Page 37 of Heart's Temptation
“Let’s go out the back way, grab a coffee and a cigarette and be normal, rebellious women. What do you say?”
What I wanted to say was no. That it was too risky, blah, blah, blah. Or that I hadn’t smoked in years. I never made any of my own choices back in the day, Gio and Marko had made them all for me. Our first show was fast approaching, and the security would increase exponentially. This may be my only time to be a real bad girl.
The sudden longing to just be a person, not a ballerina and especially not someone who belonged to two men, was overwhelming. What could a coffee and a cigarette with a female friend do? Nothing worth mentioning.
“What about…?” I indicated with my eyes who I was talking about. “And another issue, there is the security guarding the back entrance.”
She grinned like this was no problem. “Don’t worry. I’ve got an idea for the big guy, and did you know there’s a secret tunnel from the dressing rooms to an additional exit? I don’t think anyone knows about it.”
“Stop! Seriously, how did you figure that out?”
“Let’s just say that I needed a private spot to make out and stumbled upon it. Have Remo escort you to your dressing room. Pull the makeup table away from the wall. I’ll meet you there.” She winked and then rose from the pillow, returning to the ballet bar.
I was too excited about doing something out of the norm to think about anything beyond the fun I anticipated having and did exactly what Hetty had told me to do. It was only as I was pulling the table away from the wall that I realized I was not being naughty or original, just stupid. But before I had time to truly second guess or talk myself out of it, Hetty appeared in the tunnel wearing a grin and giving me two thumbs up.
She looked so excited I couldn’t back out on her now. I entered the tunnel and followed her up a gentle slope. The further we went, the more wrong it felt. We stepped into a corridor that led to a metal door.
“Finally! I need that coffee more than ever,” Hetty said, and pushed open the door that allegedly led to the alley behind the building, and I had to talk myself off the paranoia ledge. Every person at the ballet had been checked by the Vitale’s IT people and were clean.
In my brain I knew there was nothing to worry about, but my gut said something was wrong.
I should have listened to my gut.
When we stepped out, four men closed in and grabbed us, tossing hoods over our heads and that was the last I saw of Hetty. A prick in my neck that hurt like a son of a bitch had me soon tumbling into darkness.
My mouth felt like it was filled with sandpaper. That same sandpaper was in my eyes, which were unwilling to open due to the grit. A familiar scent haunted me, and I refused to open my eyes to see, because if I didn’t see it, then it couldn’t be real.
I took a deeper inhale, trying to separate the whiff of the familiar from the dank dampness of wherever I was, having no doubt that whoever was responsible for the notes had finally gotten their hands on me. Not just me, but a fellow dancer. I was such an idiot! How unfair to Hetty to be put through this horror when she was an innocent bystander.
Another whiff and I knew what the familiarity was… sandalwood. The scent belonged to whomever had broken into my apartment in New York. Something felt familiar about the room. More scents assaulted me… garbage, a bit of sewer, mold and… I froze. Stale mint cigarette smoke. There was only one place I remembered where all of those existed and that was my old apartment. My eyes flew open to see Liam Kelly standing a few feet away. The windows behind him let in limited light due to the thick paper covering them.
“Welcome back, lass.”
I decided to play dumb and see if I couldn’t extricate myself out of his clutches. Exactly how committed was he to making me pay for running from him in the past?
“Liam! What the hell is going on and what did you do with my friend?”
The burn from the tip of his cigarette matched the fire in his eyes. “I think you know what’s going on.”
I pretended to be outraged. “You do realize you stole me from rehearsal, Hetty as well and we need to get back or all of New York will be searching for us.”
Liam smirked and not in the sexy way that Gio did, or the annoying way that Han did. Nope this smirk was more like the blood and broken limbs variety. My heartbeat was wild in my chest and despite the dank conditions and my lack of proper clothing, I was sweating profusely.
“Hetty is at the studio, telling everyone that you were unhappy and decided to leave. It makes sense, doesn’t it? You escaped through a secret tunnel that only you knew about. And why else would you leave, if not to escape from them?” He sneered when he said them and I knew he meant Marko and Gio.
“They won’t believe her.”
Liam looked amused. “Of course they will. Hetty placed a well-written farewell letter on your makeup table. They’ll see that and the escape route and know you left of your own volition. Really, do you think it would be that hard for them to accept? This won’t the first time you fucked them over by running off, will it?”
I tried gulping the dry dust from my throat, but it only made me choke and cough. Why did I act so stupidly? If I’d only listened to my gut and not Hetty. “I take it Hetty is working for you?”
The look on his face was one of pure evil. “She is.”
“And you’ve been planning this for a while, haven’t you?”
His not-so-nice smile grew as big as the Grinch’s. “I have. You should be flattered, Niki. After all, you’re a street rat, just like me. Mind you, I’ve used our time apart to grow up and take what I want, so street rat isn’t really fitting anymore. I’m the goddamn king rat and you’ll learn that in time.”
A shudder moved down my spine. He’d just answered my earlier questions and proven he had no intention of letting me go.