The ones ready to step up and take the empty, me-shaped space in Nicolai’s life.
“This is going to be your future,” I would tell them as gently as I could manage. “Here’s where it’s good. Here’s where he love-bombs you and tells you you’re the most amazing person to him. Then here’s where he cuts you off so you’re left begging for his attention. Then here,” I’d tell them, showing them the raw, jagged emptiness begging to be filled, “is where he gives it back to you in small doses so you’re grateful for a fraction of what you once had, believing—somehow—that it’ll get back to the way it was when you first met.”
Spoiler alert, children, that will never happen. You’ll just stand there in his shadow working your fingers bloody for moments of attention only to be cut off when the next young, pretty thing comes along. That’s when you know what it feels like to be truly and completely worthless to someone you chose to love.
Nicolai showed me I was nothing but a drop in the fucking ocean of people he’d left behind once he’d used up their worth. The only thing I had left when he cut me off was the realization that I was alone, and there was no one out there who was going to save me from the hole I’d dug myself into.
But it was fine. Really.
I had been booted from our apartment since technically everything was in his name and we were never married. Our shared accounts were now his, and his “generous” move-out allowance was enough to cover a new suitcase, a plane ticket, and a few nights in a hotel.
The fact that he never managed to totally isolate me from my older sister was the only reason I wasn’t going to have to sell my meager possessions or my cello in order to avoid sleeping on park benches.
And that wasn’t me being dramatic. I had nothing. I’d been accepted into the London Conservatory for Youths at sixteen. I caught Nicolai’s eye at seventeen. He’d made his move six hours after my eighteenth birthday.
At nineteen, he convinced me to move into his flat with him, which seemed like a good move back then because he held the classical world in the palms of his hands.
And when he was done with me at the tender age of twenty-four, so was everyone else.
No one wanted me. I attempted six auditions and was promptly shown the door when they realized who I was and why I was there.
I had no lifeline. Taking me on and pissing him off was just too big a risk for anyone to take.
It was over.
My only option was to take my chances back in the States with the vague hope that between my sister’s generosity, the apartment building my uncle owned, and the fact that my CV boasted a prestigious education and career, I might make it as an after-school music tutor with enough students to keep the power on.
Truly, a fantastic fall from grace.
I reached for the courage to look up at Nicolai. “I get it, and it’s fine. I can take care of myself.” Jesus, why had I said that? Even now—after everything he’d put me through—I wanted to impress him with my ability to stand on my own two feet. It terrified me to think that if he told me he’d changed his mind, I’d give in and stay.
“Oh, Ju-ju-bee, I know you can.”
Something about those words made me snap. “Don’t fucking call me that.”
He blinked, surprise coloring his features, and I saw a little rage behind his watery blue eyes because I don’t think he expected me to do anything except agree with him. Or maybe beg.
