All I Ask

by KT Webb

  Detective Pahl blinked at her, “You’re referring to Karen Moreau?”

  Lena nodded, “I’m also referring to the metronome.”

  That was something he hadn’t expected to hear from the teacher. Madame Rossi wasn’t the one who called him with the tips about Overland, that was impossible. Whoever his tipster was, they had also been in communication with Lena.

  “Tell me what a metronome has to do with Andrew Overland.”

  “The Overland’s bought a custom metronome for Alphonse Durant. They gave it to him as a token of their appreciation for teaching Erik. My friend and I believe that metronome was the source of the detonation that killed them that night.”

  Detective Pahl had no idea what she was talking about, the case notes clearly identified the kitchen as the source of the fire. He made a note to look into that when he returned to the precinct.

  “I’m not asking you to take my words as gospel, I’m simply suggesting that you look at the report written by the fire marshal and compare it to that of the police. The only person to touch the metronome other than the man who designed it and the Overland’s, was Andrew himself.”

  “Interesting,” Detective Pahl replied as he wrote a note in his notepad. “If I understand what you’re saying, you believe Andrew Overland killed his parents, brother, and Alfonse Durant?”

  “Andrew murdered his parents and Alfonse,” Lena told him.

  “And his twin brother.”

  Lena stared at him for another moment. Her decision had been made, if the Detective had the same information she did, he would be a useful asset to D’Angelo.

  “Erik Overland didn’t die in that fire, Detective.”

  Lena Rossi felt good about what she told Detective Pahl. Things were coming to a head, and it was time that the secrets began to be exposed if they were going to get the help they needed. Andrew Overland had gotten away with his crimes for too long. The murder of Karen Moreau had proven that. As Lena prepared to leave for Aria’s apartment, she sent a text to the man known as D’Angelo.

  The Detective knows. You can trust him. Aria needs you soon.

  She stepped out of Webber Academy and onto the street. As usual, the city that never slept was still in full swing. When she turned to head to the curb, she saw someone coming toward her that filled her heart with relief. He must have returned from London and come right away. The man in the hooded sweatshirt grew closer with no sign of stopping.

  Lena saw his face a second too late. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders as a knife plunged into her stomach. She tried to keep her breathing even as her murderer held her close and twisted the weapon.

  “This is for helping him, he’d better hope I don’t find him.”

  Without another word, the man released her and walked away. Lena felt herself falling further into the blackness, her final thoughts were of Aria and the man she’d been trying to save for eleven years.

  Aria waited for Madame Rossi to arrive at her apartment. The woman had been willing to meet with her but couldn’t promise that she would be able to answer her questions. She sat staring at the ultrasound image the doctor had printed for her. That baby was going to be the reason Madame Rossi broke her vow of silence. Aria knew that if Lena found out she was carrying D’Angelo’s child, she would tell her whatever she needed to know to find the man she loved.

  The sound of footsteps climbing the stairs sent her heart into overdrive. No one knew about the baby yet; part of her didn’t think it was right to tell anyone before she broke the news to D’Angelo. She’d made up her mind. If she was going to get any more information out of Lena, she was going to have to tell her about the pregnancy.

  “Aria?” Christine’s panicked voice came through the door before she walked into the apartment.

  Something about the tone in her voice made Aria stand up and meet her halfway between the couch and door. It was clear there was something wrong; Christine was afraid.

  “Christine? What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. It’s not me. Listen, I need you to sit down. Something happened, and I wanted to be the one to tell you,” Christine explained.

  A dozen possibilities flew through her mind at once. Any of them could be cause for alarm, but this was something that seemed deeply personal.

  “Patrick took me to dinner near the Webber Academy. When we left, there were people all around on the sidewalk,” Christine was trying to be as delicate as she could without leaving anything out.

  “What happened, Christine?”

  “Aria, it was Lena. People were trying to stop the bleeding; they were too late. She’s gone. I’m so sorry,” Christine knew how much the teacher meant to her friend, and it broke her heart to tell her, but the idea of letting her hear it from a police officer was too horrible.

  “That’s not possible,” Aria whispered.

  “She was stabbed, no one saw his face. The only thing we got from the people who were there before us was that someone saw a guy in a black hooded sweatshirt talking to her. They thought they hugged, but when the man walked away, Madame Rossi fell to the ground with a knife in her side.”

  Aria shook her head violently, “No. I can’t believe it. She was coming to see me; she was supposed to be here to visit me. We were going to talk about D’Angelo.”

  A moment of clarity engulfed Aria in an awful gripping terror. Madame Rossi was the only person who knew D’Angelo’s true identity. There was no way it was a coincidence that she’d called her to meet that night and was now dead. Everything was crashing down on her in waves. It was her fault. Every bit of the terrible things that happened since she met D’Angelo were all her fault. Karen was dead, Madame Rossi had been killed; the blood lust was growing, and whoever was responsible wouldn’t stop unless their goals were achieved.

  She was breathing through her nose to keep herself from throwing up. Maybe Drew was right about D’Angelo. If he’d had a change of heart and decided he wanted her in All I Ask, he could easily have killed Karen Moreau to make that happen. Aria reached out to Lena because she was the only person who could tell her what she needed to know about the man Aria thought she loved. How much had he messed with her brain to get her to fall in love with him, to sleep with him? If Aria was all he wanted, why wasn’t he satisfied that he had her? Why did he insist on killing people she loved? Unless there was something about him that he didn’t want her to know. He was already concealing his identity, what else was hiding in the darkness of his mind that was too dangerous for her to know?

  “Aria? Talk to me,” Christine said gently.

  “I don’t know what to say, she was the closest thing to a mother I ever had,” Aria explained.

  “I know. I’m so sorry.”

  All Aria wanted was to go back to the way things were before she moved into the apartment. Her life at the Webber Academy had been far less complicated, and people weren’t dying regularly. Aria and Christine sat in silence together. Everything she wanted to ask Lena played over and over in her mind. There was nothing left for her to do, if Aria didn’t try to find the answers herself, she would be left with more and more questions. The forbidden thought came to her mind before she realized it was there. The only place she may find something that told her where D’Angelo had gone was the one place she hadn’t dared to explore.

  Christine was fast asleep on the couch when Aria left the apartment. She crossed the stage, followed the narrow hallway that led to the steel door she needed. After descending the stairs into a room that still housed music stands and abandoned props, Aria looked around for a door to the area known as the sub-basement. It seemed unlikely that he came and went from the place traditionally; it seemed he was able to appear out of nowhere. She remembered how he’d come and gone from her dressing room at the Majestic Theatre without using the door.

  She decided there must be a tunnel system that allowed him to move from place to place without being noticed. If he didn’t want her to see him in the light, she couldn’t imag
ine he would want anyone else to see him. There were plenty of weirdos on the streets of New York City, but it was also unlikely that he wandered around the city with a mask covering his entire face. In the farthest corner of the basement, there were large slabs of wood that once served as pieces of sets for various productions. What drew her to look closer at those particular items was the complete lack of cobwebs on them compared to the other forgotten things stored in the basement. Aria came closer to the moveable wall segments, scrutinizing them for anything that may tell her she was on the right track. It didn’t take long for her to notice that rather than leaning against one another the way they should have been, the walls were standing perpendicular and parallel to one another.

  Aria slid through the narrow passage that came to a dead-end ahead but continued to the left with a sharp turn. She grinned to herself as she followed the maze until she realized it was beginning to slope downward. D’Angelo had gone to great lengths to hide from the rest of the world, she knew there would be more to discovering the home he’d made for himself than a simple zig-zagging maze. The further Aria traveled between the walls, the narrower the space became. Before long, she wouldn’t be able to fit between them at all. Just when she thought she’d met a real dead end, Aria realized there was a door designed to blend in with the wall. There was no handle for her to turn, no button to push.

  The door was slightly indented compared to the rest of the wall. Aria decided this must be the section of wall that actually supported the building on the far end of the basement. The thought occurred to her that she should try to slide the door to one side; that did the trick. On the other side of the door, she found a metal cage. Aria reached out and attempted to shake the makeshift elevator that seemed to be suspended in midair. It was solid. There was no movement to indicate that it may fall as soon as she stepped into the terrifying contraption. Aria took a deep breath and stepped inside. A lever appeared to operate some kind of pulley system that would bring her down further into the bowels of the theater.

  With only a moment’s hesitation, Aria pulled the lever. The elevator clicked and whirred as it came to life. It was hard to determine precisely how long she rode down in the metal box. Aria was sure the ride felt much longer than it actually was. There was no turning back, she would soon find herself in D’Angelo’s home. The elevator came to a stop, and Aria slid another door open. She was met by an empty room.

  It wasn’t what she’d expected to find. The room was abandoned entirely. Aria walked into the sub-basement, wondering what that space had been built for initially. There was no way anyone lived there. Would he have left her so completely that his underground apartment no longer held any evidence of his existence?

  Aria couldn’t believe it. She walked around the edge of the room, looking for another door. Finally, she found the secret she’d been searching for. From nearly every angle, the room appeared perfectly squared and sealed in every corner. As Aria stood to the left of the elevator, she recognized the offset wall that waited on the other side of the room. She rushed to it, disappearing behind the cement.

  After winding her way through yet another zig-zagging maze, she found what she was looking for; D’Angelo’s home. At first, it felt like she was intruding on his private space. Something felt wrong about being there without permission. She quickly pushed the thought from her mind as curiosity overwhelmed every other feeling. The apartment was simple but comfortable, it was apparent he’d spent a lot of time creating a place that made him feel safe. The first thing she did was approach the corner of the ample space that so much resembled the music room she’d once spent so much time in. D’Angelo felt the same passion for music as Alfonse Durant; there were times Aria believed D’Angelo’s love was even more profound. There were sheets of music spread out on a desk; they drew her attention like a moth to a flame.

  There were pieces of music she’d never seen or heard before. Things he composed for his own ears with no intention of sharing them. There was so much about him that she didn’t know. His true identity was only a small piece of the complicated puzzle that made up the man she’d fallen in love with. There was something familiar about the way he wrote his music, as though some memory was waiting at the edge of her consciousness. Aria reminded herself that D’Angelo was a friend of her father’s, it made sense that his composition was familiar to her. A beautiful violin was propped on display next to a baby grand piano. Aria had no idea how he could have gotten that down there.

  In addition to the sheet music on the desk, she discovered the parchment he used to write his notes. Nearby she saw the old-fashioned wax seal he used to close the envelopes. There had been no more notes, no more roses, no more whispered songs. Aria was utterly alone other than the baby growing in her womb and the friend sleeping on her couch. Beyond the desk, she found a bookshelf filled with classic tales and contemporary novels. Reference books lined the shelves. Obviously, D’Angelo put as much stock in the internet as Aria herself. There was no computer in sight, no evidence of a computer ever existing within those walls.

  Aria found the walk-in vault that was locked to keep unlikely intruders like herself from finding whatever he needed to hide. One day, she would ask him what was behind the steel door. One day, there would be no more secrets for him to keep. Aria didn’t think she was going to find anything that would tell her where he went. The only comfort she found in the fact that she’d found nothing was that she knew he hadn’t been there in the time they’d been apart. It didn’t seem possible, but a thin film of dust had settled on even the tiniest surfaces.

  She couldn’t ignore the deep sadness that began to creep into her heart. D’Angelo wasn’t there, but he wasn’t with her either. Lena was dead, Aria was pregnant, and everything seemed to point toward D’Angelo as the murderous mastermind behind it all. She climbed into his four-poster bed. The silk sheets felt like heaven on her tired body as she snuggled down into the blankets and fell into a deep sleep.

  Christine sat up on the couch, disturbed by the silence in Aria’s apartment. Silence wasn’t good. Silence meant Aria wasn’t there. Christine stood up and walked over to her friend’s bedroom, hoping she had simply gone to bed. The bed was empty and did not look as though it had been slept in.

  “Aria?” She called into the dimly lit apartment.

  Of course, there was no answer. Christine was alone. She decided Aria may have gone down to the theater; it was something she did when she needed to think. After the heartbreaking news Christine shared with her the night before, it only made sense that Aria would want to be alone while processing her feelings. On the counter, Aria’s phone blinked a blue light; an indication that she had a message or missed a call. Christine tapped the screen to turn it on. The text was from D’Angelo.

  It had been a strange revelation when she overheard her friend admitting that the mysterious composer had been the man she was secretly seeing. Aria hadn’t been too keen on talking about it, so Christine didn’t push the subject. All she really knew about the guy was he was out of the picture for the time being. Aria hadn’t spoken about seeing him, and Christine was confident she’d have noticed if the man came by for a visit.

  I’ll be home soon.

  The message was cryptic. Christine wondered if the man knew about the baby. There had been no response to Christine’s own text message. She left Aria’s phone on the counter and decided to head down to the theater in search of her friend.

  As she slept soundly in D’Angelo’s bed, Aria was trapped in a nightmare that felt all too real. She wasn’t a stranger to dreams that felt like they were really happening. This particular dream she’d had on more than one night; the nightmare that she was trapped in her room as everything around her was devoured by fire.

  She was just a child when the explosion destroyed everything she loved. Her memories were limited to the nightmares and waking in the hospital days later to discover her father had been taken from her. The dreams were always the same; fire creeping in around her until s
he awoke screaming.

  This time, her dream was more lucid than any she’d ever experienced. She was asleep in her purple canopy bed, surrounded by her favorite stuffed animals. Aria was jolted awake by a violent shaking and earsplitting sound that never seemed to end. This time, instead of the fire immediately blazing to life, she hopped out of bed and looked out the window.

  Outside, she could see the driveway illuminated by a flickering glow. In the strange light, she saw the outline of a man. The house shook beneath her as though something was demolishing it; Aria banged on the window, trying desperately to attract the attention of the man below. He looked up, and for a moment, she could see his face entirely; Drew Overland was standing in her driveway.

  Christine made her way down to the stage. She’d called out for Aria multiple times with no response. As she explored the auditorium and foyer, she had no luck locating her friend. Christine returned to the stage, following the hallway that led to the stairs where all the props would have been kept if the theater was up and running. Due to her recent experience in the basement of the Majestic Theatre, Christine was more than a little cautious about descending into the basement. Her fears crept up on her, keeping her rooted to the spot at the top of the stairs. Just as she was about to flip the light switch, Christine was grabbed from behind.