He Broke My Hands

The sound of the first knuckle snapping was louder than any fortissimo I’d ever played. I lay on the wet pavement, my hands—the hands that had commanded the world’s greatest concert halls—reduced to a pulp of bone and bruised flesh beneath the weight of a heavy boot. They laughed as they finished the job, leaving me to bleed in the dark, a piano prodigy who would never touch a key again. It was the perfect tragedy, a career ended in a mindless act of violence. Or so I believed when I crawled into the arms of Liam Hargrove, the man who promised to protect me, never realizing he was the one who had paid for the boots. I was broken, silenced, and betrayed by my own sister, but they made one mistake: they left me with enough strength to wait, to heal in secret, and to plan a finale they will never survive.