Page 12 of Corrupted Heart

Midway through pinning my hair up into a bun, I turn. My brow furrows at the whiteness of her face and the sheer panic in her eyes.

“The duffle bag…”

I swallow, my bottom lip retreating between my teeth. I shake my head.

“I—I’m sorry, Alicia. They got it.”

Her face turns ashen and green around the edges, as if she’s going to throw up.

“Y-you don’t have it?” she croaks in a squeaky, terrified tone.

I shake my head again.

“Fuck me,” she blurts, turning as her throat bobs. “Oh fuck…”

“TIME!”

The barked word from Comrade Kuzmina outside the dressing room makes us both jump.

“I—I’m really sorry, Alicia,” I mumble again. “Look, I’m sure if you talked to Grisha?—”

“I am so fucked,” she mutters coldly, brushing past me and yanking the door open. She pauses, twisting to catch my frightened eyes with her downright terrified ones. “And so are you.”

For a professional dancer, classes and rehearsals take up your whole day. After morning class, the company today breaks into four subgroups, each working on a different piece for our upcoming performance in a few months. After lunch, I join Milena, Naomi, and Miguel, a super-talented new-to-the-company male dancer from Barcelona for an hour of strength and stretch, then it’s right back into rehearsing the various pieces until all I know is the count of a metronome, the bark of Madame Kuzmina’s voice, and the thud of my pulse as my muscles carry me through the steps.

Yes, it’s grueling, and there’s never a morning that you wake up and something isn’t hurting, whether it’s an old injury that you tweaked yesterday or something freshly wrenched.

But I fucking love this. Always have. And it takes so much concentration and focus that it even manages to take my mind off everything I’ve seen and every fear I’ve felt over the last twenty-four hours.

“Hungry?” Milena towels off her long blonde hair next to me, completely unfazed by her post-shower nudity. I mean, I wouldn’t be either, if I looked like her. We all have to be in insane shape to be dancing at this level. But my Russian friend was also blessed with runway model legs, and what little body fat she has is in all the right places.

“Naomi and I were talking about going for a bite at that new dumpling place she was talking about.”

My stomach gurgles enthusiastically. I’m actually starving.

“I mean, after you shower and change at home.”

My two friends are part of the very small group who knows why I don’t shower at the theater itself at the end of the day.

I’m torn. I do want to go out with them. But instantly, I start replaying the parts of last night I’ve forced out of my head. Not the exciting thrilling parts involving the masked giant who smelled like clean spice, whose big hand brushed my stomach through my hoodie and who dragged a thick finger up my sternum before his hand wrapped sensually around my throat.

No, what flickers into the forefront of my head is all the other parts of last night. The naked terror of those two men throwing me to the ground. Of them pinning me there and reaching for their belts…

I remember Dante’s warning from earlier about not going out at night. It’d be nice to say I’m being ridiculous. But last night did happen.

“I can’t,” I sigh, lying to my friend. “I’ve got a family thing.”

She shrugs. “No prob. I get it.”

“Next time, for sure.”

Next time, when the memories of last night aren’t fresh scars on my psyche…

I change into leggings and a hoodie, hoist my enormous bag over my shoulder, and step out of the back of the theater to go find a taxi.

But the second the stage door shuts behind me, I’m gasping in cold fear as a brutal hand wraps around my wrist and yanks me into the darkness. The breath is slammed out of my body as I’m shoved hard into a brick wall.

“Where the fuck is my money, bitch?!”

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