Page 76 of Pretty Plaything

THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWare something completely different. I get to spend more time with Alessandro.

Now I know that his favorite color is green and that he actually likes football, but that he stopped watching it after his brothers died because they used to play it together. The more I get to know him, the more I think that maybe I want it all.

I want to be his friend.

I want to be his lover.

I want to be his wife.

I also started sketching again. My designs just come to me, and my inspiration seems endless. There are a whole lot of them. I hide them all over my room and pretty much any place with books that no one touches.

After I watched a ballet movie with Alessandro—it was a romance and he was constantly complaining about it, but he watched it with me anyway—I remembered some of my moves, so when no one’s watching me and I’m alone, I dance a little.

For myself.

Because why the hell not?

I don’t have to worry about my posture or what anyone will think. I don’t have to worry about being good enough.

As I lift my arms up, someone’s arms wrap around me from behind, making me yelp.

“What are you doing?” Alessandro whispers into my ear and nips on my earlobe.

“Nothing.”

“You can dance for me too, you know.”

I turn around in his arms, furrowing my brow. “How do you know?”

“I know everything.” He grins.

“You’re just too good at sneaking around without being heard or seen.” I roll my eyes.

He shrugs.

But as I look deep into his eyes, I see chaos in there.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“A dream. I keep having it over and over again, and I don’t know why. It changes sometimes, and I see these little details, but I don’t recognize them or understand what they mean.”

“What happens in that dream?”

“Sometimes, my father would order a group of his men to surprise attack me. They would jump me on the street when I least expected it. Or they would come to my room at night. If I didn’t manage to fight them off, they’d take me to a shed my father had behind our house.”

I place my hand on his cheek. If his father weren’t already dead, I would’ve been tempted to kill him myself, and I’m not even a violent person.

“My dream is like a variation of that, except there are voices and people I don’t remember. And I also found out something recently... I may have been kidnapped as a child. Really kidnapped, but I don’t remember any of it. Maybe I was too young, but the dream...”

“You think it’s connected.”

He nods.

“What details do you remember from the dream?”

“Mostly the voices, but I can’t tell who they belong to. And there’s a shadow standing in the corner and watching me. A man, I think. He has a watch on his wrist.”

“What kind of watch?”