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What if we left? Went somewhere else? Just the thought makes my heart wrench in my chest. I love the ballet. I love dancing, and selfishly, I love the position I’ve managed to secure in this corps. Only in a large city—New York, Boston, Chicago—could I have this sort of opportunity. Life would be more affordable in Chicago, but there’s no guarantee I’d get into the corps there, and I’d have to work my way up again. I know that, if it meant I’d have to work less and have more time with Niki, I should do it. But I keep hanging on, hoping that things will get easier, because I truly don’t want to leave.
I tell myself that moving and shaking up his routine, would be bad for his progress. It’s even probably true. But it doesn’t change the fact that at least part of my reasoning is selfish. Guilt worms its way through me, adding to the feeling that’s been steadily growing ever since I agreed to Lorenzo’s job.
It doesn’t help that, when I go back inside, I once again can’t stop myself from scanning the couches at the back, hoping I’ll see him there. I also can’t stop the swoop of disappointment in my stomach when I don’t see him.
I sway past a row of tables, and a hand lands on my wrist, turning me. I start to tell him not to touch, but his hand immediately drops away before I can—and I’m startled enough at the sight of the man that the words die on my lips.
He’s not at all the usual sort of man who comes into the Rosebud. He’s young—maybe twenty-eight or twenty-nine. Handsome, with dark blond hair that falls a little loosely around the front of his face, and perfect features. Brad Pitt with dark eyes. He’s wearing a fitted charcoal t-shirt and dark wash jeans, leaning back casually in his chair with a beer next to him, and his gaze slides over me with an interest that looks more appreciative than lustful.
“Are you interested in a dance?” I turn towards him, his leg trapped between mine as I put one hand on the table, looking down at him seductively. He looks a bit more well-off than most of the men who come here, too, and I don’t want to let him slip away, even though something about him sets off a faint alarm in the back of my head. It’s that innate instinct that women tend to have, the gut feeling that someone could be dangerous—but so long as I’m careful, nothing bad will come of it. Even in the back rooms, we have bouncers who will come if we call. Not because Dick cares about us, but because injured dancers are bad for business.
“Right here?” His hand comes up to touch my hip, and I resist the urge to push it away. Once we’re in the back room, I’ll lay down the rules. “I can’t say I’m interested in that, but if there’s somewhere else we can go?—”
“We can go see if the back room is free.” I smile at him, arching forward a little, one hand on his shoulder. “And then it’ll be just you and I.”
His gaze sweeps over me again. “I like the sound of that.”
“Come on, then.” I reach for his hand, tugging him up out of the seat with a practiced gesture, the artificial smile still on my face, as if we’re two lovers sneaking off to make out in the corner. “Let’s go.”
I glance down quickly at my cleavage as we walk, making sure the bag of pills is safely tucked inside my bra. To my relief, the room is free—it’s always difficult to keep a man’s attention while waiting for the space. Usually, it ends with him getting a dance up against the wall, not paying nearly as much for it, and moving on. But there’s no one inside, and I push the door open, walking past the dancer as I lead my new ‘friend’ into the back room.
There’s a long black leather couch in the center of the room, and I guide him to it. “Make yourself comfortable,” I tell him playfully, flicking my gaze down the front of his lean body as if I’m genuinely interested. Anywhere else, I might have been—he’s really very attractive—but something about a man being here makes me immediately lose any interest I might otherwise have had.
Unless it’s Lorenzo.
I ignore the jeering in the back of my head, walking towards the line of liquor bottles at the back of the wall, next to a side table with a box of tissues—for reasons I prefer not to think about—and the deck for the music. “Do you want a drink?” I ask casually, over my shoulder, reaching in to fish out the pills with my other hand. I’ll tuck them inside the tissue box until I know if he’s someone who might be interested or not—one of Jewel’s hints—and if he ends up needing the tissues, I’ll tell him that I’ll get them myself.
“A whiskey would be nice. Neat.” His voice is low, rough in that way that men use sometimes to be seductive, but it does nothing for me. I can’t help comparing it to Lorenzo’s deep, faintly accented voice—the way it sent shivers over my skin even when he wasn’t trying to seduce me at all. Even when he had me pinned to a wall, his gaze threatening as he looked down at me.
I really, truly need to get it together.
I reach for the bottle of whiskey and pour it into one of the glasses—not glass, really, but that sort of faceted plastic meant to look like glass—and take it over to the man on the couch. “It’s not very good,” I murmur quietly. “But here you go.”
He smirks, taking it from my fingers. “The finest thing in this place is you. What’s your name?”
“Angel.” The stage name drops from my lips easily now—at first, when I started dancing here, I almost gave my real name away half a dozen times. Now, I never come close to making that mistake.
“You’re not going to tell me your real name?” He takes a sip of the whiskey and winces, setting it aside. I don’t blame him—the liquor here is shit. It’s meant to get patrons drunk, not entice their palates.
“Would you expect me to?” I flash him an alluring smile, turning to go and put on the music. I make sure to sway my hips, the movements as practiced now as the steps of my stage routine. All of it fake, all of it coming as naturally now as my real self. Sometimes more so.
Some nights, I worry that I’ll lose myself here. That whatever makes me will dissolve in a cloud of cheap perfume and alcohol fumes, and I’ll become like Cherry, or any of the other half- dead-eyed girls who have resigned themselves to their fates in this place. That I’ll lose my position at the ballet, and this will become all that’s left of my life.
“I could find out.” His voice has a playful note, but it sends a chill down my spine. He’s hardly the first man to tease finding out a dancer’s identity, but it’s always frightening all the same. The last thing I want is for any of these men to know my real name, where I live—to track me down and put not just me in danger, but Niki.
“Where’s the fun in that?” The music fills the room, and I move to the beat of it as I approach him again, my gaze hooded. “A little mystery spices things up. Besides—” I lean over him, one knee between his legs as I arch and writhe a little, “—the man in charge here is very careful with his paperwork.”
A warning, not to try to dig, shrouded in teasing seduction. Most of the time, men drop it at this point. But his keen gaze locks on my face, and I have a feeling he’s not going to drop it so easily.
Why, I’m not sure. But coupled with the bag of pills tucked into the tissue box, it makes my stomach churn.
“Oh, I didn’t intend to go digging in your boss’s files.” He smirks, and his eyes do slide down the front of my body then, resting on my breasts, and then the flat dip of my belly, down to my garter belt and my thighs in the sheer black stockings. “I can find out just about anything easy enough. Perks of working for the LAPD.”
My stomach drops at that. It’s all I can do to keep my expression smooth and vaguely flirtatious, to keep moving to the music without missing a beat, arching and grinding against him as I hover over his lap. If I flinch even a little, he’ll know something is wrong. It’s only the months of staring down my landlord, fielding calls from utilities, arguing with receptionists, dealing with Alfio, and facing my ballet instructor that keeps me from flinching now, as I look down into the dark eyes of a man whom I now realize is a cop.
A cop. When I know about the murder of a man killed by a mafia underboss. A mafia boss who I was sleeping with. When I have illegal drugs tucked a few feet away, belonging to that same underboss.
My stomach tightens, and I feel the burn of nausea in my throat. One misstep, one wrong word, and my whole life comes crashing down.
