Chapter 19
Indigo
Malachai spoke to the two SUVs full of men who had been following us for safety before letting me inside.
Returning to my dance studio felt like stepping into a ghost story—especially since someone had died right outside.
The air was thick with the scent of floor wax and some fruity cleaning product.
I moved through the space in a daze, my fingertips grazing the barre.
I could barely see my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors.
For three years, this life had been a closed book, yet the muscle memory hummed beneath my skin.
Malachai didn’t say a word, but his presence was heavy behind me until his hand settled firmly on the small of my back.
He applied pressure, guiding me toward the rear of the studio—to the room where heavy-duty poles rose toward the ceiling.
It was the sanctuary, the place where the Midnight Ballerina had truly been born.
“This is what I want to show you.”
The room was dark except for a single spotlight over the center of the floor. Malachai stood in the shadows near the back wall, arms crossed, watching me with that unnerving stillness.
“You said my imagination makes what you’ve done worse. When I found out where you were after you came back, I had all the footage from that club sent to me. Hours of it,” he said quietly.
My stomach dropped. “Why?” It was one thing taunting him with what I’d done. It was another for him to actually see it.
He didn’t answer. He simply lifted his phone and pressed play.
The large mirror on the wall flickered to life, projecting the video.
Midnight appeared across the screen. For some reason, I dissociated; Midnight became her own entity.
I watched her strut onto the stage in nothing but rhinestones, making the entire crowd lose their minds.
The opening lyrics of the track I’d chosen wrapped around me as I watched her hips roll in time with the lazy, pulsing beat.
She arched her back deeply, letting her body move like liquid.
Her hand slid down her own curves, tracing the lines of her breasts, waist, and thighs as if she were discovering her own skin for the first time.
She spread her legs wide and dropped low, settling into a slow, heavy grind that felt like it was pulling the oxygen right out of the room.
She rolled her hips in filthy, hypnotic circles, her thighs trembling under the strain.
Every movement was teasing and intimate.
She was Midnight—the ghost I’d buried in New York.
The girl who had never lost a baby, never stabbed her husband.
I watched her from somewhere outside my own body, floating near the ceiling, observing the way her—my—hands gripped the floor, the way her—my—mouth fell open like she was asking for something she couldn’t name.
That’s not me. I won’t be her ever again.
That thought made me sad and angry.
“Turn it off,” I whispered.
He didn’t. He let it play.
“No. You gave them this,” he said, his voice dropping into that terrifying low register. “You gave strangers something I never got. Not like this.”
On the screen, Midnight was on her knees, head back, money raining down on her damp skin like blue-and-green confetti.
She looked like she was in the middle of a prayer, and the men in the front row were her congregation.
Every movement was pure sex and power—a version of myself that didn’t know how to feel guilt.
“I have all the videos,” Malachai continued, his eyes finally moving from the projection to me.
He stepped out of the shadows, the light catching the sharp line of his jaw.
“I watched them all. Fridays, Saturdays… almost every day of the three years you were gone. You danced like you didn’t have a fucking care in the world while I was losing my mind trying to find you.
I studied the men’s faces. I watched how they looked at you, how they reached for you. ”
His hand came up to point at the screen, where a man was leaning over the stage with a thick stack of bills, eyes glazed with hunger.
“There were so many men, Indigo. I sat in that empty house in Tampa and learned their features. I found some of their names.” He paused, a breath escaping him.
“Over the weeks, I plotted some of their murders. I decided which ones I’d kill first and made a list. I should add you for making me feel. ”
For a man who rarely felt anything, the jealousy was burning off him in waves.
“Do you have any idea what it does to me, watching you perform for them?” he asked, stepping closer. “I don’t feel—you know that, Indigo. Not like normal men. But watching this… I feel rage. I feel like someone reached into my chest and stole something that was mine.”
He stopped the video on a frame of me in the middle of a sensual body roll, lips parted, eyes hooded, looking like pure sin.
“I was robbed,” he said flatly. “Three years of you giving them the Midnight Ballerina. I want her too. I want what they had. And I want it better.”
My heart slammed against my ribs. “Malachai…”
“Dance.” His voice left no room for argument. “Right now. Redo it. Every move. Every drop. Every fucking roll of your hips. I want this raw version—the one you gave them when you thought I’d never see it.”
He used his phone to dim the lights even more, leaving only the harsh spotlight on the pole.
“No music,” he said. “I want to hear you breathing. I want to hear your skin against the pole. I want to hear the regret in your muscles.”
I stood frozen for half a second, watching his face, seeing the devil in his eyes. How had the night gone from me apologizing to this?
I did something I rarely ever did.
I didn’t argue.
I walked into the light like I was stepping onto that Manhattan stage again. The silk robe I wore slipped off my shoulders and pooled at my feet, leaving me in just a black sports bra and tiny shorts. I grabbed the pole, eyes locked on him in the mirror.
And I danced.
I climbed. I spun. I dropped. Making sure every movement was more intimate than what was on the video.
Malachai watched, his fists knotted at his sides, nostrils flaring.
I caught the way his eyes flickered, not just with anger but with a desperate need to possess, to reclaim what he thought he’d lost. I didn’t know if he was still mad or aroused, or if the two emotions had twisted together inside him.
I arched my back and rolled my hips slow and deep, grinding against the pole the way I used to for hundreds of screaming men. He stepped forward.
“Again,” he growled. “Slower. Like you’re fucking me with your body.”
I was breathing hard, sweat glistening on my dark skin under the spotlight. But I obeyed.
This time, when I dropped low and crawled toward the edge of the stage on all fours, eyes never leaving his, Malachai met me there. He grabbed me by the throat and pulled me into a brutal kiss, devouring my mouth like he was trying to erase every man who had ever looked at me.
When he pulled back, his voice was rough.
“You’ll never dance like this for anyone else ever again,” he said against my lips. “That version of you belongs to me too now. Only me.”
I didn’t say anything.
He could have Midnight.
If I could become her that fast… I could become someone else just as easily if he pushed me too far and I had to run again. For now, I’d just let him get his anger out of his system.