Page 68 of Off Balance

"No. She wanted to warn a very green, impressionable young woman about the viper's pit she was walking into. She never once mentioned your name. You're the one that assumed she was talking about you."

"Is that what she told you?"

"She has no reason to lie about this."

"And I suppose you also believe whatever poison she is filling your mind with, too?"

I sigh heavily. "No one is trying to fill my mind with poison, Emile. You are being paranoid."

"What about Heath, then? What did Mr. Marshall have to say about his circumstance. What was his sob story?"

My gaze narrows on Emile's knowing glare. He could infer that I would have met with Marissa based on our being friends, but how does he know Heath was there?

Emile picks up a folder and tosses some photos at me. Photos of Marissa, Heath, and me at a coffee shop on the other side of the city. I can just make out the full-leg brace around Heath’s right leg, the one he had to have put back together with a metal rod and several pins. He’ll never dance again.

"Which one of us are you having followed?" I ask.

Without removing his hard glare from mine, he throws some more photos at me. Photos of me running with Dom. Photos of us sneaking a kiss behind some trees in the park. Photos of us through the windows of his apartment. Not much can be seen in those, but I know what was happening when those photos were taken, and anyone could make an educated guess.

My entire body flushes hot, not so much out of embarrassment, but out of rage.

"I don't even know where to begin," I say.

"Why don't you start with whatever Heath told you? And then we can move on to how long you've been fucking your uncle."

"Heath didn't tell me anything. And Dom is not my uncle. He's my step uncle. It's… different."

"If you say so, Cameron. Either way, you are cheating on me with a much, much older man who is part of your family, is he not?"

"Cheating on you? We'd have to be in a relationship for it to be considered cheating."

"And what has this been to you?"

"Manipulation. Warped intimidation. Exploitation. Degradation."

"Degradation? Please. As if you weren't willing to give it up to anyone who so much as looked at you twice."

"You use your position as the owner of this company to exploit people."

"C'est n'importe quoi. Prove it."

"You're paying off Heath. He didn't tell me that, by the way, that was something I figured out on my own. Also, by the terms of our own contract, you should have been paying me for the performances where I was listed and performed as principal dancer. Yet you refuse to call me anything other than an intern because you are trying to get away with not paying me as a means of control. You sent thousands of dollars of floral arrangements to an eighteen-year-old girl's dressing room and hover around her like a predator?—"

"You are jealous."

"No. I feel sorry for her. If she wasn't so young and innocent, I'd be glad to let someone else have your attention."

"Glad? After everything I have done for you? I gave you a job, a life! You were nothing but a low-rent slut before I found you. I should have taken you up on your offer that night, and then leftyou with the rest of the trash. It would have been a better use of my time." He assesses me for a moment, a cruel grin spreading over his face. "Although, who else could I have used as a—how do you say it?—a cum dumpster? Yes, that you are good at. Oh, don't be so uptight, Cameron. Everyone knows. I make sure they do. It's how I keep you in your place."

Tears sting my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall.

"It's time for you to get back to rehearsal, Mr. Stevens. I expect you in my office and on your knees where you belong the moment you are showered, otherwise these photos might find their way to the paparazzo. What a shame that would be for Mr. Connor's reputation, would it not?"

I walk away sick to my stomach.

I nearly drop Daphne three times during what remains of rehearsal, and fumble through the steps I know by heart. Everything feels like too much. It's too loud, too bright. My skin is itchy. My thoughts are too much, but not decipherable at all.

The plan I had formed in the back of my mind is nothing but a jumbled mess. I can gamble with my own future, but to risk Dom's? I need to talk to him.He’ll know what to do, or at least be able to talk me down from the edge I feel like I’m standing on.

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