Will spoke with care, like he was treading warily through his memories. Tremors in his voice had him stopping every few words as he revisited the terror of parking three blocks north of Seven, watching chaos unfold on the sidewalk outside, then stalking unseen into the building.
The terrifying, blistering heat of Seven hit me again. Through my creeping nausea I could still sense it all: the smell of each curl of smoke descending Seven's stairwell, the acrid taste in my mouth, the red-hot embers crackling on our skin, the dread on Will's face. My guys languishing on the sidewalk while I ran away.
Charlotte shifted her legs aside as I stumbled past her along the bench, my hand over my mouth in an effort not to throw up. The lone journalist sitting opposite looked up from his phone at me with a startled expression. I crashed back to the bench and lowered my head again, too afraid to run outta the gallery in case a sea of paparazzi was waiting in ambush.
"Don't listen, Zeph." Charlotte pulled my head to her shoulder. "Just wait this part out, OK?"
The prosecutor continued in his best-friend voice. "Can you tell us why you went to Seven, Plaza del Este on March twenty-eighth?"
I could see how shit was gonna go; I was meant to be the reason that Will had apparently burned down Seven.
"I went to see Jun-su Park. Zephyr. His American name is Zephyr." Despite the tremors in his voice, Will said my name just like he always had. Slowly, like each syllable tasted good.
"You visited him in his capacity as a sex worker."
Will scowled at the prosecutor. "No."
Perhaps it was an act, practiced in a mirror until it looked convincing. But I abandoned the thought the moment it occurred to me. Will was terrible at dissembling to everyone else, but he truly believed his own lies.
"No? But in a conversation between you and Jun-su Park himself, you told him..." The prosecutor read out from a sheet of paper that had been handed to him by one of his legal team, "...that you had been offered Mr Park's services as a sex worker by Sigma, as compensation for an injury you received while smuggling counterfeit passports for them."
"I just wanted to talk to him."
Even under oath it sounded like pure bullshit, to me and most probably to the jury too.
"What did you want to talk to him about?" Amusement curled the prosecutor's lips a fraction. The idea that someone would book a sex worker just to talk tickled even him.
"Piano."
"Piano?" The prosecutor shuffled papers, still with a little smile on his face, confident that the jury saw Will as either a liar or bat-shit crazy. "I don't understand, Mr Graz. Can you please explain?"
"I'd seen him playing piano at La Rosa the week before the fire." Will's voice was firmer, clearer than before, laced with rage at the intrusive nature of the questions.
"So, your interest in him as a sex worker lay in his ability to play piano."
"I wasn't interested him as a sex worker. I was interested in the way he played."
No. Will was lying. Or deluding himself. That wasn't how it had been. Nobody booked assets just to talk. He'd practically admitted to me that he'd gone to Seven for one reason alone.
"Please explain." The prosecutor looked at Will with sympathy, like they were gonna work out a confession together.
"He was playing classical repertoire. But with...musical ornamentations...that made the pieces sound...like he was afraid, and angry. Like he was...playing to show Sigma how angry he was. And how scared."
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The Sigma Asset 🏳️🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022
Mystery / Thriller**AMBYS 2022 WINNER** He'll never play piano again. That's what virtuoso pianist Zephyr has vowed to himself after escaping Sigma, the sprawling criminal organisation that once held him--and still holds his friends--captive in California's mega-city...
