Watched (eBook)

Letícia Melo (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
154 Seiten
Lofty Dreams Publications (Verlag)
9780000956460 (ISBN)

Infos

She thought perfection would protect her. She was wrong.

Emmy's life at the prestigious Richmond Ballet Company is built on control-every movement precise, every routine flawless. But when mysterious gifts appear in her dance bag and anonymous messages flood her social media, her carefully ordered world begins to unravel.

Someone is watching. Someone is waiting. Someone knows her every move.

Marcus seems harmless-just an older man offering friendly advice at the local coffee shop. But his intimate knowledge of Emmy's schedule sends chills down her spine. When she discovers evidence that someone has been inside her apartment, touching her belongings, moving through her private spaces, Emmy realizes she's become the obsession of a dangerous predator.

Three restraining orders. One missing woman. Zero escape routes.

Detective Sarah Chen uncovers Marcus's horrifying pattern-Emmy isn't his first victim. But as the psychological warfare escalates and Marcus targets everyone Emmy trusts, she faces an impossible choice: abandon her dreams or become his next casualty.

The dance studio that was once her sanctuary becomes her prison.

In a deadly game of cat and mouse, Emmy must use every skill she's learned to survive. But when she discovers Marcus has an accomplice inside the ballet company-someone she trusts-Emmy realizes the most dangerous predators are the ones hiding in plain sight.

Some performances are a matter of life and death.

A bone-chilling psychological thriller that will leave you checking your locks twice.

Textauszug

Chapter 1: Perfect Position

Blood always looked darker under studio lights.

I pressed my palm against the mirror and watched the red smear spread across the glass like abstract art. My feet were screaming inside my pointe shoes, but I’d learned years ago that pain was just another part of the conversation between dancer and floor. You either listened to what it was telling you, or you let it consume you.

Tonight, I was choosing to listen.

“Again,” I whispered to my reflection, stepping back into fifth position. The studio around me was empty except for the ghosts of a thousand other dancers who’d bled on these same floors, chasing the same impossible dream of perfection.

The combination started simple—tendu front, tendu side, tendu back. Basic movements I’d been doing since I was old enough to hold onto a barre. But simple didn’t mean easy, not when you were aiming for the kind of precision that separated good dancers from great ones.

I moved through the sequence, feeling each muscle fiber stretch and contract in perfect harmony. This was what I lived for—the moment when my body became an instrument, when every breath and heartbeat aligned with the music playing in my head. Everything else faded away: the pressure, the competition, the constant fear that I wasn’t good enough.

In here, alone with the mirrors and the silence, I was exactly who I was meant to be.

The grand jeté at the end of the combination sent me soaring across the studio, arms extended like wings. For three perfect seconds, I was weightless. Untouchable. Free.

Then my feet hit the ground and reality crashed back down with them.

The clock on the wall read 11:47 PM. I’d been here for over four hours, and tomorrow’s company class started at nine sharp. Madame Volkova didn’t tolerate tardiness, especially not from corps members who were still fighting for every opportunity to prove themselves.

I should go home. Should ice my feet, stretch out my hip flexors, get at least six hours of sleep before another day of technical perfection and artistic interpretation. Should be responsible.

Instead, I walked back to the center of the floor and started the combination again.

This time, I caught something in my peripheral vision—a flicker of movement beyond the windows that faced the parking lot. I paused mid-relevé, my working leg frozen in attitude, and stared at the glass.

Nothing.

Just my paranoid imagination, probably. The studio was on the second floor of an old warehouse building, and the windows were tinted enough that anyone outside would have trouble seeing in clearly. Plus, who would be lurking around a dance studio at nearly midnight on a Tuesday?

I lowered my leg and shook out my arms, trying to release the tension that had suddenly knotted between my shoulder blades. Focus, Claire. You’ve got three weeks to nail this audition, and standing around jumping at shadows isn’t going to get you there.

The audition. Just thinking about it made my stomach clench with a mixture of excitement and terror that I’d grown addicted to over the past year. Swan Lake was the holy grail of classical ballet, and the lead role of Odette was everything I’d been training for since I was seven years old. The company’s artistic director had hinted that they were looking for fresh talent for the spring season, someone who could bring new energy to the classic role.

Someone like me, if I could prove I deserved it.

I’d been working at Metropolitan Ballet Company for two years now, dancing in the corps and taking whatever small solo parts they threw my way. It was good experience, but I was ready for more. Ready to be the dancer everyone else watched instead of the one blending into the background.

The problem was, I wasn’t the only one with those ambitions.

Vera Kastner had been the company’s golden girl since she’d joined three years ago. She was technically flawless, politically savvy, and blessed with the kind of natural stage presence that made audiences forget they were watching someone work. She was also a complete nightmare to work with—the kind of person who smiled to your face while sharpening knives behind your back.

If I wanted Odette, I’d have to be better than flawless. I’d have to be perfect.

I started the combination for the third time, pushing my body harder with each repetition. My calves burned and my lungs ached, but I kept going. Perfect position. Perfect timing. Perfect extension.

That’s when I saw it again—movement in the windows, more definite this time. A shadow that was too solid to be a trick of the light, too purposeful to be random.

Someone was out there. Someone was watching me.

I stopped dancing and walked slowly toward the windows, my pointe shoes clicking against the floor like a countdown timer. The parking lot below was mostly empty except for my car and a few others belonging to the late-shift cleaning crew. Street lights cast everything in an orange glow that made the shadows look deeper and more ominous than they should have.

I pressed my face against the glass and scanned the area systematically, the way my dad had taught me to check for threats when I was little and afraid of monsters under my bed. “Look with your eyes, not your fear,” he used to say. “Fear makes you see things that aren’t there.”

But this wasn’t fear talking. This was instinct, honed by years of being a young woman alone in a city that didn’t always care about young women’s safety. And my instincts were telling me that something was wrong.

I grabbed my phone from where I’d left it by the sound system and checked for missed calls or messages. Nothing important—just a text from my roommate asking if I’d be home before she went to bed, and a reminder from my dentist about an appointment next week.

Normal life, carrying on as if nothing had changed.

But something had changed. I could feel it in the way the studio’s familiar atmosphere had shifted, becoming charged with an energy that hadn’t been there an hour ago. The mirrors that usually reflected only my own image now seemed to hold secrets in their corners, and the windows had transformed from barriers into vulnerabilities.

I needed to get out of here.

I gathered my things quickly—water bottle, towel, street clothes, the worn leather bag that held my life in zippered compartments. My hands shook slightly as I changed out of my leotard and tights, replacing them with jeans and a sweatshirt that smelled like fabric softener and home.

The elevator took forever to arrive, and when it finally did, the mechanical hum sounded too loud in the building’s after-hours silence. I jabbed the button for the ground floor and watched the numbers count down: 3… 2… 1…

The lobby was deserted except for the security guard’s desk, where an elderly man named Frank usually sat reading paperback mysteries and drinking coffee that could strip paint. Tonight, his chair was empty.

Great.

I pushed through the glass doors that led to the parking lot and immediately felt the cool night air hit my overheated skin. It should have been refreshing after hours in the stuffy studio, but instead it felt like stepping into a predator’s territory.

My car was parked under one of the few working street lights, a small mercy that I’d never appreciated before tonight. I walked toward it with measured steps, trying to look confident while scanning the shadows between the other vehicles.

Nothing moved. No one stepped out to explain why they’d been watching me dance.

But as I reached for my car door, I noticed something that made my blood turn to ice water in my veins.

A single white rose lay across my windshield, its stem tucked carefully under the wiper blade so it wouldn’t blow away.

I stared at it for a long moment, trying to process what I was seeing. The rose was fresh—so fresh that drops of water still clung to its petals like tiny diamonds. Someone had placed it there recently. Someone who knew I was inside the building. Someone who had been waiting for me to come out.

My hands trembled as I looked around the parking lot again, this time abandoning any pretense of calm. “Hello?” I called out, hating how small my voice sounded in the empty space. “Is someone there?”

Silence.

I grabbed the rose and threw it on the ground, not caring if I was overreacting. Flowers were supposed to be romantic gestures, but this felt like a violation. Like someone had marked my territory without my permission.

I got in my car and locked the doors immediately, then sat there for a moment trying to decide what to do next. Call the police? And tell them what—that someone had left me a flower? They’d probably think I was some paranoid dancer who’d been watching too many crime shows.

Call Frank, the security guard? He was nowhere to be found, and even if I could reach him, what could he do about a rose that was already wilting on the asphalt?

Call my parents? They were three thousand miles away in Oregon, and the last thing they needed was their daughter having a panic attack over what might be nothing more than a case of mistaken identity.

I started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot, checking my rearview mirror every few seconds. No one followed me. No mysterious cars appeared in the distance with their headlights off. But the feeling of being watched clung to me like smoke, impossible to shake no matter how many times I told myself I was being ridiculous.

The drive to my apartment usually took fifteen minutes, but tonight I stretched it to...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.7.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-13: 9780000956460 / 9780000956460