Page 26 of Kept

“She’s smart. Not having a meltdown. Sassy. She’s in the bedroom.” He points off to the guest room.

“You know she threw a Bible at my head?”

He fakes an Irish accent of all things. “Is that what I need to try to get some scripture into your life, my child?”

“Fuck you, Alessandro.” Then I sigh. “But thank you for spending the day.”

“Anytime.” He hugs me, then gathers his coat.

I head to my room and strip out of my clothes. Getting into the shower, I notice the collection of toiletries spread across the empty shelves and smile. Good girl.

I finish my shower and dress, changing into a more casual pair of dark jeans and a long sleeve black t-shirt. I’ve never been a big fan of slippers, so I put on a pair of comfortable, well-worn leather shoes.

Aldo knocks on the door. I find him standing with one of the younger kids, who is holding a rather large bag of takeout from what I consider to be the best steakhouse in the city. I take the food, a bottle of wine, and two glasses up to the rooftop garden, and then turn on the propane heaters ringing the table. Then I come back and knock on the guest room door.

She opens the door hesitantly. “You learned how to knock!” she says with mock excitement.

I take a deep breath. “I have dinner ready.”

I can see the conflict run across her face. Finally, she gives a resigned sigh and follows me up to the roof.

CHAPTER 14

Sarah

It feels ridiculous to be sitting on a rooftop patio with the man that kidnapped me. Yet, here I am.

“Wine?” he asks, indicating the bottle of Chateau Lafite sitting on the wrought iron table.

“Absofuckinglutely,” I tell him, because if kidnapping isn’t an excuse to have a couple glasses of absurdly expensive red wine, I don’t know what is.

He smiles. It’s annoyingly attractive. He fills both glasses and tips his towards me. “Salute.”

I try the wine and feel my eyes start to roll back in my head. “Oh my god, this is good.”

“It’s one of my favorites,” he tells me as he begins to unpack food from an insulated bag. “I went with Mastro’s. But just in case you’re not a fan of steak, there is a rather large salad here as well.”

“I didn’t know they did takeout,” I tell him, sipping more of the wine.

He gives me a sly grin. “They don’t.”

“Then how—oh, right.” I give a little air toast with my rapidly vanishing glass of wine. “Is that what would be considered a ‘fringe benefit’?”

“Absolutely.”

He finishes setting up the food spread. I help myself to a large portion of salad and a small helping of NY strip steak. He gives me a quizzical look.

“What?” I ask.

“Interesting choices,” he says, pointing to my plate.

“Well, since you’ve recently been to my apartment and I’m sure have done some sort of research into me by now, you know I’m a professional ballerina. I eat food, I like food, I really like wine, but I don’t eat crap food.”

“Fair enough. I’m sorry if I offended you.”

I sigh. “It’s fine. There is just this stigma that all dancers are anorexic. It’s not true. You can’t dance and you can’t recover without nutrition. But I also have a partner that needs to toss me around through the air, so yeah, there’s a fair amount of moderation that goes into that.”

He nods and refills my almost empty glass from the bottle. The food gives the wine a run for its money.

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