Ophelia was angry, and she was struggling with the intensity of it. It wasn’t fair of her. It wasn’t the way she was raised. She’d spent her whole life being proudly free of the kind of small, childish drama that she saw herself getting caught up in now, like it was some foregone conclusion out of her control.

And Salim was the cause.

It wasn’t just that he hadn’t properly kissed her goodnight. She didn’t understand that, but there were probably plenty of explanations. She didn’t think he knew about her lack of experience, but maybe it was a kind of vibe that she was putting out without realizing it that he should go slowly. Or maybe there were some cultural differences. For all she’d asked him under the bridge about Al-Shyla, there was still so much she didn’t know. She’d never been anywhere in the Middle East, and her knowledge was limited.

No, the kiss on the hand instead of the mouth was forgivable. And really pretty sweet, in a way; as upset as she was that it hadn’t been a bit more, she still couldn’t help but smile every time she remembered it.

But going completely with no contact for the rest of the time they were in London? Having a night like that, which had quite unexpectedly turned into one of the best nights of her life, and then not so much as showing up to a performance?

She was livid. Livid at him, and livid at herself for having gotten her expectations up so much higher than they should be. She was angry, and then angry at herself for being angry.

She was so angry, that she did something she hadn’t done since college: she called her mother to rant about a man.

“And has your performance suffered?”

That was what her mother had to say, when Ophelia laid the whole thing out to her. She’d told her mother about the feelings involved. She’d told her how open she’d been with Salim, and how open she felt like he’d been with her. She told him how hard it was to try to separate his motivations, the artistic and the personal, but how certain she had felt that there was ample of both.

She’d told her mother how it was that very certainty, and then his behavior that immediately contradicted it, that made her feel as though nothing in her life was certain. More than anything else, she told her that she was angry at Salim for making her mistrust her own judgement.

And yet, still:

“He’s not distracting you, is he? You can’t let him, you know. This is too important for your career.”

Yes, Ophelia knew that a romantic entanglement with her boss wasn’t conducive to giving sublime performances night after night. She knew that much. And yet, at the same time, it didn’t matter. No matter how concerned her mother was, Ophelia knew that she could handle it without allowing her golden opportunity to be wasted.

She had practice. She’d performed in all kind of emotional states before. She’d performed as an anxious middle schooler and a sulky teenager. Throughout all the ups and downs that college life had brought her, as it brought everyone. She’d danced through all that, so she could dance through one entitled, stupid, handsome Sheikh.

By the time the company flew to Madrid, she’d pushed down all her feelings of the night—and what it should have started, and what it apparently did not—so far down, that she was shocked by how strongly they all came rushing up to the surface at the sound of his name.

“Is the Sheikh not flying with us?”

Katie’s innocent question, asked, thankfully, to someone else, was all it took. Immediately, the feelings of the night overwhelmed her. She remembered their walk along the river and up under the bridge. She remembered her spontaneous climb out over the water and the way his presence had pushed her on, even while every muscle in her body was exhausted.

She remembered the conversation—not what they’d said, but how they’d said it. The way so many meaningless little details and stories from their lives seemed to take on an intense importance.

And with the recollection came the shame of the slow realization that he wasn’t calling, or stopping by, or anything else. And the second-guessing of every word, every thought, every glance that had passed between them.

Ophelia couldn’t tell if it made it better or worse that, while she was angry, she was also still living in a kind of luxury she’d never known before this tour. As in London, everything had been upgraded. The hotel, the limos, the incredible theater. It was all finer than she’d ever experienced, and the constant background noise of approval and excitement from the other dancers couldn’t help but remind her of Salim, and why he said he was doing all of this.

She wondered if he were here. She wondered if he still meant any of it—about the company and how he planned to shepherd it and nurture it. She wanted to write it all off as just the words of a man who was trying to—as Mr. Ansaroff had so indelicately put it in New York—“get into her pants.” But at the same time, if that was what he was trying to do, then why would he had not pushed harder?

If that was what he was after, why had he held back?

All the questions about Salim swirled around her as she recovered from jet lag, and rehearsed in the space with the other dancers, preparing for their short Madrid run. She did the best she could to set them aside.

But still, as they were preparing to go on for her first performance in the city, Ophelia couldn’t stop herself from joining a group of her fellow dancers and crowding around a vantage point where they could see the audience and not be seen.

“I haven’t done this since I was at the academy,” Ophelia said, almost under her breath. “Is the Sheikh here? Is that what we’re looking at?”

“No!” Katie said, a little louder than she probably should have, to pointed looks from other dancers. She continued more quietly, “At least, I don’t see him. But look who is here.”

Ophelia looked out into the crowd, and then, thinking better of it, looked up into the boxes. Even though Katie had said that Salim wasn’t there, part of her was hoping to see him, anyway. Instead, her eyes widened when they came across Mr. Ansaroff.

“What’s he doing here?” she asked aloud, to very similar pointed looks from the other dancers as Katie had gotten.

“I don’t know,” Katie said. “But he was in New York, too. And they say that he went to several performances of the St. Petersburg Ballet before he bought the company. And they say that he competes with the Sheikh about a lot of things. So, maybe—”

“What did he say to you in New York, Ophelia?”

It was Eliza’s voice, much closer to Ophelia’s ears than she was expecting, that interrupted Katie.

“Nothing!” she answered, too defensively and caught off guard. “He didn’t say anything interesting, anyway. Nothing about buying the company.”

Eliza shrugged.

“Maybe he wasn’t interested until his rival decided he was.”

And just like that, yet more questions began to swirl around Ophelia’s head, and continued to do so, right up until the moment she stepped on stage to dance.

Maybe this was the missing piece to explaining Salim’s behavior. She’d come across a few photos of Mr. Ansaroff and the Sheikh together when she’d done her research, but she hadn’t thought too much of it. Sure, they knew each other, but there were an awful lot of photos with him and an awful lot of rich people.

Apparently, though, she hadn’t read the right articles if the other dancers knew of this rivalry, and she didn’t. And, if it made sense that Mr. Ansaroff wouldn’t be interested in something unless his rival were, maybe the opposite held true, as well.

Between her exits and entrances, the questions gnawed at her, and being out on stage started feeling like a welcome reprieve. She began dreading intermission, when she would be stuck for a full twenty minutes without anything to stop her from thinking about it.

When intermission did eventually come, Ophelia tried to go to her dressing room, so she could at least be wondering miserably in solitude. But she was stopped by Katie, who was standing with a very similar group of dancers who had been standing around the spying place at the beginning of the show.

“Did you hear?” Katie asked, and Ophelia shook her head. “He is here for a reason. Mr. Ansaroff. Nikolai. He’s invited the whole company out for drinks after the show. He’s reserved a whole night club for us! You’re coming, right?”

All her miserable questions felt like they were answering themselves before her eyes.

“I…I’m not sure…” Ophelia answered, hating the way both of these men made her so uncertain of herself.

“You know, you really should,” Eliza broke in. “If he was interested in talking to you in New York, he’d probably want to see you there tonight. If he’s considering buying the company, then don’t you owe it to us to keep him interested?”

Ophelia frowned. There was something cruel and mocking in Eliza’s expression, as there often was. And, as she often did, Ophelia had a hard time telling exactly what.

“The company was just bought out. Do you really want us to get passed around from rich man to rich man? Since when are ballet companies the new fashion accessory?”

Eliza shrugged.

“And see how much better things got? You can hold on to your pride if you want to, but those of us who aren’t in starring roles don’t see anything wrong with being in demand.”

Again, something behind Eliza’s eyes. Like she knew something. And Ophelia wasn’t sure what it was, but she was sure that she didn’t want Eliza knowing it.

“I…I don’t know. I’ll see how I feel after the show.”

That wasn’t the answer Eliza was looking for, Ophelia knew. But it was the only answer she was going to get. Ophelia went off into her dressing room.

She didn’t know why she was surprised that Nikolai (when had she started thinking of him as Nikolai?) was attending the performance. He’d said that he would be back when she’d had time to change her mind. He hadn’t seemed interested in buying the company before, but maybe he had changed his mind. It was hard to say. How could she know what was going on in there? He was as inscrutable as Eliza.

The amount Nikolai reminded Ophelia of Eliza sent a chill down her spine. She thought back to the photos she had come across when she originally looked into the man who’d bought the company with no notice—Salim. Something was bothering her about them, and she wasn’t quite sure what.

Quickly, she grabbed her phone from the pocket of her street clothes. Usually, she made a rule of it not to look at her phone until after the curtain call, but the point of that rule was to keep her mind on the dancing, and that ship had long since sailed.

She typed in both men’s names into the search engine, clicked on the image tab, and looked at the results.

There they were, standing together. In picture after picture, they were smiling or regarding each other with playful expressions. There were so many more pictures than Ophelia had expected, now that she was specifically looking for them. And in all of them, Ophelia could see what had bothered her before.

Rivals, Katie had said. And Nikolai as Salim’s rival made sense, from the initial impressions she’d made of them both. But the men in all the photographs didn’t look like rivals. They looked like friends. Good friends, even. Friends that went way back, judging by the pictures that were taken when they were much younger than they were now.

An entirely new crop of questions sprang up in Ophelia’s mind. What if, she thought, they were in it together? Salim didn’t seem to know what he wanted, but Nikolai surely did. Was it Nikolai’s intention to acquire the company, and having his friend buy it first was…what? A way to make it easier? Had Tomas not wanted to sell to Nikolai, knowing his reputation? Was it some kind of accounting trick, for the two of them to juggle the company between them?

The whole thing started feeling like a plot, and Ophelia didn’t know the end game, but she knew that she and the company were involved in it. And she hated that she wasn’t completely certain if it was her or the company at the center of it.

She was either a pawn herself, or she was the principle part of a plot. A tool. A toy. On stage just moments ago, she had felt powerful and impressive, but staring at the phone, willing it to go back in time and show her different images, she felt as trapped as the princess in the tower.

A knock at her door brought her back to the business at hand.

“Ophelia, it’s places for the second act.”

Ophelia couldn’t remember a time when she was so grateful to be called to go on stage.