The Price of These Hands

My husband, Adrian Thorne, was a world-renowned pianist. He despised my hands—hands he claimed were made only for coarse labor.
One day, after I’d dared to dust his grand piano, he melted a bowl of searing wax. Without a flicker of emotion, he seized my hands and plunged them deep into the molten liquid.
“This,” he whispered in my ear as I screamed, “is your punishment for defiling art.”
To avoid his wrath, I never touched his precious piano again.
Until his birthday. He came home drunk, took my hands in his, and guided them over the black and white keys, playing the favorite song of his first love.
Tears streamed down his face as he murmured, “So… your hands can be this soft, too.”
In that moment, I naively believed he had finally let go of the past, that he had finally seen me.
But the next morning, I was held down by two burly men, forced to watch as my husband took a hammer and, with the chilling precision of a metronome, shattered the bones in my fingers, one by one.
He watched me writhe on the floor, then calmly poured himself a glass of red wine. “How dare these hands,” he mused, his voice cold as ice, “recreate a melody meant only for Celeste? Garbage… must be destroyed.”

1
The fluorescent lights of the hospital ceiling were a blinding glare. I wanted to shield my eyes, but my hands were wrapped into two thick, white bundles, suspended in the air. Every breath sent a fresh spike of agony through them.
My orthopedic surgeon held up the X-rays, his expression a mask of professional regret.
“Mrs. Thorne, you have comminuted fractures in all ten fingers. The nerve reconstruction in three of them was not optimal.” He sighed. “From now on, you should avoid lifting heavy objects and any fine motor activities.”
Adrian hadn’t just shattered my hands.
He had taken a hammer to my entire life, piece by piece, and smashed it to dust.
I stared at the gauze-wrapped clubs that used to be my hands. I tried to smile, but the corners of my mouth wouldn’t obey.
The door creaked open, and my husband, Adrian Thorne, walked in. Impeccably dressed in an expensive bespoke suit, he was an alien of sterile perfection in the drab hospital room.
He didn't look at me. He walked straight to the window and pulled back the curtains. Sunlight flooded in, and I flinched, my eyes squeezing shut.
“What did the doctor say?” he asked. His voice was as crisp and cool as the highest notes on his keyboard.
I said nothing.
He finally turned to me, a slight frown creasing his brow. “Lina, I’m talking to you.”
“Just as you wished,” I rasped, my voice a dry, unfamiliar sound from my chapped lips. “I’ll never touch your piano again.”
Adrian’s expression remained unchanged. He simply nodded. From the fruit basket he’d brought, he selected an apple and began to peel it with a small, sharp knife. The peel came off in a single, unbroken spiral, a work of art in his grasp.
He had the most perfect hands in the world—long, elegant fingers, with well-defined knuckles. These were the hands hailed as “kissed by God,” capable of weaving the most magnificent symphonies.
And, with the same flawless precision, of shattering his wife’s bones.
He sliced the peeled apple into small, neat pieces and held one to my lips.
I turned my head away, avoiding the hand that had brought me such ruin.
His hand froze in mid-air. After a few seconds, he retracted it.
“Don’t be difficult.”
“Lina, you should know by now what you can and cannot touch.” He popped the piece of apple into his own mouth, chewing slowly, deliberately, as if savoring my pain.
“That melody does not belong to you.”
“Remember this lesson.”

2
After Adrian left, my mother-in-law arrived, carrying a thermos of chicken soup.
She slammed it down on the bedside table the moment she entered. The greasy smell hit me like a wave, and I fought back a surge of nausea.
“Lina, what did you do this time to make Adrian so angry?” The blame in her eyes was raw and undisguised. “Don’t you know his world tour starts next month? Are you trying to ruin his career by causing trouble now?”
I looked at her, a bitter, hollow laugh stuck in my throat. I was causing trouble?
“Mother, your son broke my hands.”
She scoffed, pulling a chair to the bedside and studying me with an air of aristocratic disdain. “If he hit you, you must have done something to deserve it.”
“I told you from the start, a woman from your background was never good enough for our Adrian. What can you do besides housework? And now you’ve even forgotten your place and touched his piano?”
“That isn’t just a piano—it’s his life! Better for you to lose a hand than for him to lose his future!”
And my life? Was my life not a life?
I closed my eyes, unwilling to argue. Trying to reason with a Thorne was a fool’s errand, an argument you were destined to lose before it even began.
Seeing my silence, she must have mistaken it for submission. Her tone softened slightly.
“Don’t blame Adrian. He’s been through so much.”
“Celeste has been gone for years, but he’s never moved on.”
Celeste.
Adrian’s first love. The only woman he deemed worthy of touching his piano, a fallen piano prodigy.
“He was drunk yesterday. He thought you were Celeste. That’s why he lost control. As his wife, you should be more understanding. It’s a small price to pay.”
My eyes snapped open, the hatred in them so intense it could have burned her. “So, when he realized I wasn’t Celeste, he decided to destroy my hands?”
My glare made her flinch, but her shock quickly morphed into anger. “What is this attitude? You think you’ve grown wings?”
“Let me tell you something, Lina. There are countless women who would kill to be Mrs. Thorne. Don’t be so ungrateful!”
She stormed out, slamming the door behind her.
I stayed in the hospital for two weeks. Adrian never visited again. But every day, a delivery of fresh, expensive fruit and gourmet supplements would arrive, piling up on my nightstand.
A silent, condescending charity.

3
On the day of my discharge, the Thorne family driver was there to pick me up. I refused to get in the car and called a taxi instead.
The driver looked distressed. “Ma’am, Mr. Thorne instructed me…”
“Tell him I need some time alone.”
I went back to the house I shared with Adrian. When I pushed the door open, a pair of new women’s slippers sat in the entryway, a size too small for me.
In the living room, the black Steinway grand piano gleamed, polished to perfection. A young woman I’d never seen before was carefully dusting the lid with a feather duster.
She started when she saw me, looking flustered. “You are?”
I didn’t answer. My eyes moved past her to a woman’s trench coat draped over the sofa. It was exactly Celeste’s style. Looking closer, the girl herself bore a striking resemblance to her.
Understanding seemed to dawn on her, and a blush crept up her cheeks. “I’m the new piano maintenance specialist Mr. Thorne hired. My name is—”
“Get out.”
My voice was quiet, but it held a steel that couldn’t be disobeyed.
The girl froze. “But Mr. Thorne…”
“I said, get out,” I repeated, looking her straight in the eye.
My expression must have terrified her. She hastily put down her things and fled.
I walked to the piano. This instrument was Adrian’s sacred ground. He once told me my hands were only good for washing vegetables, that to touch his piano was to defile it. In three years of marriage, I had never laid a finger on it.
Now, my hands were ruined. I could never play again. I could no longer threaten the sacred memory of the woman in his heart.
I reached out with my still-bandaged hand and let it rest gently on the piano lid. It was cold and hard, just like Adrian’s heart.
The front door opened behind me.
Adrian was home.
His eyes fell on my hand on his piano, and his gaze turned to ice. “What did I tell you?” His voice was a low growl, thick with a rage that felt ready to tear me apart.

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