Page 92 of Vicious Impulses (The Capo and Ballerina)
Ignazio barely waits for the last bobby-pin in my hair. He’s back to being a loud bully, clutching me by the arm and dragging me from the dressing room.
The men let him know Nero’s arrived and is seated in the audience. He expects the performance to start in five minutes.
“But what am I even performing?” I pant, scurrying to keep up on our walk backstage.
“Your solo from Lupi Nella Notte. I have the music on deck. It’ll impress him. You should want to stay alive.”
Ignazio gives me another hard nudge toward the stairs to the stage. My legs feel stiff and uncooperative as I stagger my way up the steps.
The bright stage lights flash on and almost blind me. An arm comes up to shield my eyes. Nerves flutter inside my belly in warning I’m beyond unprepared. I’m in no condition to perform, let alone a complex routine like my solo from Lupi Nella Notte.
My mind’s fuzzy. My heart aches. Caelian feels like a ghost alongside me, making me wish he were really here.
His protection and the safety I found in him.
“There she is!” Nero yells from his seat in the fifth row. The huge theater is empty except for him and a handful of his men. He breaks out into applause with a delighted grin stretched onto his face. Though it’s been a while since I’ve last seen him, he’s as ostentatious as ever in a black and gold embroidered dinner jacket. His loose curls shine even at a distance from all the product he’s used.
I drop my arm to my side and give him no reaction. I won’t let him know he gets to me. I won’t make whatever this is more enjoyable for him.
“Well?” he demands loudly in the empty theater. “What do you have to say for yourself, Nevaeh? Do you realize the amount of trouble we’ve gone through to get you here? You’ve been a very, very bad ballerina. Your family’s been very, very bad too. Explain.”
My lips part to speak, then I stop and glance to my left off stage. Ignazio’s watching with the kind of baffled expression that tells me he’s unsure how I should play this. The nerves already running rampant inside me intensify.
“I… I don’t know,” I answer uncertainly.
Nero quirks a groomed brow. “You don’t know?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“You mean you’ve been ducking me for weeks—your whole family’s been—and I’m supposed to believe you don’t know? Sweetheart, you better fucking know,” he says, pulling out a handgun as though it’s a toy to tinker with. He cocks back the hammer and aims it at me on stage. “Let me tell you how this is going to work. You’ve got some vital information. You’re going to entertain me with your little dance like you used to, then you’re going to provide me with what your family’s taken from Zinc Co. Then… then I’ll decide if I want to be nice or if I want to be nasty. Believe me when I say, you want me to be very nice to you.Capeesh?”
A numbness settles over me. I nod, feeling any hope drain from my body.
Nero grins wider. “Good, sweetheart. Now, go on. Dance.”
TWENTY-NINE
Caelian
“Nevaeh,”I grit out. “Nevaeh!”
“C, you’ve got to stay still,” Ms. Poitier lectures from somewhere beyond my blurred vision. “You’ve got to let Tulio do his job.”
My arms swipe at whoever it is hovering over me. Clobbering smacks that could easily knock a normal person off their feet. In the blinding fever of my pain, I don’t have a single fuck to give if I do. I keep swinging my arms and finally connect with solid skin.
A punch to the throat.
Dr. Tulio chokes at the force of it. He stumbles several steps back and grips his throat with terror widening his eyes.
“C, what the hell!?” Ms. Poitier gasps. She appears as a distorted shape in my limited vision. “Dr. Tulio was administering your treatment. You’re acting like a barbarian.”
“Nevi!” I croak in my weak, husky voice. “NEVI!”
There’s not much I can think or say in moments like this, where my heart feels like it’s being ripped apart. It’s all I can do to simply stay alive. Being drugged into numbness and slumber have been how I’ve managed so long.
But this moment’s different.
Even as the pain eats me up, the only thing I can think of is Nevaeh.