Page 109 of Xavier

Thirty

Him

It’s funny the information you can find when you know what you’re looking for.

She changed her name. That was the problem, all this time. She changed her fucking name and was lost in the sea of new people coming every day to this godforsaken town, and I couldn't find her.

Malynda. I'd been looking for Malynda. But my Malynda had died in a sea of shame and emerged as Isabella.

But she’ll still always be Malynda to me.

At least she was smart enough to change her name.

It wasn’t that hard to find her attacker’s name, even twelve years after the fact. Not that hard to bribe the admissions officer at the dance school to look up her name and what classes she took and who taught them. And who wasn’t around come the next semester.

And now here I am, in Albany, New York, standing outside a glass door with his fucking name carved into it.

Damien Romanski Studios.

It's funny the information you can find, when you know what you're looking for. And have a wad of cash to bribe whoever needs bribing to get it.

I push on the door. The wind follows me in as I’m greeted with music muffled by walls.

“Can I help you?” a young woman perched on a stool in front of the front counter asks me.

“I’m looking for Damien.”

“He’s um, actually, he’s just in a training session. Can you wait for about ten minutes? He doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

“He’s in a class?”

“Well, yes. It’s a one on one.”

The hackles on the back of my neck spring up as if on command, and it feels like an ice cube is sliding down the middle of my back. I push away from the counter and head toward the music, ignoring the protests of the woman.

It leads me up a narrow staircase and to a closed door on the second floor.

I take a breath and push it open.

Two figures in the middle of the room spring apart. And I know instantly, it’s him.

“Who the fuck are you?” he growls at me.

“Are you okay?” I say to the girl, ignoring him. She just shrugs. “Good, then I’m going to give you five seconds to collect your things and leave. You’re not going to want to be here for this.”

“Hey! Who the fuck do you think you are?” he says again, grabbing onto the girl’s arm.

I steel myself. Not yet. “I suggest you let her go. Right now. You’re not going to want a witness for what’s about to happen.”

Something in my words makes him drop his hand from her forearm and she hesitates, looking at each of us in turn.

“GO!” I yell and she jumps, her hands coming up to her blushing face as she runs past me and out the door.

He takes a step toward me, chest puffed in an involuntarily display of his masculinity. “I’m going to ask you one last time. Who the fuck are you, and where do you get off coming into my dance studio and telling my students what to do?”

“And that bothers you? Because you’re the only one that likes to tell young girls what to do?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”