“But still.”
I took off my shirt, gave it to Giorgio, and walked over to Dr. Vieg. “I came to you because I believed that you were one of the loyal. And I gave you one thing before they took me off to jail.”
“I-I was in a tough spot.” Dr. Vieg twisted and turned in his chair, trying to break free from the ropes. “I…Cynthia needed m-medical care…s-she had cancer—”
“You left your wife a day after the sale.”
“But…I still—”
“And you bought your mistress a brand new house and moved in with her.
“Jean-Pierre, p-please. I could give you another instrument. I have many—”
“I found something.” Louis rushed over to me with a thick folder in his hand.
I grabbed and rummaged through it while Rafael eased back in his chair and blew circles of smoke. Dead silence filled the room.
There’d been some truth to Dr. Vieg’s statement. He didn’t know the exact location of the violin, but he knew the city and country.
I flipped the page over and spotted the buyer’s name. “He’s working with the devil. Alexander.”
Alexander was the head of the Unione Corse.
Started in the 1910s, the Corsican mafia was a set of criminal groups from Corsica. No drugs or arms passed through the French border without one of the groups knowing about it. It was an influential organized crime structure. And we operated in France, Russia, as well as African and Latin American countries. It was many groups of criminals. However, there were only two groups that one noted when mentioning the Corsican mafia. The Unione Corse and the Brise de Mer gang.
We were Brise de Mer. The new buyer of my stolen violin was Unione Corse. Dr. Vieg had not only betrayed me by selling an item I’d told him to hold, he’d sold it to the enemy.
Now I understood why Dr. Vieg had refused to give me the information. He knew as soon as we barged into his office that he would die. Even if I let him live, the Unione Corse would kill him for letting me know.
Rafael wagged his finger at Dr. Vieg. “Now you’re going to get it.”
I set the folder down on the desk. “Giorgio, my knives?”
He hurried over to me with my leather briefcase, set it on the desk, and snapped it open.
My collection of knives was intriguing. They were handcrafted by an artist in a tiny French village. I’d had ordered him to shape them exactly like violin bows.
In music, a bow was essentially a stick with hair attached to it. And when a musician possessed it, he or she moved it across some part of an instrument, causing vibration and emitting beautiful sounds.
While I couldn’t play anymore on an instrument, there were other ways to make music.
I twisted my favorite knife in my hand. It was very close to a violin bow, but instead of guts or hair, there was a sharp blade. Even the knife’s handle resembled the end of bow. In the music world, that part of the bow was called the frog. This knife’s frog was done in ivory and tortoiseshell. Other knife handles had been done in mother of pearl or abalone shell.
They were works of art in their own way.
And when they spilled blood, when I slid them along some part of the human body, it caused the loveliest of vibrations. Melodies of pain and symphonies of blood.
I took my knife and walked over to Dr. Vieg.
“Please, Jean-Pierre,” he mumbled in between crying. “Please! I-I was like a f-father to you.”
“You were.” I walked around to the back of him. “How should I play you this evening? Like a violin? Like a bass? Like a cello? How do you want to say good bye? What bow technique should I use? Arpeggio? Spiccato?”
“Oh God.” Dr. Vieg cried. “Help me.”
Rafael rose from the chair. “I’m not going to watch this. It will ruin a good high.”
“Then give me ten minutes.” I raised the bow above Dr. Vieg and relished in how the light hit the blade. “No. Make that thirty minutes.”
Rafael took a puff of his joint and blew smoke out. “And where will we go after that?”
“America.”
He quirked his eyebrows. “That’s where Belladonna is?”
“Yes.”
Rafael spat on the floor and glared at Dr. Vieg. “How dare you send her to that monster of a country. Make it a full hour, Jean-Pierre.”
“I’ll try.”
“Then, we go to America and get your Belladonna.” He took another hit of the joint and slung it on the floor. “We’ll kill whoever has it.”
“Unless, we don’t have to.”
“We always have to.” Rafael walked away. “Even now, you’re ready to play a song.”
I gripped the bow hard and placed the blade gently on Dr. Vieg’s neck. “Let’s begin.”
The song began with screams. Not blood-curdling or bone-chilling. His scream delighted the ears. More anguish than terror. There was a delicate tone to his pain. And it was just at the right pitch and frequency. Not too high or low. Just the most intense sounds of human terror.