“I didn’t see anything,” I whisper, shivering.
He’s motionless in the gloom of the alley.
“I’ll be watching you, prinkípissa.”
He steps backward into the shadows, sinking into them like black ink swallowing a white page.
Then he’s gone.
2
BIANCA
Hands reach for me out of the darkness. Footsteps pound behind—chasing, hunting, drawing closer. I can hear the rasp of his breath and the dark, cold chuckle signaling he already knows the outcome of this.
That I can run, but I can’t hide.
Not from him. Not from the nightmare I crave.
The promise of darkness and the fulfilment of sinister, deviant desires. Of the bite of rope and the gag of rubber. Of being used by him in whatever way he wants, with or without my consent…
The promise of utter submission. Of pain.
He draws closer and closer, his footsteps right behind me. His fingertips brush my skin before they suddenly catch and tangle in my hair. They yank. They grasp. I crash to the ground where he roughly pins my hands above my head and growls as he takes his pleasure from me as I writhe and scream—
I wake with a start, a real-world gasp lodged in my throat as I sit bolt upright.
My pulse hammers in my ears. Sweat clings to my skin. I force myself to exhale as I slowly rub my face and push a hand through my long hair.
The dream isn’t new. It’s not even infrequent.
It happens all the time, as if I need to be reminded while I’m safe in my bed that I’m never safe from the fucked-up darkness that lives in my head. The kinks and desires you can’t tell anyone about…as if I even have people to tell my kinks to.
And even if I did, as if I ever would.
Fever dreams like these happen all the time. But there was a small difference in the one I just woke up from.
Usually he’s faceless, the man who chases me. Who catches me. Who pins me down and has me waking up sweaty, with a racing heart and slick, quivering thighs. I suppose the one last night was technically faceless, too. Except it was a faceless pursuer I know.
One I’ve met in the real world.
One with a mask.
Just now, in my twisted, fucked-up dreams, I was chased by the huge man in the neon mask. The very same one who melted out of the shadows and killed two men right in front of me in reality last night.
I shiver as the vivid red blood on black tarmac and the horrifying gurgling scream echo in my head.
I don’t feel bad about what happened to them. Not after what they were clearly about to do to me. But even so, I flinch as I replay the sickening sound of the man’s knife slicing their throats open.
My eyes squeeze shut. Even being part of the world I live in, I’ve never seen death happen like that before. I’ve never watched someone die. And even though I did, that’s not what I’m fixating about where last night is concerned.
I’m not thinking about the fact that Alicia dragged me to a massive drug deal. Or that two men tried to attack me last night.
I’m thinking of him.
The beast of a man with the gravel voice, the iron touch, and the absence of eyes.
The one who saved me and then melted right back into the darkness, like an apparition or a vengeful spirit.
Exhaling, I flop back across my bed and look up at the ceiling of the room I grew up in. I chew on my lip as my eyes slowly travel the walls of the room, taking in the posters, the achievements, the memories.
It’s funny how quickly “normal” feels like kid stuff.
For the last two years, I’ve had my own modest apartment on the Upper East Side. Money isn’t an issue, not when you’re from my family. But when I finally told my dad it was time for me to move out, I didn’t want to be just another mafia princess in a glass penthouse that Daddy paid for. I mean, yeah, he covers my rent—it’s not like ballet dancers earn much. And it’s also not like Vito Barone’s bank account would notice it even if I did live in some palatial penthouse or townhouse.
Still, I wanted to fit in a bit more with the majority of the girls I dance with. So, where I live is just a regular, average apartment. Okay, it’s got state-of-the-art security, and a doorman and guards who are on the Barone payroll, because my brothers are all psychotically overprotective of their “baby” sister, even though I’m twenty-one.
But that’s not where I’ve woken up this morning.
After what happened last night in Brooklyn, I came here, to my dad’s townhouse in Little Italy. There were pros and cons to showing up at Dad’s house in an Uber at midnight, covered in bloody scrapes and dirt, white-faced and freaking the hell out, but honestly, I was too scared to go home after what happened. Scared enough that I was willing to chance him still being up and having to explain the state of myself to him.
Mercifully, though, the house was asleep. And Roberto, the guard on duty at the front door last night, was distracted enough by the football scores on his phone that he seemed to buy my explanation that I’d tripped while out on a walk, and that I was fine.
Part of me wants to stay right here in my childhood bedroom and hide from the world all day. But then another, more adult instinct takes control of mine, and it’s one I can’t ignore.
The need for coffee.
I tie my hair up in it’s typical dancer’s bun, pull on a hoodie, and pad barefoot downstairs to the huge galley kitchen dad had remodeled a few years ago when he got really into cooking old-school Italian food.
