Tortured Obsession by Alice King EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Alice King
- Language: English
- Genre: contemporary romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2.2 MB
- Price: Free
Nikolai
Her voice floats through the halls of the theatre, slipping between the
marble columns and snaring me in its sweet embrace. Silence falls over
the droves of people in the audience, their eyes fixating on centre stage. On
her.
I settle into my private box to catch the end of the opera. The box hovers to
the left of the stage, engulfed by the shadows consuming the audience.
Sometimes I consider getting closer to her, buying a ticket next to the stage.
I let my daydreams tease reality, but they’re forbidden. Even the mere
fantasy could topple an empire… but everything begins with an idea.
I lean forward, keeping my face in the shadow, inches from the beam of
light descending onto the stage.
She hits her cue perfectly, gliding back onto the stage and taking every drop
of the audience’s attention. Before I saw her I didn’t believe in sirens, now I
can’t be so sure. An involuntary sharp intake of breath hits my chest like a
war hammer colliding with a sheet of glass. Her voice takes me away. Away
from the memories, from the gunshots and the screams, away from the
room I’ve returned to every night in my dreams. Her voice finds me, lifts
me, pulls something from me I thought was long destroyed.
And so, here I am, at every performance of Eugene Onegin, watching her
play Tatyana. Watching her steal every show. Watching her break a hundred
hearts a night. Watching the way she returns to the stage to thank the
audience and reveal a smile so convincing you’d think she performs it in the
mirror every single morning.
The audience comes and goes, at most someone might return a handful of
times. Not me. I watch every single performance. So, I catch the subtle
changes in that smile as the crowd gives her their standing ovation. I see the
falters. I see something deeper underneath her perfectly practised facade.
She hits the final note and drops us into a collective silence. The audience
holds on for a tense moment and then erupts into cascading applause.
Isabella De Rossi flashes her practised smile. She smooths down her dark,
curly hair, tied close to her head, as she does every night. The other
performers join her to bow and absorb the love from the audience.
She blows a kiss to a private box across the way from mine, this one bathed
in a bright spotlight. In a spotless, crisp white suit, her father, Don
Leonardo De Rossi, plays the doting father when the eyes of the crowd land
on him. My gaze lingers, waiting for the scowl to return to his face as it
does every night without fail.
If he ever sees me here, I know what he’d do. The Bratva aren’t technically
at war with the Cosa Nostra, but technicalities are such flimsy defences.
He’d cover his mouth with his hand, lean into his bodyguard and whisper
what he wanted the last words I’d ever hear to be. The story would be that I
stumbled into the canal, drunk, on my way home. “Russians and their
vodka.” I can see his sickly sweet smirk now. Or perhaps I’d simply
disappear.
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