Billionaire Romance12 min read
"My Name Is Marie — Don’t Touch My Piano"
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"Get in the car," my father said.
I walked slow and looked at him. He smelled like cologne and money. The city lights burned above us. I kept my hands folded in my lap so they would not tremble.
"Are you sure you want this?" Pavel asked quietly from the front seat.
"I have to," I said. "I am ready."
Sterling opened the car door for me like a gentleman in a movie. Andres pretended not to smile, but his hand landed on my shoulder.
"Don't worry," Andres said. "If anyone bothers you, I will break them."
"Good," I told him, and we drove into the bright city.
They had sent me away when I was three. They told the village that I carried bad luck. That was why I learned doctors' hands from the old healer. That was why I learned songs and keys from an old teacher who kept me safe. I had lived eight years by the river, and the river taught me a quiet I never lost. Today I was sixteen and they said the superstition ended. They came to take me home.
The gate at the mansion was tall, white, and cold. A fountain turned in the moonlight.
"Dad says your room is the best," Sterling said, squeezing my hand. "We even put a little bear lamp. Do you like bears?"
I smiled. "I like the bear."
Pavel pushed the door open. A short woman with a thousand pearls kissed my cheek and called me "my child." She was pleased. The house smelled like lemon oil and music.
"Marie," my father said. "This is your room. If you need anything—"
"I know." I set my small bag down. The curtains had blue birds. The window looked at a row of magnolia trees. On the ceiling hung a pale bear lamp with a red bow. I felt silly and safe.
At dinner, everyone looked at me like I might break. Sterling tried to make me laugh. Andres elbowed me under the table. I liked that.
After dinner they took me to a big party. I let them dress me. The woman who made my hair said, "Less is more," and for once I let her. I wore a purple dress and a pair of shoes with small silver heels. I kept my hands bare. The only thing that belonged to me was an old ring Andres had given me—two small knocks would make Blaise know where I was, a little trick the healer taught us.
When I walked into the banquet hall, people stopped. I felt their eyes like applause. Sterling looked proud. Andres looked angry like he had to protect something fragile. My father glowed like candlelight. I almost laughed.
"She is beautiful," a man said.
"She is more than beautiful," another whispered.
They wanted me to stand with them, but I wanted to step away. Music is a kind of home for me. Left alone near a piano, I put my fingers on the keys and closed my eyes. The notes came like river steps. Someone cleared his throat behind me.
"Marie," whispered Li Dubois. "You should not show off, or they will poke."
"I don't care," I said.
Li Dubois smiled like a brother and left.
"Can she play?" Julissa asked, meaning trouble.
"Let's make it a contest," someone else said.
A girl in white—Julissa Santiago—smiled like a knife. She wanted to make a scene. That is what girls like her do. They want to be the sun and make everyone else the shadow.
"Let them compare," my father said. "A little music will be fine."
I sat down. My fingers moved. The room sighed.
I played something that began like a story and grew like a wave. I closed my eyes and let the music be honest. The last note fell and the room was silent, held in the sound. Then hands clapped like thunder.
"Impossible," Julissa said in a thin voice. "You used someone else's music."
"Who said that?" Sterling asked.
Someone uploaded a clip. A voice over the internet said I plagiarized a famous pianist. My phone buzzed with anger and hate. Screenshots, memes, jokes, threats. The word "fake" chased me like wind.
"Don't answer," Andres told me. "Let us handle it."
I went upstairs and took the old laptop the healer had taught me to use. I was not clever for the first time in my life, but the river showed me ways. I found the original score on my hard drive—the one I had made alone in the hut with my teacher. I found the old videos the healer saved. I posted them. I wrote small, honest lines, and I signed with the name that had been mine all along.
"People will believe lies faster than truth," a voice said outside my door.
"They always do at first," I told the room.
That night, a man I had only met when he had sent a sharp message to a news anchor came and hacked the smear. His name was Blaise Said. He reposted my clip and wrote, "Listen. This girl is hers. Stop lying."
Blaise was famous as a man of steel: he owned half of the glitter in the city and kept the other half in his pockets. He was tall and a little cruel and a little kind. He liked to do the right thing his own way.
"You didn't have to," I said the next day when my phone lit with supportive messages.
"I wanted to," he said. His hand was warm and he tasted like winter smoke. "Now, who will buy me dinner?"
"Why do you do this?" I asked.
"Because you are smaller than my rage when you are hurt," he said.
The internet turned. Fans who had shouted with knives now cheered. People who called me fake ran away. Some apologized. Some changed their accounts. The city loved drama more than anything, and they loved a rescue even more.
The music teacher who had lost a student years ago came to the mansion with wide eyes and a folded bow. His name was Clement Garza. He had heard my pieces in secret. He bowed to me like a fanboy and said, "Marie's fingers carry the river."
"Don't call it that," I said.
At school people crowded by the gate. My name echoed in the halls. A girl called Harmony ran to me and hugged me so hard I could not breathe.
"You're my hero," she whispered.
I took her hand and said, "I'll help you with math if you help me with gossip."
Harmony laughed.
But not all mornings were kind. At school, a boy named Nan Gong Han—no, a boy with a name that sounded like a crown—came to snarl. He wanted me to apologize for owning the title of beauty. He wanted blood. I told him to go home.
He pulled me then, fingers catching at my sleeve.
"Leave her," Andres said.
I flipped him over and the class gasped. That was the first time someone had seen me move like I had learned in the hut. He slumped and the principal called the parents. Long, slow anger sat in the chest of Nan Gong Han's mother. She called for justice with red nails and a red voice.
Blaise showed up like a storm. He walked into the school auditorium like he had always owned it. He stood on the stage and spoke to a thousand sleepy faces and said soft things about talent and fairness. He sat beside me and whispered, "You did good, little storm."
When the school called a centennial event, Blaise gave the speech. He looked out and in the crowd his eyes found me. He smiled. I felt small and safe.
Later, he asked me to be his date for another banquet. I said no. He said "I won't take no for an answer," and my answer slipped like a key from a pocket. I said yes.
At the banquet we sat very close. He told jokes like he had invented laughter. He held my hand. I let him. He kissed my forehead and called me "my Marie." The sound made a soft heat in my chest.
That night there were people who wanted to hurt me. The same girls who had made false stories found a man to take advantage of me. Julissa sat with a glass and moved closer and whispered and smiled. They spiked a cup. I tasted metal—sharp and cold—and understood.
I had planned a little trick. I had left a message in Blaise's phone: two knocks on the ring would show my position. I left another sign with my healing friend. I slipped away toward the elevators like I had an illness. The men watched me and thought me drunk. They took my wrist and opened a room I did not open.
I pretended. I let them. A hand went to my mouth. I bit it and the man screamed.
My feet had learned a hundred ways to land. I used one. I took a knee, which broke a jaw, which broke a plan. I ran and ran and left the rest. Without shouting, the room under the chandelier emptied.
"Get the footage," Blaise ordered.
They had deleted it but the hacker we called "Night"—a boy who had once slept under my unstrung violin like a stray cat—pulled it back like silk. He sent the file to Blaise. Blaise came with many hands and folded the city like paper. The man who had been paid to take me left with his head down. Julissa didn't leave. She watched and screamed. She cried and then she begged. No one filmed her at first.
"Go away," Blaise said. "You made a mess."
"I—" Julissa tried.
Blaise smiled then, and it was the worst thing. He walked up to the stage at the worst party in the city and he held her record up like a book of shame.
"You pay people to hurt a girl," he said. "You paid them with your own coins. Show me the messages."
Her face went white. Her mother, who had come with red nails and a louder voice, tried to pull her away.
"Let me see," a woman said from the edge of the crowd. "Show me the bank transfers."
Julissa's phone whined. The messages showed her name, her account, her fingerprints on the cruelty. Her mother began to cry. A camera in the corner closed in like a trap.
"Apologize," Julissa said, and it was not an apology. It was a scream. People pressed their phones closer. Videos turned. The internet ate the scandal. The woman who had been seen as beauty became a lesson.
Within a day her brand deals pulled out. Her father lost clients. A podcast host who had flattered her erased entire seasons. Her name trended like a storm.
Julissa went to the police to claim protection. The prosecutor opened accounts and found more. The man she had paid with the heavy hand went to jail. Julissa stood in the center of a hundred microphones. Her makeup was a face of porcelain that could not hold shame.
"Why?" she asked in a trembling voice.
"Because you hurt people for profit," Blaise said. "And this city will not buy your lies."
People recorded her kneeling. She begged. She cried. She texted her defenders who turned their backs. Her friends blocked her. Within twenty-four hours Julissa's companies were gone. Her father called a lawyer and then left the country.
When she came to the hospital, she tried to find a reason. She found jail time and cameras instead. The legal papers were big as stones. Her name became a warning.
That scene was long. People watched. Her breakdown lasted until midnight. She fell to the floor and we filmed her. I watched from a chair with my hands folded. I felt the river inside me: the calm that bends but does not break. I felt sympathy, a small thread of something like pity, then I let it go. She had pushed people into a dark.
"Blaise," I said later when we stood alone, "you could have let the law do its thing."
"I wanted her to see," he said simply. "I wanted the shame to be loud enough that no one would try that again."
"Was humiliation necessary?"
"Some lessons have to be shown where everyone can see," he said. "I did not humiliate her. She made the choice to hurt others."
I did not say more. His hand found mine and I kept it.
School settled into a strange rhythm. People wanted to be near me or far away. I taught Harmony how to study history. I taught a boy named Axel how to stop being afraid. I watched Andres sit at his desk and listen to his radio and think of the things his badge meant.
Then someone took me.
I felt a pull and cold and a gag over my face. I knocked a ring twice, as I had promised Blaise I would if there was trouble.
Blaise's face appeared on my phone seconds later like a floor opening. He came like light pushed by wind, and his men were many. They reached me before the car turned another block. Their hands were iron and warm. They took me from the back of a van and I crawled up into Blaise's arms. My lungs remembered air like a blessing.
I later learned they had traced my thumbprint on a broken camera and Night had used fragments of deleted video to pull us in. Andres and Sterling had led a squad with Blaise's men. We found the men in a cluster of low houses. They shouted. They were taken away.
We were at the hospital afterward, and Blaise did not let go. He had cigarettes in his hand and no patience in his eyes.
"You let me scare you," he said softly. "If I had not come home that night I would have found them sooner."
"Don't speak like that," I said. "You saved me."
"I will always," he said.
I pretended to sleep. He held my hand and hummed like a machine. He smelled of tobacco and old wood. His face softened and I felt like my fingers might melt.
After that the city watched. Blaise became a guardian angel in the papers. The men who had risked their hands on my skin were arrested and then shamed. Julissa's world had already crumbled. The organizers who had sold access to the room were found guilty of negligence. The man who had taken money for dirt had nothing left. The media called it justice.
My master arrived at last. He was a large man named Gabriel Craig. He looked like a mountain. He had once trained me by the river and had shown me how to tie a rope with one hand and still write a song with the other. He stood in the hospital doorway and he told me to breathe.
"You're not just a girl who plays piano," he said. "You are many things."
"Master," I said. "I do what I can."
He smiled like a father and then gave me a list: study, fight, learn the code, learn the roads. He was on the city council for things that were not very kind.
"Tomorrow we train," he said. "No excuses."
"Okay," I said, and I meant it.
They healed me. The pain was in the long nights when a hand reached for me in sleeping moments. Blaise would not let go. He stayed close. Sometimes he would talk to my little bear lamp through my window as if it could understand.
One morning at my bedside, Blaise said, "You will not go back to the old life."
"I want to," I said. "Sometimes I miss the river."
"You shouldn't have to choose," he said. "I will build you a place by the river. We will have a piano there."
I rested my head against his chest. He smelled like winter storms. I heard his heart. I heard how big his world was and how carefully he put me inside.
School kept giving me tests. They tried to hold me to old standards but I moved like water through everything. I took a thousand small exams and I did them with fingers and with grit. People called me "S"—a code for someone who did too much and never asked for credit. I did not ask for credit. I let the work be the work.
One night Blaise asked me something simple.
"Will you be mine?" he asked. He had that small boyish fear that men hide.
I looked at him. His features were a map of the city I had walked in. I nodded, and the city felt quieter.
"Say it," he teased.
"I am yours," I told him. "But I will still be Marie."
"Good," he said. "I like Marie."
We had small fights. He did not want me to be reckless. I did not like to be watched. He wanted to protect me. I wanted to be free. We argued with short sentences and then made up with longer looks. Sometimes he teased me and called me "little storm." Sometimes I pushed his face and he laughed.
"Promise me," he said one afternoon in winter when the air cut like paper. "Promise you will let me help."
"I promise," I said.
Then came the day of public reckoning.
Julissa made a last attempt to ruin me. She tried to sue Blaise for slander, and she tried to sell a story about our private life. Her lawyers were thin and hungry. Blaise looked bored. I watched him open his phone and press a key. He released a file—a conversation that showed Julissa planning the whole smear. Her messages, her payments, her orders. The media devoured it. She was stripped of last pretenses. The cameras swarmed.
This time Julissa did not beg. She sat like a person whose life had become a book burned at the edges.
"Why are you so cruel?" I asked one night when she sat in a small room behind glass. It was a legal interview. She looked hollow and tired.
"Because nobody ever looked at me," she said. "I had to make people look."
"I see you now," I told her. "It does not mean the same thing."
She cried then. It was not the kind of cry that asks forgiveness. It was a cry that asks for an answer. The city had none. She was found guilty. Her deals dissolved. Her accounts held small change. Someone posted a photo of her kneeling. People recorded. Justice had been loud and final.
After that, the city pivoted again. The press loved a hero and a villain. People returned to their lives like a tide.
My master told me to test myself in front of those who wanted to learn. The house filled with students: merchants, doctors, old painters. They wanted to learn what I had. They wanted to take the river away from me. I taught them with a stern hand. I would not let the river be stolen.
One test was in the square. I stood and drew with ink and a brush. I made a water painting that moved like the river at dawn. People watched. They cried. A small old man named Li Dubois bowed and declared me teacher. He gave me a paper he had been saving.
"Keep this," he whispered.
I kept it.
The other test was a fight. I stood in a ring and faced men who had trained and men who had not. I moved like a story I had been told. Blaise stood at ringside. He had once been a man who slapped the world and it fell. Now he held his breath like a child. I fought and I did not hurt people; I made them stop.
Afterward Blaise came to me with a small box. He opened it and there was a ring—plain and honest. He asked me to be his partner, and he meant more than romance. He wanted me to be safe.
"I keep it on my finger because I can find you by it," I told him.
He smiled. "Keep it on. I like the way your hand looks with it."
Summer came and we walked by the river. I took off my shoes and let the water touch my toes. He leaned on a stone and watched me like the last sun.
"Will this be enough?" I asked him.
"It has to be," he said. "But if it is not, we will make it so."
We bought a small house near the water. They painted the walls pale and they placed a little bear lamp in my room. On the first night there, I set my fingers on the piano and played. He stood by the window like a guard and then walked to me. He pressed his forehead to mine.
"Forever," he whispered.
"Only if you promise to come with me on river days," I said.
He nodded. "I will come."
Years later, some nights I still sit at the window where the blue birds on the curtain watch me. A soft lamp bears a red bow. I play for the river and for the small dark house in the village where I first learned to count the sound of rain.
Sometimes the city needs a loud punishment so people will listen. Sometimes the city needs a quiet piano so people will heal. I learned to be both.
"Do you miss the river?" Blaise once asked as we fed a cat that had found our yard.
"Sometimes," I said. "But now the river is everywhere."
He smiled and kissed the top of my head like a benediction. "Good. Because it's home now."
I closed my eyes and found the music inside my ribs. I played one soft song—a song I had written when I was eight beneath a tree. Outside, the magnolia breathed. Inside, the lamp glowed red on its bow.
He held my hand and I kept the ring on my finger. He kept the city out at bay and my heart in a small safe place.
I learned to trust that if I knocked twice, someone would come.
I learned I could be loved and be myself at the same time.
I learned to play until the river answered.
And when the city tried to tear me apart, I let the music and the truth hold me. The last scene of the story is simple: I press the last key, look at the bear lamp, and Blaise leans his forehead to mine and says, "My Marie," as if saying it enough could keep us safe forever. I smile, and the river outside our window listens.
The End
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