Stolen Heir - Sophie Lark Page 0,15

too panicked to feel them.

I check my phone as well. No texts or messages from my parents, even though it’s after midnight.

It’s funny. They’re so overprotective. But they’re also so busy that they haven’t even noticed I’m gone.

Oh well. I’m at the studio, and I’m the furthest thing from tired after I had ten thousand volts of adrenaline running through my veins. I might as well practice a while.

So I head upstairs to my favorite room. It’s the smallest of the studios. The floor is so springy it’s almost like dancing on a trampoline.

I strip off my jeans and sweater, leaving only the leotard underneath. Then I set my phone into the dock and find my favorite playlist. It starts with “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi. I warm up on the barre as the lilting piano intro begins.

5

Miko

I stand at the edge of the parking lot, just out of sight, laughing softly to myself.

Little Nessa Griffin spooks easy.

Watching her sprint toward the studio gave me a thrill so sweet I could almost taste it. I could have caught her if I wanted to. But I have no intention of taking her tonight.

That would be too easy to trace back to me, after she only just left my club.

When I make Nessa disappear, it will be like dropping a stone in the ocean. There won’t be a single ripple to show where she’s gone.

I wait to see if she’s going to come back out and get in her car, but instead she stays inside the studio. After a minute, the light flicks on up on the second floor and she walks into a tiny practice room.

I can see her perfectly. She doesn’t realize it, but the illuminated room is like a lightbox suspended above the street. I can see every last detail, as if it were a diorama in my hands.

I watch as Nessa strips off her sweater and jeans, wearing only a skin-tight bodysuit underneath. It’s pale pink, so sheer and tight that I can see the outline of her breasts and ribs, her navel, and the curve of her ass when she turns.

I didn’t know she was a dancer. I should have guessed—she and her friends all have that look. Nessa is skinny. Too skinny, with long legs and arms. There’s a little muscle, too—on the round balls of her calves, and in her shoulders and back. Her neck is long and slim, like the stalk of a flower.

She pulls her hair free of its elastic, letting it spill down around her shoulders. Then she twists it up in a bun on the very top of her head, securing it in place once more. She doesn’t bother with shoes, taking her position barefoot at the wooden bar that runs the length of the mirror. She faces herself, her back to me. I can still see her in double—the actual, real Nessa, and her reflection.

I watch as she bends and stretches, warming up. She’s flexible. Her joints look loose and rubbery.

I wish I could hear the music she’s playing. Classical, or modern? Fast or slow?

Once she’s warmed up, she starts twirling across the floor. I don’t know the names of any dance moves, except maybe a pirouette. I don’t even know if she’s good.

All I know is it’s beautiful. She looks effortless, weightless, like a leaf in the wind.

I’m watching her with awe. The way a hunter would watch a doe that walks into a clearing. Nessa is the doe. She is lovely. Innocent. Perfectly at place in her natural environment.

I’ll send my arrow straight into her heart.

That’s my right, as the hunter.

I watch her for over an hour, as she dances tirelessly.

She’s still going at it when I walk back to my club. Maybe she’ll stay there all night. I’ll know if she does, because the tracker is still in her purse.

I follow Nessa Griffin all week long. Sometimes driving. Sometimes walking. Sometimes sitting at a table in the same restaurant.

She never notices me. And she never seems to sense she’s being followed after that first night.

I see where she goes to school, and where she shops.

I see where she lives, though I was already more than familiar with the Griffin’s mansion on the lake.

I even see her visit her sister-in-law several times. It pleases me to know that they’re close. I want to punish the Griffins and the Gallos. I want to set them against each other. It won’t work, unless they all feel the loss of