Page 149 of Dance of Ruin

Adam’s bleary eyes raise, horror on his haggard, bloodied face.

“You…you promised us if we gave you wha…what you wanted to know…”

“That I’d let you go?” I chuckle to myself, twirling the shears in my hand.

“Yeah, and you promised Naomi she was just going to have her picture taken.”

His face goes white.

“But don’t worry, you rapist piece of shit,” I say quietly. “Death is alongway off for both of you. Now, whose balls am I cutting off first?”

32

NAOMI

I don’t sleepmuch at Milena’s.

I mean, her place isbeautiful—ultra-modern, floor-to-ceiling windows, a private elevator that opens straight into the penthouse. It smells like jasmine, has silk throw blankets…well,everywhere…and I think every surface in the kitchen is imported marble.

There’s both an espresso machineanda wine fridge in the bathroom of the guest room I’m staying in, both in comfortable reach of the bathtub.

Yeah.

But I still feel like I’m interloping on someone else’s life.

Milena’s been nothing but amazing since I called her, holding back tears, and asked if I could stay with her. First, she comforted me as I cried into her shoulder.

Then she offered to have Nico killed via a Bratva hit.

But she hasn’t asked any questions or made any comments about what happened between him and me, and I haven’t told her a single detail.

I can’t.

I’m not ready to face that yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever be.

Milena hasn’t pushed it. She’s just made space for me in that amazing way she has. But even with her kindness, and her offer to stay as long as I want, it feels like I’m just floating along, waiting.

I hate it.

I keep replaying that scene in Nico’s apartment. The words that broke it all. The silence that followed. And the horror in his eyes when he dropped to his knees.

I wanted to forgive him.

God, I wanted to.

But the truth—that everything I gave him, everything I surrendered to him, was built on a lie—shattered something in me.

I keep telling myself I did the right thing.

But the ache in my chest feels more like grief than victory, and no amount of punishing self-imposed extra rehearsal time has been able to quiet it.

That said, I still find myself staying late after everyone else leaves, day after day.

I stretch in silence, alone on the stage, the tips of my pointe shoes whispering against the scuffed Marley floor.

Then, I start to dance.

The music’s in my head, but it’s so deeply ingrained it might as well be playing over speakers. I hear every note, leaping, pirouetting; my body moving as if pulled by invisible threads as I dance until the memories of Nico taking me in his arms, capturing my lips with his, or just looking into my eyes burn from my mind.

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