Silva

Chapter Twenty-Five

• Irisa •

—

"Miss Irisa, do you love ballet?"

I stare at Silva's mother with two buff bodyguards flanking her sides, their sleek black suits matching her velvet red dress. Her curls fall on her shoulder as the wind sways them towards her tapered waistline, and she towers over me with her sharp heels.

I, on the other hand, was amid of renovating a movie room when I was physically lifted into the arms of the man on her left. He took me out of the estate with alarms blaring through the rooms and putting me in the back of a limousine.

There, I was judged for my casual attire by this woman who had the audacity to say I'm not properly dressed for a black-tie event.

That wasn't the worst part of my day. I was forced on a private plane, jetted off to Moscow with no passport or shoes.

She presented a pair of flats as if she predicted it, or it was a way to mock me with humiliation.

Unfortunately for her, I have thick skin. If it's from Silva, then that's a different story.

I like his humiliation.

"Do you?" she asks insistently, "I despise ballet."

I adjust my ass on the firm seat as the curtained stage turns dark. "I've never seen a performance."

I have no opinion about it. I've heard the appeal to abstract beauty and everyone's interruption to beauty, but I'm just not interested.

"Why're we here if you hate it?" I ask, crossing my arms over my chest.

She chirps, "It keeps me angry."

This woman is strange and hard to converse with. I thought I was having trouble talking to people, but Silva's mother is on a different level.

She's cryptic. Not thrillingly and mysteriously, but in a preposterous sense.

Madame, Silva's mother, put me on a nine-hour flight for an unprompted ballet performance and bizarre ambiguity.

Did she forget she tried to have me killed?

Bright lights shine on the stage, hefty curtains roll open, and lights concentrate on the ballerina in the center. Her limbs twist, flowing in tandem with the soothing music and spinning leisurely.

My toes curl in discomfort. A muscle cramp inches into the muscles, and I flex my toes in the flats to get rid of it.

As the music kicks up, the lines in her muscles sharpen, my heart thumps.

Time goes by, and my pulse rises in beats. The appeal of ballet stirs my heart, yet the indifference dawdles lifelessly in my veins.

That is the longest two hours of my life while being extremely short. I still don't know what to feel about ballet, so I don't put energy into it.

"Dinner?" Madame inquires unceremoniously.

I stretch my legs as I stand, shoving my hands into my sweater pocket. Murmurs from beneath the VIP floor grows louder as the applause fades away.

"What exactly are you aiming for?" I question back.

"My son cares about you," she says.

Her manicured hand tosses her hair back, securing the fur coat over the exposed skin from her dress. Her heels crack with each step, muting my light taps as my feet refuse to get used to the flats.