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She looks dazed as I examine my foot. There are tiny cuts all over, the kind you get from razor blades. They’re not deep cuts, but they’re bleeding a lot, and I start to cry, not because of the pain, but because I know it means I won’t dance for weeks. Maybe more than a month.
Automatically, I look back, but I know there’s no one hiding in here. Security checked the dressing room.
“Call, Ares, Debra. The person who did this could still be out there!” My voice sounds a little hysterical with panic.
She finally seems to wake up from her trance, but she doesn’t even get to the door before it opens with a bang.
“Ares . . .” I hate that my voice sounds whiny, but I break down when I see him. I show him my foot, and without saying a word, I know he understands that besides fear, the reason I’m crying is because this is going to ruin my season.
He approaches me and picks me up. He kisses my forehead and then carries me into the hallway.
“Where are we going?”
“To the hospital, to have your foot seen to.”
“Ares!” Debra calls.
“Warn my brothers, Debra,” he orders. “Have them check all the cameras. I’m going to get her out of here.”
Ares
Hours later
“They were superficial injuries,” Zeus says, as I pace the corridor of Athanasios’s hospital.
As the family came to watch her debut, they are all with me right now.
“I checked the cameras. No strangers entered the dressing room. The only people other than our family were the mentor, Debra, and the nanny, JeAnne,” Odin says.
“JeAnne?”
“Yes.”
“But she didn’t come to the premiere. She said she was feeling ill,” I say.
Odin takes his phone out of his suit jacket and after unlocking it, accesses the photographs and videos.
Seconds later, I confirm what he said. JeAnne snuck into the dressing room.
“I want these images to be handed over to the police,” I say, distrust starting to settle inside me.
“I’ve already done that. They should be arriving at Serenity’s apartment right now to take JeAnne to the police station. She will have to give a statement.”
“Do you think it was her?” I ask.
“There is no other possible answer.”
“Why would the woman who cared for Serenity her entire life harm her by doing something like that?” Hades asks as he approaches.
“We don’t know yet,” Odin says, “but I think it was her. Ares told me that when Serenity came to New York, the excuse her nanny gave for not coming with her was that she was sick.”
“Yes. That’s what she implied, at least.”
“There is no record that she was admitted to any hospital for treatment,” says Odin. “She kept her normal routine in Louisiana before traveling here.”
“I suspected she was lying after she arrived here in New York,” I say. “She’s looking great. But even with the evidence that she was the one who put the blades in Serenity’s shoes, I still can’t understand why. Do you think it has something to do with her father’s ex-partner?”
At this point, all my brothers know about my girlfriend’s past, and like me, they are obsessed with unraveling this mystery.