I cease breathing.
I blink once, twice, desperately trying to chalk this up to another play of my imagination, a manifestation of my demons and hallucinations.
Maybe I’ve exhausted my mind so much that it’s started to fabricate things.
Raising a shaky hand to my wrist, I sink my nails into it. Pain explodes on my tender skin and my mouth parts.
This is real.
I’m not dreaming or hallucinating. I’m not waking up from this nightmare in a cold sweat. This is the actual world.
A few rows ahead, the stranger who held a gun to my head a week ago is sitting with the producers. He’s wearing a gray cashmere coat over his black shirt and his hair is styled, neat, looking like a CEO who’s just been to a meeting. His demeanor is composed—normal, even.
But there’s nothing normal about him.
Even from this distance, I can feel the danger emanating off him in waves and aiming daggers straight at my chest. His expression is neutral, but it wouldn’t be more terrifying if he were scowling. Because I know what that façade hides, what actually lurks beneath the surface.
A killer.
A lethal, cold-hearted one at that, who wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.
Did he change his mind and come to kill me after all?
Is this my last dance before I meet the fate of the men from that night?
My legs tremble and I’m a second away from collapsing on my face or vomiting the salad I had for lunch.
“Lia!” Philippe’s impatient voice echoes through the air, yanking me back to the present. In my stupor, I forgot that I stopped mid-movement.
What the hell? That’s a first and it doesn’t go unnoticed. The other dancers scowl at me as if I personally hurt them. Philippe and Stephanie watch me, puzzled, because they know I’m not the type to lose focus or get distracted.
Not when it comes to ballet.
“I’m sorry.” I release a long breath. “Let’s go again, please.”
I don’t trust myself to not break down here and now if I keep staring at him or imagining his gun pointed at my head. So I take refuge in the one thing that gives me joy—dancing.
My movements aren’t as fluid as I like, but it’s impossible to force myself into that headspace. Not when dread and fear like I’ve never felt before continue to shoot at me from every direction.
When I was trapped in that black box, I believed I knew what fear felt like. It was dark and tight and made me wet myself.
But that was far from what I’m experiencing right now. Fear has evolved into a tall, dark-haired stranger with terrifying gray eyes and a lethal weapon.
I try my hardest to ignore the spectators, like I always have, but it’s damn near impossible when I know he’s there, watching, contemplating, biding his time until he decides to pounce on me.
I never pay attention to the audience, because they interfere with my performance and my interpretation of the character’s emotions. The only time I look at them is once I’m done and everything is finished.
Now is different.
Now, I can feel his intense cold eyes piercing into me and peering inside my head. In a way, it feels like everyone else has disappeared and he’s the only presence I can sense. The only person who’s watching me. Just like Albrecht was watching Giselle that day and became infatuated with her.
That thought sends a chill to my bones, but my feet don’t falter. I don’t lose my footing again. If anything, I become one with the music, and as Stephanie said, I let Giselle take over me. I let her be a naive fool who’s dancing in the forest. The lone difference is that I’m well aware of who’s watching me—more than aware. I know his eyes are taking in my every movement.
Instead of deterring me, the thought allows me to completely let go. I’m free-falling like a feather, boneless and suspended from my body’s physical reality.
I stand on pointe more than specified in the choreography and give my performance of the year. I don’t even know what’s come over me. Is it the fact that this could be my last dance? Or do I want to show him my passion for what I do, hoping that he’ll have mercy and let me go?
Either way, I don’t stop or hold back. I give it my all, pushing my muscles to their limit.
When I’m finished, I stand in place in fourth position, catching my breath. A round of applause comes from Philippe and I’m immediately wrenched to the present. The spell breaks, the world and people filtering back in with a symphony of sounds and chatter. For some strange reason, I miss the state where it was only me. I turn around to find the director ready for a hug.
“Bravo, chérie! This is my Lia.” He points at his forearm. “You give me chills.”
“Thanks,” I murmur.
Stephanie rubs my arm. “You became one with her, didn’t you?”
“I think so.” I keep talking in a low tone, not wanting a certain someone from the audience to hear.
I chance a glance around the theater and find the stranger’s seat beside our producer, Matt, empty. I search for him in case he’s changed places, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
A long breath heaves out of my lungs. Maybe he didn’t come for me after all. Or maybe my plan worked and he saw how much I love ballet? Though I doubt it.
He’s the type who destroys things instead of preserving them. Why would my passion be any different?
After we finish rehearsal, I head to my dressing room to have a hot shower before I leave. I could use a cup of tea and some mindless television right now.
My limbs are still shaking from the stranger’s sudden reappearance and I’m lightheaded, as if I’m walking on the clouds.
My mind is somewhere else when I open my dressing room door and close it behind me. That’s when I sense something is wrong.
Cautiously, I turn around and gasp, hands flying to my mouth, when I find him standing next to my dressing table, running his fingers over the jewelry and makeup products scattered by the mirror.
If I thought he was intimidating when sitting several rows away in the audience, he’s damn terrifying up close. I can almost feel the muzzle of his cold gun nestled against my forehead, ready to fire and tear me to pieces.
Without thinking twice, I turn to flee, my sweaty hands grabbing the doorknob.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” he says casually. “That will make me use violence, and I would rather not bruise that fair skin, Lia.”
The sound of my name coming off his tongue sends new tendrils of fear through me. It’s like he’s making it his mission to up the intensity of such emotions in me.
My chin quivers as I release the doorknob and slowly spin around, my ballet shoes skittering against the floor. I know I should run, but at the same time, I’m well aware that his threats aren’t idle. He killed someone—or three—what’s one more addition to his list?
He’s still in front of my dressing table, but he’s stopped going through my things and is standing upright now, one hand in the pocket of his black pants and the other by his side. I almost forgot how tall and broad he is, how his physique can eat up all the atmosphere and any oxygen that comes with it.
The scariest thing about him isn’t his gun—that I’m sure is hidden somewhere. It’s the absolute calm etched in his handsome features when he’s about to use that gun. It’s his complete composure right now while I’m trembling like a leaf in a hurricane.
He is that hurricane, wrecking people’s lives without being affected in the least.
“How did you get in here?” I’m thankful my voice doesn’t betray my scattered emotions.
“I don’t think that’s the question you want to ask, Lia. Shouldn’t you be more worried about why I’m here?”
“Are you going to kill me?” I whisper, choking on the words.
“Why? Have you been talking?”
“No. I swear.”
“I’m aware you haven’t, or we wouldn’t be standing here.”
He knows I’ve kept my mouth shut, but he’s still using the intimidation factor to corner me. I’m so thankful that I didn’t decide to play detective. While those men’s deaths shouldn’t go unnoticed and I haven’t stopped having nightmares about them, I also don’t want to die. I still have so many things to do and I refuse to be an indispensable pawn in someone else’s chess game.
However, the fact that he’s here while knowing I didn’t talk means he’s not done with me.
Not even close.
And that realization, although I’ve been contemplating it all this time, snaps my spine into a painful line.
“Are you going to hurt me?” My voice is small, divulging my erratic heartbeat.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On your ability to follow orders.”
“W-what orders?”
“Have dinner with me, Lia.”
“What?” I mean to snap, but it comes out as a bewildered murmur. Did this killer/stranger/the one who threatened and continues to threaten my life just asked me to have dinner with him?
His face remains the same, caught in that eternal calm that only monks should be allowed to have. “Dinner, something where people eat and talk.”
“I know what dinner is. I just…I just don’t know why the hell you’re asking that of me.”
“I already answered that question. To talk.”
“About what?”
“You’ll know once we have dinner.”
“Can’t we talk here?”
“No.”
It’s a single word, but it’s so closed off that I know he’s done entertaining my questions.
Still, I have to ask this, “What if I don’t want to?”
“As I said, your safety depends on your ability to follow orders, Lia.”
I swallow at the subtle threat in his tone. His message is clear. If I don’t have dinner with him, he’ll act on that threat. Worse, he might even finish what he started a week ago.
“It would’ve been easier to take you to an unfinished construction site or ambush you in your apartment building, but I’m offering you dinner in a restaurant with people around. You’re smart enough to realize the difference, aren’t you?”
The difference between getting hurt and not. My ability to stay alive and the complete opposite.
While everything in me revolts against the idea of going anywhere with him, my survival instinct rushes forward.
Dinner is definitely much better than being killed in a parking garage and having all traces gone in the morning.
Besides, he awakened something inside me earlier by merely sitting in the audience. I chalked it up to coincidence, but now that he’s standing in front of me, my legs tingle with the need to move, to do something, anything.
If I have to do this, I might as well find out why someone like him, a dangerous criminal, was able to draw that reaction out of me.
“I need to change,” I say, tactfully avoiding his gaze, not only because of its intensity, but also because he seems to peer into me whenever we make eye contact.
“Then change.”
“You need to leave for me to do that.”
“And allow you to call for help or escape? I don’t think so.”
“I won’t call for help. If that was an option, I would’ve done it already.”
“You would’ve done it already,” he repeats, rolling the words over his tongue with that sinful accent.
“Yes, and I won’t escape either. There’s just one door.”
“There’s a window in the bathroom that you can climb through.”
God. He already went over this entire place, didn’t he?
“I won’t escape. Just go. Wait outside the door.”
He pulls the chair and sits down, his long legs stretching in front of him before he crosses them at the ankles.
“I’m going nowhere, Lia. Now, change.”
