I leaned up against the wall. “You don’t think this is going a little too far? How many long-lost family members are we going to have to take in? We don’t run a halfway house. And I’m still not convinced this isn’t a con of some kind.”
“Who said we’re taking the ballerina?” Kingston asked with a frown. “I thought we just had to meet her.”
I couldn’t hold back a sigh. “Did you miss the part where her grandmother died, and she’s a poor little orphan, all alone in the world?”
Kingston narrowed his eyes. “Grandmother? Nina told us it was their mother? And she’s living with guardians or something?”
“Nina’s a liar - there no way that girl is her sister. She’s been hiding a secret daughter from the world and tried to lie to Dad to cover it up. Plus, the ballerina is living with her boyfriend’s parents. Do you not see how this is all adding up to be a perfect setup? She’s going to try and con dad out of as much as she can.”
Kingston’s eyes sparked with menace when he caught up to what I was saying. “Nina or the ballerina?”
“Both,” I said calmly. “But we aren’t going to let either of them get away with it.”
Chapter 5
Katya
After the final curtain, Ryan and I went out into the audience to find his parents. They both met us with polite smiles, and Mrs. Logan handed me a bouquet of roses.
“Where’s mine?” Ryan demanded jokingly. Mr. Logan grimaced instead of smiling. Mrs. Logan tried to make up for it with a fake laugh, but tension strained between all of us.
I handed the bouquet off to Ryan with a smirk, trying to bolster our fake levity. This was supposed to be the happiest moment of the year, and I didn’t want to bring the mood down even further.
“Be a good partner and hold this for me so I can hug your parents?” I teased him.
Ryan laughed with a stressed look around his eyes, but he took the flowers. I inhaled the sweet scent of Mrs. Logan’s perfume as she embraced me, and I tried to ignore the ache in my heart. This was the first year that Babulya hadn’t been in the audience waiting to hand me flowers and give me a list of critiques. I appreciated Mrs. Logan’s effort to make this feel as normal as possible, but it was almost more painful to have someone else hand me flowers that should have been from Babulya.
My babushka had grown up with parents who adored the Bolshoi Ballet and instilled her with a deep respect for the art. She got a fierce sense of pride when she saw me on stage and structured her life around helping me to succeed in ballet. She hadn’t just encouraged me to dance at a young age; she had pushed me to excel and had been strict with the grueling practice schedule she had set for me.
I was lucky enough to be born with the ideal “ballet body,” which was long legs, a shorter torso, and a slender frame, but it was the endless hours of practice in and out of the studio that had given me the necessary tools to get this far.
I pulled away from Mrs. Logan and gave Mr. Logan an awkward half-hug. Where Mrs. Logan would sometimes play the part of a loving mother, Mr. Logan was uncomfortable with any emotional display. He preferred to remain stoic and unflappable at all times. And that was before his relationship with Ryan had been shattered. Things were even worse now. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Logan moved to embrace their son.
After I stepped back from Mr. Logan’s fake hug, I felt someone’s heavy gaze on me. I glanced around the crowded auditorium, filled with parents congratulating their kids, and noticed two guys who were out of place. They were both dressed up a little too much – tuxes instead of suits, but it was more than their age and good looks that make them stand out. If they were a classmate’s brothers, I would have seen them before now; our school was small, and families came to many of our events.
At first glance, they could have been just another part of the small group of wealthy patrons that kept our school endowment flush with cash, but when I looked closer, I realized that they didn’t fit the type. These guys were dressed well and obviously had money, but there was a roughness to them that our patrons didn’t have. They had swagger and attitude, and they lacked the softness that the overprivileged ballet crowd usually had.
The one with the dark hair captured my attention completely. Even though I was standing a distance away, I could feel raw intensity radiating from him as I met a pair of stormy gray eyes. My heart rate sped up when our gazes connected, and it shattered the careful veil of numbness I had been hiding under. It was invasive and irritating, so I narrowed my eyes at him and gave him my best fuck off face.
While the dark-haired guy was scowling over at me, the one with sandy blond hair looked amused by a joke made at my expense. I didn’t care to know why they were staring, so I turned away from them. Ryan and I were still wearing our costumes from the final curtain call, and my tutu poked out awkwardly, leaving most of my legs bare. I didn’t mind while I was dancing, but it was unpleasant to be standing still in a cold auditorium after I’ve already done my cool-down and stretches. I had a chill running up my spine that didn’t want to go away. Or maybe it was because I could still feel the unwelcome stares of the hot guys
