Chapter 29

She smacked me up the side of my head with one of her palms, twisted an ear, and barked, “How dare you betray my wishes! How could you? I have kept you as an employee for the last nine years, and you…you decide to sleep with my enemy. You are not right, Cannon Rake. There’s something terribly wrong with your thinking. How could you fuck him like you have? How? I want to know.”

I pressed the send button on my unemployment application, shook my head, and thought about jumping out of my desk chair, lunging at her with open hands, and squeezing the life out of her, murdering the woman just as she needed to be murdered. Instead, I felt a thin wire being placed around my neck and tightened. I knew nothing about pianos and their wires, but I surely knew that it was her chosen instrument.