Rhapsody (Butcher and Violinist 1)

He helped them take everything from me. Set me up. Put me in jail.

My mother’s face flashed in my head. She’d died while I was in jail. I never got to say goodbye. Pain hit my heart. I pushed my mother’s image away and shifted my mind to black. Complete darkness. Nothing. Silence.

It was the only way I could function.

Time was pain.

Dr. Vieg screams broke through the silence for a minute.

I pushed it away and continued to play. The bow’s blade delivered vibrations through his flesh. And the whole room watched the performance.

You helped them take my life. Why? You didn’t like that I wasn’t as clean and proper as you? You didn’t like that my hands had so much blood on them?

Dr. Vieg’s bone cracked under the blade.

Giorgio came to me with towels in his hands. “I’ve prepared the shower.”

Dr. Vieg’s body quaked. He was close to leaving.

I walked around his bleeding and cut body. “Empty the room.”

Everyone left.

Dr. Vieg was no longer conscious.

I stood in front of him and considered the new existence of my life.

The few that knew my history, thought that I’d lived two lives. One began as a violinist. The second switched to a life of crime. But they would be wrong.

Not many knew this about me, but I’d grown up in the Brise de Mer gang. Had it not been for them, I would’ve never found my love for the violin. At eight, a violin case was the first thing I used to traffic cocaine. Of course, I had no idea what I was doing at the time. My father told me to carry the violin on the train from Nice to Paris, and I did with success.

That trip became a weekly event. Every Saturday I took a violin case of cocaine up to Paris. A quiet boy traveling by himself. The case sat on my right. A packed lunch from my mother sat on my left. Once I hit Paris, my uncle, Rafael’s father would pick me up and grab the case. I would spend the night with them and then head back home on Sunday.

The train conductors and staff began to get in the habit of greeting and making small talk with me. After a few months of traveling, they would beg me to take my violin out and play.

It scared me. I was just a kid. It was hard to mumble out excuses of why I didn’t want to play each trip. After another month, I told my parents at dinner.

My mother turned to Father. “We should get Jean-Pierre violin lessons.”

Father broke his bread and waved the comment away. “Just tell them that you’re too shy to play.”

“How long will they believe that?” She frowned. “I don’t like this—”

“I’ve heard that already.” Father glared at her.

She went silent, but a frown appeared on her face.

It was my mother’s biggest super weapon out of them all. Father hated to see her upset. Groaning, he ate some of the bread and then sipped his wine.

Mother continued to look upset.

“Fine. We’ll get him some lessons, but he won’t like them.”

I brightened. “I might.”

“Jean-Pierre can do anything he wants. He’s a genius.” Mother patted my shoulder. “And then these lessons will make up for what you’re doing to him.”

Groaning, Father dropped the bread on the plate and rose from the table. “I’m going upstairs to get some rest. I don’t have time for this.”

Mother went after him. “This could get him in trouble.”

“He’ll be fine.” Father raised his hands in the air. “He’s made the trips and now he’ll play the damn violin! Are you happy?”

“He shouldn’t be doing it at all!”

“We do it for them or we all die. We can’t tell them no. If I had the power, he wouldn’t be doing this.”

They continued up the stairs, arguing the whole time.

Crime and music had always been my life.

I balanced both on a delicate tight rope.

It was only the moment where I added love that it all went to shit, and I was exposed.

She discovered who I was because one could only pretend for a short time. How long would she think I was a simple violinist, when I kept hiding bloody clothes? The answer was not long at all.

And once she found out, I thought that she could still remain by my side.

Instead she started a love affair with a rich lawyer with high society friends. That was enough for me to kill the man. But then she told him about my connection, and he went to his friends.

I killed him.

Rafael killed her.

I went to jail.

Rafael went and broke me out.

And during our shenanigans, the Unione Corse took over our territory.

The Unione Corse operated out of Corsica and Marseille, France. Through the 1930 to 1970s they were the French Connection, holding a monopoly on heroin trade around the world. They had a degree of influence within French government and law enforcement.