The Price of the Necklace
by Michael J. D’Alfonsi
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
“You’re early,” Curtis said, careful to mask a tremor.
Blake smiled without showing teeth. “Couldn’t help myself. Word got around that you were ahead of schedule. I do so hate waiting.”
He made a show of surveying the room, lingering on the fireproof safe and the heap of unsold stock beside it. Curtis felt the scrutiny like a thumb pressed into a bruise.
“Well?” Blake said, with the languor of a man who owned the very oxygen.
Curtis reached for the display box, hands steady by will alone. The velvet lining showed wear; he’d used it for every major commission, an unspoken hope that some of their luster would pass to his own work by osmosis. He clicked open the lid.
For a moment, Rothington said nothing. His gaze flicked from the opal to the diamond collar, then to the filigree of platinum so thin it seemed woven from wire. Curtis watched for the twitch of a lip, the squint of an eye: signs of disappointment, or worse, contempt.
But Blake’s expression remained unreadable. He reached out, handling the box with the practiced delicacy of someone raised around breakables and lifted the necklace free. The opal caught the overhead light, spitting fire across the dull concrete walls. For a moment, even Curtis was caught by it: a flash of pride, quickly buried.
“Impressive,” Blake murmured. He turned the necklace, inspecting each setting. “You’ve outdone yourself, Mr. Thorne. Almost makes me regret the necessity of our business.”
Curtis caught the edge of the barb. He said nothing.
Blake set the necklace down, carefully and fixed Curtis with an amused glare. “Let’s discuss payment.”
Curtis nodded. “The contract specified—”
“Forty thousand,” Blake interrupted, his voice flat and final.
Curtis didn’t understand at first. “Excuse me?”
“I’ll wire forty thousand. You’ll have it before close of day.”
He forced a laugh. “You must be joking.”
“Hardly,” Blake said. He brushed imaginary lint from his lapel. “You’re in no position to haggle. I know your rent is past due, and I’d hate for this beauty” — he tapped the opal, lightly — “to end up as scrap when the bailiffs haul you out tomorrow.”
Curtis felt the blood drain from his face, then surge back, hotter. He pointed to the ledger tacked above the espresso machine, where the original figure was highlighted: 100,000, net upon delivery. “That was the deal. Materials alone—”
“Your mistake,” Blake interrupted, his voice soft but predatory. “You should have hedged. But you didn’t, so now you’ll take the forty and thank me for the exposure.”
Curtis’s grip on the workbench tightened until the wood groaned. “You know what this is worth.”
Blake sighed, bored already. “It’s worth whatever I say it’s worth. It’s a small world, Mr. Thorne. Displease me, and you’ll never sell another piece ever again.”
The room seemed to contract around them, the air thickening with a charge that felt electrical. Curtis glanced at the safe, the old photograph of Leskov, the ruin of his own hands.
“Why,” he asked, voice quivering, “do you people always assume no one will ever push back?”
Blake’s smile sharpened. “Because you never do.”
Curtis wanted to throw something — a soldering iron, a vial of etchant — anything that would erase the smirk from Blake’s face. Instead, he picked up a pair of jeweler’s pliers and squeezed them until the metal bit flesh. “Get out. Now.”
Blake didn’t move. “Careful, Curtis. Violence is a bad look for a struggling artisan.”
He tried to steady his breath. “You can take the necklace for the agreed price or not at all. But I’m not giving it away. I’d rather melt it down than let you have it.”
For the first time, Blake’s composure slipped. Only a fraction, but enough. He leaned forward, lowering his voice to a hiss. “You’re desperate. You’ll take less.”
Curtis felt something in him break, a thin membrane that had held his anger in check for years. He dropped the pliers, the clatter loud in the silence and stood so abruptly as the stool skittered away. The two men were face to face, close enough that Curtis could smell the imported cologne and, he felt, the faint, sour tang of entitlement.
“Last chance,” Curtis said. “Full price or walk.”
Blake laughed: sharp, derisive, unguarded. “You pathetic little man. You wouldn’t dare.”
Something cold and final settled in Curtis’s chest. He looked down at his hands, at the veins coiled tight beneath thin skin. Then at the necklace, still pulsing with its impossible light.
He closed the box slowly and deliberately and set it on the shelf behind him. The act felt like slamming a coffin.
“Leave,” Curtis whispered.
Blake straightened his cufflinks, not breaking eye contact. “You’ll regret this,” he said. “Maybe not today, but soon. Everyone does.”
He left without another word.
Curtis stood alone in the thickening dusk, breathing in the ozone of his own rage. The world narrowed to a point. In the background, the espresso machine clicked on, as if to mock him.
He didn’t move for a long time, afraid of what would happen if he did.
But he already knew.
Afterward, Curtis could never reconstruct the exact sequence. Only that the world went very small, the air narrowing to the blur of his own breath and the way the hammer fit in his palm.
It was dusk again, or maybe it had never truly left from the night before. He moved through the workshop like a ghost, drawn to the places where his work had failed him, to the table where the necklace sat boxed and mute. Somewhere between the last negotiation and the next, he had gotten a headache so profound it roared behind his eyes, a caged animal rattling its ribs.
The door buzzed again. Not a knock, never a courtesy; the insistence of those who owned the world.
Curtis opened it on the second ring. Blake stepped in, looking fresher, more charged with energy than any man had a right to be at this hour. The suit was new; he must have changed, perhaps anticipating a victory lap. The confidence radiated like a toxin around a wound.
“I hope you’ve reconsidered,” Blake said, smile already curdling into a sneer.
Curtis did not reply. He just watched the man, a buzzing in his molars. He thought of the ledger, the rent notice, the portrait of Leskov watching him from above the bench. He thought of his father’s hands and of his own and of how little difference it had made.
“You know,” Blake said, casually, as if sharing a family recipe, “it seems your prospects are even grimmer than you let on. You might want to take my offer before the possibility evaporates.”
Curtis’s vision pulsed. He was aware, in a detached way, of his hand closing around the steel-shaping mallet. It was heavy, perfectly balanced; the handle still bore the thumbprint of Leskov, from when the old man had given it to him as an apprentice. “For pounding out the kinks,” Leskov had joked, “In the metal or the maker.”
He moved behind the workbench, putting the wooden slab between them. Blake followed, relentlessly.
“It’s a good deal,” Blake insisted. “More than you’ll get from anyone else. Think about it: forty thousand in your account, and you walk out with your dignity intact. Or whatever’s left of it.”
Curtis tightened his grip on the mallet. The words came out raw. “You never had dignity. You only have leverage.”
Blake grinned. “And yet, here we are. One last chance, Curtis.”
The phrase detonated something inside him. He didn’t recall the transition from conversation to violence. Just the sound: the sudden, wet thunk of mallet meeting bone, the way Blake’s eyes went wide, like a clock surprised by midnight. Then blood. Not a trickle, but a blossom, bright against the navy wool of the suit, spattering the necklace box and the white of the ledger above the espresso machine.
For a second, they were both statues: Curtis frozen, Blake leaning back as if considering the ceiling, arms out in a gesture of eternal questioning. The room smelled of copper and ozone. Then Blake crumpled, a sack of laundry, his head smacking the concrete with a hollow drumbeat.
Curtis watched himself from somewhere above, not believing the heighened reality of flesh, of violence, of anything but the heat blooming in his hands. The mallet clattered to the floor, rolling a few inches before it came to rest, as if it too needed time to process what had occurred.
He fell to his knees beside the body, instinct overriding thought. Blake’s pulse beat frantic under the jaw, but the eyes were already losing focus. Curtis tried to say something: a word, an apology, a curse, but all he could utter was a dry croak. He pressed his hands to the wound, but it only made the blood well faster, pooling beneath the collar and creeping toward the grout lines on the floor.
After thirty seconds, the struggle stopped. Blake’s chest hitched, then slowed, then ceased entirely. Curtis released the pressure and sat back, palms painted red. He waited for the next thing to happen, but nothing did.
The world grew very still.
Curtis stood, legs shaking. He stumbled to the sink, ran the water, scrubbed his hands until the skin screamed. Blood and water swirled in the basin, a small universe of guilt and denial. He dried himself on the apron, then untied it, leaving the cloth on the counter as if it could absorb the crime by osmosis.
He looked at Blake again, expecting some trick, some sign of life. There was none. The necklace box still sat on the bench, untouched by violence save for a single red fleck on the velvet. Curtis wiped it away with the back of his sleeve, carefully, reverently.
The clock above the espresso machine ticked on. For the first time in months, Curtis no longer cared what hour it was.
He staggered to the safe and pulled it open. Removed the black diamond cufflinks, the sapphire ring, every failed experiment and hopeful commission he had ever made. He arranged them in a careful line along the workbench, an impromptu memorial to all the things he could never sell. He set the necklace at the center, the opal’s fire dulled by the cold room.
Curtis took a long breath and let it out slowly. He thought of Leskov, of the pain and the purity of the work, of how, sometimes, there was nothing left but to destroy the thing you loved.
He turned back to the body, tried to summon feeling, but only exhaustion answered.
He sat on the floor, knees drawn to his chest, and waited for the next knock at the door.
Copyright © 2026 by Michael J. D’Alfonsi
