Chapter Three

For a moment, the mask seemed to take all of her awareness. She saw nothing else in the gloom of the theatre, but those hard white features.

Gradually, the rest of his face became clear to her…lips that curled in an angry smirk, cold green eyes that seemed to burn through the shadows between them.

He shrugged back his cape and took a step closer to her.

He is the only one who knows…

She forced herself not to run, forced herself to speak.

"You did this…you're the Phantom, aren't you…you're the one who destroyed the opera house"

Her directness caught him off-guard. And as she spoke, he noted something about her voice.

Her French was perfect, aristocratic…but there was a hint of foreignness…Italian, perhaps?

"What is that to you, Madame? Why are you trespassing in my theatre?"

He smiled, seeing the fear trying to take control of her as a draft teased the edges of her veil.

Still, she did not give in to it.

Her brown eyes…no, not brown…a deep amber edged with long, thick lashes.

"What became of the Vicomte de Chagny?"

He had not expected her question and, when he did not answer he immediately, she found the courage to go on.

"He was here," she insisted, "the night you let the chandelier fall. He came here because of a girl…because of Christine Daae."

He flinched when he heard that name…for the first time since that night.

He held her gaze for a long moment. When it seemed as if she would turn away, he drew the rope from the beneath his cloak and, a second later, he coiled it around her neck and spun her around.

"Now, Madame," he growled, pulling the rope so that she was jerked back against him, "who are you? Why have you come here asking about…de Chagny…about her?"

The noose was like a leash around her and she could feel the steady pounding of his heart against her back.

"Answer me, Madame, or I will pull this tighter."

"I am the Comtessa di Sciacca-Licaria," she gasped.

"That name means nothing to me," he said, jerking her head back against his shoulder.

"The Vicomte de Chagny is my brother."

Abruptly, she felt the lasso yanked from her neck and he pushed her away from him.

Her hand went instinctively to her throat as she turned to face him again. The rope hung limp in his hands and he was looking up at one of the gaping boxes.

This man released a chandelier into a crowded theatre…they say he was behind the hanging a stage-hand, too. He could murder me now…

"Did you kill him? Did you strangle him like that?"

He said nothing, but continue to stare silently at the box. It seemed as if he had forgotten her presence.

I should run…

Instead, she lunged at him and caught him by his arm.

"What did you do to my brother and the girl he was going to marry…to Christine Daae? Where are they now?"

Those last words captured his attention, snapped him from the trance he seemed to have withdrawn into.

The rope had fallen from his hands, but he turned on her with vicious heat in his eyes. His hand closed around her wrist, but he did not pulled her from him.

"Madame," he snarled, "I do not know!"

He was telling her the truth. She could see that so plainly in his eyes, see the pain that both fueled and tempered his anger.

"I did not kill them, Comtessa! If that is what you think, you are mistaken. She left me…with him…I let them go…"

For a moment, it seemed as if his voice would break and his hold on her wrist tightened.

"I let them go! Do you understand that, Madame? She choose the boy…your brother…Christine saved his life, you see. They left me and I don't know what became of them…I let them go…because I love her."

He must be mad…like Theo's poor mother before she threw herself in the Alcantara River…

But there was no madness in his eyes. Carefully, she eased her hand from his grasping fingers.

And she ran from the stage, stumbling once as she fled back down the stairs and across the foyer.

Her carriage was waiting for her near the abandoned café at the corner of the Place de l'Opera.