In the dark living room, the heavy breathing sounded eerie. Amelia closed her eyes when she felt it against her neck, hot and intoxicated. Her head swam, her feet felt unsteady.

“You still haven’t paid me this week.” The snuffle was followed by the clink of glass against metal. She saw him lift the bottle to his mouth from over her shoulder, guzzling noisily until there was nothing left. “How many times do I have to remind you?”

“We broke up two months ago.” She turned around to face him, not sure if it was fear making her so cold or the damp clothes. “You are not my boyfriend anymore. There’s nothing between us.”

The answering laugh curdled her blood.

Jason Reeve Kershaw. Recently discharged horse jockey, profligate younger son of a retired banker. Skilled, smooth-tongued, privileged— yet a raging fiend under the influence.

Amelia took two steps back when his hand tightened around the neck of the bottle.

“You remember our deal, right?” He inched closer, his dark brown hair glistening in the streak of streetlight. “You stop paying me and I add to your collection of bruises.”

“I’m not giving you any more of my money,” she explained slowly. “You spend it all on drink.”

She did not see the slap until she was stumbling backwards, the sharp sting burning like red, hot coals. Her hand moved to her cheek, even as she was roughly grabbed and pinned against her console piano. He brutally squeezed her arms, and through the pain, she tried her best to not scream. The soundproof apartment would do nothing to alert anyone.

“You’re back-talking now, are you?” His mouth was contorted, his eyes bloodshot. “What a change, babygirl. Is it because of the new man in your life?”

“Let me go,” she stuttered, wiggling to free herself from the savage grip. He released her and she tried to run, but there was nowhere to hide. She staggered against the piano, sending sheets of music fluttering across the room.

“Is that why you refused to get back together?” he hissed, shadowing her. “Because you already have someone new?”

Her ability to speak was robbed by the slap that followed, pinning her face to the cold wood of the piano. Amelia remembered that hand holding her, leading her to the dance floor, touching her in ways she was now ashamed to admit.

“It took you no time to get over me!” A fist accompanied the roar, then another, pistoning her to the floor. Amelia gasped, her vision blackening, as though she had been stabbed with a knife. She wailed noiselessly, the pain rising from her lower back and spreading across her stomach. The last time he had done that, she spent the night vomiting blood.

She bit her lip when she was yanked back to her feet. “I want my money.” He wrung her face, the muscles of his jaw throbbing. Amelia jerked free and pushed him away, reaching for the wall. 

“It isn’t your money.” She shook her head. “And you’re not getting any of it.”

The bottle came flying at her, and she ducked just in time, collapsing onto the floor again and hitting the corner of her forehead on the cold, hard wood. The bottle lay in shards around her, sparkling in the faint light streaming in through the window. Her head spun but she felt the trickle of blood only when she tasted it on her lips.

“Bitch.” A boot kicked into the side of her stomach and yet again, she resisted the urge to cry out. The pain was piercing like a razor, shooting up her chest. “That’s what you are. A filthy slut.”

There were sounds of her flat being ransacked, but she could not move. Could not breathe. Slowly, with difficulty, Amelia crawled to the kitchen. She had been there too many times to care anymore. As she shuffled to her feet and grabbed the steak knife from the drawer, the sight of the shiny steel filled her with the courage she had so long lacked in the face of fear.

The drunkard stumbled forward when the sharp tip of the blade scraped against his body.

“Careful,” she warned, her hand firmly wrapped around the handle of the knife. “One wrong move and I’m going to rip your insides out.”

A short, confused pause later, he found his voice back. “You… you can’t,” he stuttered, frozen where she held him against the knife. Amelia’s jaw stiffened.

“Try me,” she whispered, pressing the tip into his back, enough to bruise but not draw blood. “I’ve given you too many chances. Tonight, I’m quite ready to stab you to death and bury you in my kitchen.”

He tried to turn but Amelia pushed the sharp tip into his skin, and he stumbled again with a groan.

“Kill me and the whole world will find out,” she added quietly. “But if I kill you, no one will find out. I promise.”

Without turning to look at her, Jason ran out of the bedroom as fast as his intoxicated senses would allow him. Amelia heard the front door slam shut. Only then did she drop the knife and collapse onto the floor, letting the world disappear into a black hole.

#

“Good afternoon, Daniel.”

Jayden Freeman-Atwood, the head of the conservatoire, offered a smile from behind his desk. Daniel closed the door to the principal’s office, his eyes passing over his colleagues in the room. He would hardly call it a good afternoon, not with the predicament his first public masterclass of the season had unexpectedly faced only hours ago.

“We were talking about Amelia,” said Timothy Martin, a lean, grey-blonde professor of piano. “I’m sorry about what happened. I had a class with her the other day and she seemed excited about her first ever masterclass with you. Did she send word that she couldn’t make it?”

“No.” His response was curt, even a tad bitter. “I do have a class with her in a few minutes,” he added, consulting his watch. Oscar Harvest, a fellow professor, sighed heavily.

“Let’s hope she turns up, eh?” he murmured, looking at Tilda Dankworth, Daniel’s colleague and former classmate. The soft-spoken professor shook her head sadly.

“Amelia is the best among the crème de la crème of young musicians today,” she said. “If there’s any pianist who can match Dr McGraw’s genius after all these years, it’s her.”

Daniel wordlessly walked over to the window, raking his fingers through his raven hair. The disruption of his event had left him peevish and fretful, yet he had not been able to shake off the difference he noticed in Amelia lately— the withdrawn demeanour, the sunken eyes, the nervousness in her comportment…

And the bruise on her arm. That alone had turned his concern into alarm.

“Did you talk to her yesterday?” The principal asked. Daniel nodded.

“I tried,” he replied with a sigh, staring at the neatly manicured garden outside. “Getting a word out of her is like pulling teeth.”

“It’s unexpected of a staunch professional like her,” Ms Dankworth said. “A rare lapse in her meticulousness. She never lets anything get in the way of her career. But now she’s missing classes all the time and I’m afraid it’s grown worse over the past two months.”

The principal leaned back in his chair and sighed. “I called her to my office the other day and tried to unravel what was going on,” he said. “Daniel is right. She wouldn’t say anything.”

“It’s such a shame,” Ms Dankworth lamented. “She’s a smart, intelligent, even-tempered girl. You can put her in any situation and she will shimmy her way out with her charisma and elegance.”

“Summer is almost here and we have events lined up.” Mr Harvest clasped his hands under his nose, a scowl forming on his forehead. “She is indeed the most remarkable musician we have seen since Dr McGraw. She’s carrying our music festivals, the recitals, the seminars—”

“Wait a minute.” Daniel looked at his colleagues over his shoulder. “Are we only talking about this because we need Amelia for our professional gain?”

The people in the room recoiled. “I… I did not imply that,” Mr Harvest quietly amended. “But if she really backs out of the concerts—”

“Daniel, I want you to change her mind,” the principal interjected. “You’ve known her far longer and better than anyone else here.”

“Yes,” he said. “And I know it’s nigh impossible to change her mind.”

“Well, you must persist.” Mr Freeman-Atwood turned in his chair. “As bad as it sounds, it’s true that we do need her for our professional gain. She isn’t just another student here. We’re planning to hire her as part of the piano committee once she graduates, as your second-in-command—”

“I don’t need a second-in-command,” Daniel exclaimed, facing away from the window. “I have a class. “I’ll try to talk to her again and let you know if anything changes.”

Taking his leave, he made his way to the practice room, where his student was not found. It had been a busy day, starting with the masterclass, followed by three interviews with the press, the first round of entrance auditions for the new session, and a meeting with the piano committee regarding the line-up of the conservatoire’s annual music festival in June. The centrepiece of the event was going to be his rare performance of Ligeti’s piano concerto, a recital he was looking forward to. Besides the masterclasses, the summer series would also feature Schubert’s late sonatas and various multimedia collaborations, and the world premiere of Amelia Cavenham’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

But where was she?

He consulted his watch again. It was his last class before the weekend and he had been anticipating the individual session with Amelia, to have a first-hand taste of her incredible maturity as a musician at such a young age and talk to her about her decision.

Students dropped out for several reasons. But the principal was right— she was not just another student. She was a prodigy, a jewel in the academy’s crown, and an expert at both classical and contemporary music. She had owned some of the biggest music competitions since she was nine, performed at the most hallowed venues across the globe, and given older, more experienced musicians a run for their money. That year, she had been commissioned for four unique arrangements for the most iconic classical music events, two under his conduction. She was the epitome of precocious talent. Letting her go would be such a loss for the conservatoire, for the world.

He went  for his phone but stopped himself. They had tried to reach her on the phone several times, and none of the calls had been answered or returned, leaving the live, public event scrambling to cover for an absent participant. Daniel loathed carelessness. Amelia could be content letting three years of hard work go up in smoke, but she had no right to disrupt his events.

He had known her long enough to be acutely aware of her stubbornness. But if she was stubborn, then so was he.

#

“Ye lookin’ for anyone, sir?” The middle-aged gent spoke with a cigarette between his teeth. Daniel was in front of the building he was almost sure Amelia lived in, but he did not feel confident about going up the stairs only to find the wrong house. The man who had just spoken to him was probably the owner of the bookshop on the ground floor.

“Yes.” He cleared his throat and turned towards him. “You don’t happen to know a red-haired girl who lives around here, do you? Name’s Amelia. Small, quiet, green eyes, plays the piano.”

“Sure I do.” The man smiled, pointing up the stairs. “Right there. That’s ‘er flat.”

Daniel’s gaze followed his finger, and he was relieved to know that he had been looking at the right apartment. “Ye aren’t the police, are ye?” the man suddenly added.

“What?”

“Don’t mind me.” He turned to walk back to his shop, stopping only to drop the cigarette butt on the ground and crush it under his shoe. “But it’s time someone called the coppers on that cunt.”

The door of the shop swung shut before Daniel had the chance to thank him or ask what he meant. As he walked upstairs to reach the blue door, he could not help but wonder why a gifted, globally-renowned musician with a prestigious career would want to live there. He was twenty-three when he bought his house. Amelia was around the same age now with the same level of success and could easily afford a better dwelling.

He knocked and waited, but the door did not open. Daniel knocked again, listening for any sounds inside. The flat was silent, not a creak or a footstep to be heard. His hand involuntarily reached the door knob, a frown marring his brow when it turned easily. He stepped past the gaping door into a dark apartment, the afternoon sun blocked by the thick curtains.

“Mel?” He called out cautiously. “Are you here?”

His query was met with silence. He stepped forward, then abruptly halted when a piece of broken glass crunched under his shoe. Daniel picked it from the floor, his brow furrowed as he gazed around the living room. Despite the dimness, he could discern the state of disarray, the chairs toppled on the floor and the sheets of music scattered all over.

A wave of icy fear swept over him.

“Amelia…” He hurried towards the open doorway of what appeared to be a bedroom. His blood turned cold at the sight inside.

Amelia lay on the floor, still in the same dress he had seen her in the previous afternoon, her form seemingly lifeless. He knelt beside her, his fingers brushing against her burning hot skin as he moved back her hair to reveal the trickle of dried blood on her face from the gash on her forehead, a dark purple bruise on her cheek, and a deep cut down the side of her neck oozing blood down her collarbone. Next to her on the floor was a knife. His heart dropped.

“Mel, can you hear me?” He turned her onto her back, before gently gathering her in his arms. “Open your eyes, please.”

Her bruised lips moved, but the uttered sound was drowned by her fevered breaths. Daniel scooped her from the floor, her weight impossibly light against his chest. Without second thoughts, he carried her out of the room, stopping only to pick up her bag and her coat from the floor.

“Dan…”

“Don’t say a word.” Shutting the door behind him, he carried her down the stairs. “I’m taking you home.”

He settled her in his car and started out, the world blurring around him as he navigated the city streets.