He answered by lifting my hand to his mouth and placing a firm kiss over my knuckles.
“Whatever you do,” I breathed out, “don’t let me go. Not now. The floor doesn’t feel steady.”
Eyes. Eyes were on us from what felt like all sides. All faces were masked, but there was no denying the shocked looks as we passed, still arm in arm.
“Never will I let you go,” he said in Italian, walking in as if he owned the fucking place. “Never feel unsteady when I’m with you. I’m your greatest weapon. When I was designed, it was with you in mind.”
I glanced at him from the side of my eye, his warm words chasing some of the cold fear away.
Maybe it was my imagination, maybe not, but as we moved deeper and deeper into the ballroom, people were moving out of our way, clearing a path.
They all seemed to watch with bated breath—or maybe that was me, because my breath was lodged in my throat—as we stopped in the middle of the dance floor and Aniello released my arm.
The music stopped, and Aniello bowed to me and offered me his hand as if he had planned it. Knowing him, he probably had.
I took it, and again, as if someone was timing our movements, music started to play.
“The Music of the Night,” by a rich-voiced Italian tenor.
I had no clue how to dance to this, but surprising me, Aniello moved us so smoothly that I didn’t worry about making a misstep or looking ridiculous. I wondered if this was what it truly meant to give over all control and let a partner who knew what he was doing lead us to something beautiful.
The way he moved me, I almost felt like I was floating. His moves were so polished, but nowhere close to overly stiff, and our steps were timed to the beat of the music. Even though I was enveloped in this moment with him, I couldn’t help but listen to the lyrics too. It was as if they were written for us.
I grinned up at Aniello when the artist sang about the night, turning away from the harshness of the day, and surrendering to a darker side.
“That’s what I did,” I whispered. “I surrendered to you.”
He turned me out, and then pulled me close to his body once more, gliding us as if this was the dance of our life.
Maybe it would be because this was more than a dance.
This was letting the entire world know, without masks on, who we were and what we were going to do, together.
Disavow.Disconoscere.
We were officially giving the organization our two weeks’ notice—a death sentence in our world.
“I wanted the entire world to know who you were to me the first time we danced to this song,” he said.
“We danced to this song before?” I gazed up at him, and in that moment, I wondered if I could ever love anyone more. I also wondered why people didn’t dance like this anymore. How easy it was to fall, or fall even harder, when the eyes and the body did the talking in such a silent but powerful way.
He nodded but said nothing else. Not until the song seemed to be coming to an end, and he leaned in and whispered, “Baciami, Rosalia,” in that intoxicating accent of his. In that way he had of making my name sound like it belonged to him only.
The tenor’s voice lingered on the last note, and so did our lips, as the kiss to seal our fate faded with the song’s end.
Aniello’s hand was in my hair, and when I was brave enough to open my eyes, to leave the security of where only he could take me, I noticed another song had taken our song’s place, but no one was moving. All eyes were on us.
Maybe they all felt like they had captured the moment that would one day become the beginning of the end of our lives.
As Aniello led me off the dance floor, I said, “If you wanted a show everyone would see, you got it.”
“I gave them the truth,” he said. “Something they will never forget.”
“The truth?”
He stopped at the far end of the ballroom, where people seemed to move out of our way like we had a disease that was catching.
“You are mine.”
