I turned my back on her, looking out at a world that didn’t belong to me. This place. Paris. It gave me an uneasy feeling.
“I—” She stopped and cleared her throat. “I’m going to talk to papà. I’m going to have him send you somewhere else. You should have taken my deal.”
I smiled even though she couldn’t see. It wasn’t pleasant. “You do that. He’s the one who requested me.”
She hadn’t recovered from the shock, even after she entered her dressing room and locked me out.
Chapter7
Saverio
After our conversation, Mia ignored me most of the day. She only answered when she had to.
Minutes ticked with her silence and practice seemed to meld into a live show. I stood backstage, watching from the sidelines as the massive production moved like a well-oiled machine. Except, behind the scenes, it was organized chaos.
It was almost impossible to keep up with the amount of people and fluff, along with a group of men who swore to keep the ballerina from harm. But I did. And I would.
I watched the stage and the constant flow while keeping in touch with my men. Guido, second in charge of the Fausti’s security, was close tonight, so that gave me an extra layer of protection, but I still treated the situation like it was only me, and she was my sole responsibility.
Because she was.
She turned me into a man the day I realized it.
She was mine to protect. To love. To live and to die for.
And she wanted to hide me from the world. Fucking hide us. The thing I was the proudest of in my life. The connection we shared might have been different, but it was simple. Right. So fucking right.
She was complicating it. Making it seem like it was wrong somehow.
That was why she was tired. She was fighting it. She wanted it as much as I did.
I wasn’t a good man. I did things most men would cower from. I knew what wrong was. But the two of us? We were given a small piece of everything that was right in the world.
“Fuck if I let her ruin that for anything,” I muttered to myself, watching as she did some fancy footwork on stage.
Even if she wanted to pretend that she wasn’t watching me, I’d been watching her all day. I expected her to socialize with the other dancers outside of a work capacity. But she kept to herself, and so did they. The only one Mia really talked and laughed with was Edoardo Campagna, who was the male lead dancer.
I’d heard she was having a hard time. She always had a hard time. All her life, she was compared to her famous great-grandmother, Maja Resnik, and her famous mamma, Scarlett Rose Fausti, and she was coming up short.
Mia was taller than her mamma and built differently. She had her mamma’s graceful lines, but she also had Fausti running through her blood. One of her great-grandmothers had been a famous movie star, and she was built like one. There were times I worried about how thin Mia looked, even though she took good care of herself.
I wondered, if she ever quit dancing and the grueling demands it put on her body, whether all her curves and assets would no longer be contained.
She had a face that was unforgettable, too. So beautiful from every angle that it was heartbreaking. But there was something deeper that set her apart. The light inside of her drew me in and refused to let me go. Something about those eyes…
“All good back here?”
“All good everywhere,” I said, nodding to Matteo, who had come to stand beside me.
He returned the nod. “My father tells me Evelina found out who Livia is married to,” he said in Italian.
Evelina was my little sister. Even though I trusted the Faustis, I also didn’t trust all of them. Over the years, they would go to war with each other, one branch of the family trying to take over another so they could lead. It was fucking cutthroat, but I knew something about that and everything about the history of the family. Instead of depending on them solely, I branched out on my own. My sister, who was as beautiful as she was smart, did a lot of sleuthing for me.
“Arsenius Bykov. Goes by Arsenii.”
Matteo’s eyes narrowed on the stage, but I could tell he was thinking. “Russian arms dealer?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s got a good operation but wants to go bigger. He’s American-born and wanting to make a name for himself internationally. His parents were both Russian born.”
