Page 53 of Nemesis

My muscles instantly slacken.

“You’re okay. Breathe.”

My hyperventilation slows. The effect is so immediate that embarrassment flushes my skin.

I come back to myself. To the room with the warm rays of sunshine. To the male bodies that crowd around my position on the floor. Murderers. Soldiers. Family.

Self-consciousness replaces the panic, alcohol drizzled over a cut.

“Y…you left me,” I stammer through my next exhale, dipping my chin into his neck to hide my shame.

“It won’t happen again,” Vasiliy whispers, holding me against him on the floor.

I rub the wet streaks from my face with angry swipes. “I’m a terrible feminist.”

Vasiliy chuckles softly, swiping a final tear from the corner of my eye before it can even fall. “We’ll be better feminists tomorrow, moya zlaya.”

There’s something quite bizarre about sitting across from the human being who decided to give you half his genes on a whim nearly twenty-two years ago.

Though I haven’t bothered to utter more than a couple of monosyllabic grunts, I’ve picked up on a few of my sperm donor’s traits. For one, he’s extremely large. Almost as tall as Vasiliy, and slightly wider, too. And you know what? After years of praying for a few extra inches to meet the long-legged ballet standard, that kind of pisses me off. Science isn’t fair, and my short, stubby legs had to pay the price.

I’ve also noticed that he’s incredibly analytical, soaking up every word from Vasiliy’s mouth with an intelligent glint, as if he’s filing the information away in some complicated file cabinet in the back of his mind. I won’t lie, it’s a little creepy.

Maybe he’s a psychopath—the clinical version, not the mindless insult.

Oh shit. Does that mean I’m a psychopath too?

I flunked science.

“I still don’t understand how my daughter got all mixed up with the likes of you,” my father says after Vasiliy gets through explaining our kidnapping and captivity.

My eyes grow tired, despite the clock reading half past three in the afternoon. I curl into Vasiliy’s larger form on the bed behind me.

The fact that seeing us so entwined is making my absent father increasingly uncomfortable is just a bonus. Ever since my embarrassing freakout on the floor, he has refrained from commenting on our strange closeness, but that hasn’t stopped the glares from being tossed Vas’s way.

“Solokov ordered me to attend a donor performance at the ballet with his Second, Ivan Petrov,” Vasiliy explains, casually mentioning his employer as if my father knows the guy.

Well, now that I think about it, they might know each other, since they both run those Bratva-things.

“Are you a dancer?” my father asks.

My mouth dries.

I’ve never been ashamed of my career, but how am I supposed to tell this successful leader of an underground empire that all his daughter amounted to was a ballet dancer who makes less than minimum wage and can’t afford groceries most weeks?

“She happens to be the youngest principal ballerina that the Manhattan Ballet has had in years. Hers was the most breathtaking performance I’ve ever seen.”

Shock blooms in my chest at Vasiliy’s words. How would he know that?

Shock, and something warmer. Purer.

“By that, he means it was the only performance he’s ever seen, and I’m pretty sure he slept through it,” I laugh, trying to negate the overwhelming effect of his speech.

“Never. Before seeing you, I never knew dance could be so angry.”

My mouth slackens, hanging open like a goldfish.

“I hope to see you dance one day,” my father murmurs with a confusing tone of honesty.