The few days between acquiring the company and the opening performance of their London run were some of the busiest of Salim’s life. He’d had some sense that there would be work involved in his new role, but he hadn’t been prepared for the amount of micromanagement that Tomas had been doing to shepherd the company up off the ground, nor the number of things that he wanted to alter in order to give the company, and the tour, their greatest possible chance of success.

Nor was he quite prepared for the personal interest he found himself taking in the preparations. Things he would normally have delegated, interviews he would normally have outsourced, he found himself conducting. Choices of venue, choices of accommodation… all these things ended up under his direct decision.

Other things, he was aware, were falling by the wayside. The friends he had meant to meet up with in New York went ignored. The details and inspections of his new Caravaggio, even, ended up delegated to others. Since the auction, he’d been too wrapped-up in his new venture even to go and look at it.

But here, now, sitting in a historic venue—which had taken several of his staff a great deal of effort, along with a lot of money to obtain on such short notice—Salim felt that all of the trouble had been more than worth it.

It was true that the theater in Williamsburg had a certain charm to it. It was small, off the beaten path, and had the effect of making everyone who visited feel like they were a great deal cooler and more underground than they had ever been. Besides, it was where the company had developed and rehearsed the ballet. It was their home, of sorts, and that had given it a comfort that couldn’t be found elsewhere.

But here, on this stage, was where a performance of that caliber belonged. And the treatment that they’d received over the last few days was, in Salim’s view, entirely validated. Perhaps it was impossible to tell for sure, but to Salim, it seemed as though the sense of value, the sense that their skills were considered worthy of that kind of luxury, carried over into their dance. The dance, which had glimmered in Williamsburg, sparkled here.

And then, there was Ophelia.

It wasn’t that Salim had forgotten what it was like to watch her dance, or the way that the graceful movements of her body could evoke emotions he didn’t know he had. But to see her again, here, was a validation of everything he’d poured into this project. Here, just as in Williamsburg, the audience was transfixed. No one in the room was looking at anyone but her. Salim even suspected that the sound of the audience around him was quieter—as though everyone was holding their collective breaths as she took the stage with each solo dance.

He remembered the plot of the ballet from when he’d seen it in New York. It was a new story, but had enough elements in it, from what he’d read, to make those familiar with the classics of the art form feel it belonged there.

It centered on a woman, played by Ophelia, who was locked in a tower. She was a princess, and the whole thing had a very Rapunzel-esque feeling to it. But while Rapunzel had been locked in the tower by someone who came and looked after her, this version had a rather dark turn.

The ballet began on the night when her caretaker didn’t come back. What exactly had happened was never established, only that Ophelia’s character was trapped and alone, with no way out.

Until a hero arrived. The male lead. Unlike in Rapunzel’s story, this hero didn’t need any help getting up into the tower. He scaled the wall himself, with the princess cheering him on. From then on, he visited every night, but left every morning, leaving her mourning his absence till sunset.

The second act began with the princess begging the hero to take her out into the world with him. He agreed, and he began to take her with him every night, showing her the wonders of the world, bit by bit.

It was hard to say when every member of the audience realized that the hero wasn’t real, and that the princess was simply imagining her adventures with the prince while she slowly wasted away in the tower.

It was a tragic realization, but for Salim, it was the princess’s imagined adventures—complete with great big group dances in fantastical places—that did it for him. The reveal certainly made watching the audience interesting, as he saw people lean over and tell each other the conclusion they’d come to as the dance went on.

Eventually, it became clear that when Ophelia’s character asked the hero not to put her in back in the tower, she was asking for death, without knowing it. The audience changed from hating the hero for refusing to let her out, into begging him to put her back in. To make her live just a little bit longer. To give her just one more day for help to arrive.

In the end, the ballet was a tragedy. The lovers’ final adventure was to a world so beautiful that Ophelia’s character’s plea to the hero was successful. They stayed there. And the princess was happy.

If it weren’t for the final scene, in which the villagers found the tower and her body, Salim might have been happy for her as well.

The emotional ride—the change from hope, to despair, back to bittersweet hope—had caught Salim off guard the first time he’d seen Ophelia dance it. But this time, he knew what to expect, and this was all familiar, only more intense.

What Salim hadn’t expected was a bit of new emotion creeping in as he watched. At first, he wasn’t sure what it was; Salim had never been a man prone to jealousy of any sort, and whatever he wanted, in general, he could have. Perhaps the only exception was his self-inflicted competitions with Nikolai—but then, it was rivalry, never jealousy, that motivated him.

But seeing the male lead—Ryan, his name was—and the intimate way his body moved with Ophelia’s brought a bout of jealousy roaring to the surface. Salim had to swallow hard to force it back down, focusing instead on the art that they were creating together on stage. This was her profession, and besides, he had no right to be jealous.

He was here for a purpose, anyway; he was here to stop Nikolai from getting what he wanted, and that was all he should focus on.

But thinking of Nikolai, and what he wanted, had been a mistake. Seeing Ophelia with her talent on full display, and the purity of expression she was capable of, then immediately pairing it with the crude things that Nikolai wanted her for, clouded Salim’s mind.

When the intermission came along, Salim had intended to go backstage and greet the dancers, but he found that he could not. Thoughts of Nikolai, and the bet, prevented him. Instead, he went for a walk outside, and did some quick research online to make sure that his friend was nowhere near London, and in no way about to bring his particular brand of smarm and charm to this night he had worked so hard to put together.

It was only when he was satisfied that Nikolai was far away, already in in Spain, where the tour would go next, that Salim was able to relax and return to the theater.

The second act was much the same as the first in character and quality. Though Salim had seen the entire ballet through before, he still found himself enraptured. He’d heard of hanging on every word before, but it was a first for him to be hanging on every movement.

The company as a whole performed excellently, he was pleased to find, now that he had the headspace to even notice. He’d done a bit of due diligence before acquiring the company, of course, and had found that they were all talented dancers. But he’d been too caught up in Ophelia and her enrapturing performance at the time to even see them.

Now, knowing them as he did, having met them and made arrangements for them, he felt a sense of pride in seeing them on stage. Though his purchase of the company and his fostering of it was an act for the purpose of a very clear end, he began to realize just how much truth there was in what he’d told the reporters who had asked about the overlap between his art collection and ballet.

The pride he felt in knowing that he had secured the safe care of a great piece, and that it would be shepherded down to the next generation with the greatest of care due to his action…it was that same pride he felt, now. Only, instead of the sense of longevity, there was a sense of ethereality. He wasn’t protecting art for some future generation—he was enabling it to be experienced to the utmost by the people here and now, all around him. It was a different warmth he felt from the process, but not an unwelcome one.

Of course, when Ophelia took the stage, he felt all his ruminations fade. He watched her intently, along with everyone else in the audience. And, when the show was over, he felt a keen sense of loss, even knowing that he would get to see her perform again—as many times as he wished.

As the audience filed out of the theater, Salim sat in his private box. His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he knew who it probably was. He had friends in London he hadn’t seen in months, and he’d told them that he would go out with them once the performance was done tonight.

Among them was a beautiful woman he’d casually been meaning to pursue. A world-class beauty, she was. She’d made a career of it, modeling for some of the biggest names on the London fashion scene. It was meant to be a bit of fun, aside from his current project. Something to keep his mind off of getting sucked in too deep with his competition with Nikolai—something he’d learned in the past could be important.

Besides, he had a carefully arranged plan, based on years of experience with women; to get Ophelia interested enough in him to rebuff Nikolai, she needed to be intrigued by him, and not bored. She needed a sense of mystery and of forward momentum. A strong introduction—like the one he’d given her the night he’d announced he’d bought the company—followed by scarcity, but with reminders of himself in her life to make sure he was on her mind.

From past experience, a week ought to do it. And that would line up well with the last day of their run in London, and put her in the perfect position to ignore Nikolai in Madrid.

He had a plan: he was not to see Ophelia until their last night in London, and he was to go out tonight and enjoy himself with his friends and a pretty, shiny distraction.

His hand went to his phone in his pocket to view the message and respond, but he hesitated. Everything about the plan, though carefully considered, felt wrong. He didn’t want to go out with his friends tonight, and he didn’t want to avoid Ophelia for the rest of her time in London. He wanted to see her tonight.

Resolutely, he stood. He’d made up his mind.