Page 118 of Stolen Harmony
Victor's eyes glittered with something that might have been amusement. “No? Then what would you call it when a twenty-six-year-old with a history of self-destructive behavior seduces his dead mother's husband? When he uses emotions as a weapon to extract comfort and financial support from a man old enough to know better?”
“That's not?—”
“Isn't it?” Victor stood and moved to the window, gazing out at his kingdom with the satisfaction of a conqueror. “Because that's how it will look to the state licensing board when they review your teaching credentials. That's how it will look to your business partners when they decide whether Harbor's End Music Production is the kind of establishment they want their names associated with. That's how it will look to every client who's ever trusted you with their children.”
My teaching license—gone. The business I'd built from nothing—destroyed. The trust of every parent who'd let me work with their kids—shattered. All of it reduced to ash by carefully orchestrated whispers and strategic photo angles.
“But we're just getting started,” Victor continued, his voice taking on the tone of a connoisseur discussing a fine wine. He returned to his desk and pulled out a second folder, this one even thicker than the first. “Would you like to see the rest?”
He spread the contents across the mahogany surface like adealer revealing a winning hand. Rowan's arrest record from New York—dismissed charges, but the booking photos and reports remained. Financial documents showing his debts, his overdrafts, the trail of financial irresponsibility that followed him from the city. Medical records from his brief stint in rehab three years ago, obtained through means I didn't want to contemplate.
Then came my own files. Bank statements showing the money I'd transferred to cover his rent. Receipts from the groceries I'd bought him, the meals I'd paid for, the guitar repairs I'd funded. Every act of kindness transformed into evidence of an inappropriate relationship, every gesture of care recontextualized as grooming.
“Paper doesn't lie,” Victor said, tapping each document with one manicured finger. “It tells a story. And lucky for me, I get to decide how that story is told.”
My throat was desert-dry. “What story are you planning to tell?”
His smile was pure predator. “Oh, it's quite compelling, really. Respected teacher takes advantage of emotionally vulnerable young man. Uses position of authority and financial leverage to manipulate grieving stepson into inappropriate relationship. Classic power dynamics, textbook exploitation. The kind of story that makes people feel very, very angry.”
He moved back to his laptop, fingers dancing across the keys with practiced ease. The screen came alive, showing a grid of black-and-white surveillance footage—timestamps, multiple camera angles, the unmistakable layout of an apartment I recognized with growing horror.
Rowan's apartment.
“The beautiful thing about modern technology,” Victor murmured, rotating the screen toward me, “is how smallcameras have become. How easy they are to install. How few people think to look for them.”
He clicked a file, and the video opened: Rowan and me at his piano, shoulders brushing, the air between us electric with unspoken want. I watched myself lean closer, watched my hand rise to his jaw, watched the moment when years of careful distance collapsed into something that looked unmistakably like the beginning of a kiss.
The camera had captured everything. Every breath, every hesitation, every second of the intimacy we'd thought was private. The angle was perfect, the lighting clear enough to leave no doubt about what was happening.
My lungs seized. The room started to spin. “You put cameras in his house.”
“Insurance,” Victor said softly. “Though I have to say, you two put on quite a show. Very touching. Very... incriminating.”
He clicked to another file. More footage—this one showing Rowan alone, drinking, talking to his cat, breaking down in tears while clutching a photograph I couldn't make out clearly. The violation of it made me physically sick.
“How long?” My voice was barely a whisper.
“Long enough.” Victor closed the laptop with casual finality. “Though if it makes you feel any better, he invited me over that first night. Made it very easy to... enhance the security system.”
“What do you want?” The words scraped against my throat like broken glass.
Victor settled back into his chair, the picture of relaxed authority. “Simple, really. Elegant in its straightforwardness.” He took another sip of whiskey, savoring the moment. “I want you to get him out of my way. Convince him to leave Harbor's End. Back to New York, anywhere but here. If you truly careabout him—if you want to spare him the humiliation of having his most private moments broadcast to the world—you'll make him think it's his own choice.”
“And if I don't?”
He gestured to the evidence spread across his desk like a feast of destruction. “Then this goes public. Every photograph. Every document. Every second of surveillance footage. The local paper runs a front-page story about inappropriate relationships and abuse of power. The state education board launches an investigation. Your business partners distance themselves. Your clients disappear. And young Rowan gets to see himself on social media, tagged and shared and mocked by strangers who think they know his story.”
Victor leaned forward, his voice dropping to something almost intimate. “Imagine the headline: 'Respected Teacher Exploits Grieving Stepson.' It writes itself, doesn't it? The perfect storm of scandal and sympathetic victim. The town would eat it up.”
“You're insane.”
“I'm protective,” Victor corrected, his voice taking on that reverent tone I'd heard when he spoke about Elaine. “Do you know what it's like to love someone for twenty years and watch them choose the wrong man? To see them waste themselves on someone who never deserved them?” His pale eyes grew distant. “And then to watch that same man replace them with their own child, as if one ghost could substitute for another?”
“Why?” The word exploded out of me, raw with desperation. “Why destroy him? Why destroy me? What could possibly be worth this level of cruelty?”
Victor's smile was thin as a razor blade. “Because you never appreciated what you had. Never understood that love like Elaine's was rare, precious. You took her for granted, and nowyou're doing the same thing to him.” His voice hardened. “That precious little studio of yours—your monument to a woman you couldn't properly love when she was alive—it should already be mine. She would have wanted progress, development, a future for this town instead of your sentimental shrine.”
He stood and moved to a cabinet, withdrawing a rolled set of architectural plans. He spread them across the desk, pushing aside the surveillance photos to make room. The drawings showed a gleaming complex of shops and condos, all glass and steel and profitable square footage.
