Prologue: A Confession
~September, 2012
~St. Petersburg, Russia
Czarina Sokolov rushed forward away from the elevated stage as tears began to pour down her powdered face. Every time she would pirouette and see Natasha's understudy, her heart sank a little further. Natasha was a novice in ballet. This was her first real performance, especially in a theater this established, but she would never miss a call time. Not on her own. Czarina could only guess how much it was her own fault. She told Natasha to meet that man. The one she was told not to trust.
Before the curtains drew during the last Tchaikovsky grandiose aria, she was hurrying her way through the aisle ways, looking up to see what box seat held her father and mother. The only people who could help her now were also the people she knew would be hurt the most by what she was about to confess.
Eighteen years of lessons and lectures, sixteen of those with money well spent on ballet lessons with Russia's most sought-after instructors, were all valued to nothing now. Her father was going to kill her. She just knew it.
Dmitri and Rosalee Sokolov leaned over their high box seats, filled with adrenaline to see their daughter charging forward in tears to find them. The audience was agasp to see the lead ballerina causing such a scene, a harrowing sight as she fled through the crowd with her tulle skirt billowing behind her in short, animated flaunts. Her parents now stood away from their seats, in a full sprint, to bring themselves down to the main floor to meet her in the secluded hallway behind the house walls.
Czarina turned seeing them both agape in fear and wonder of what could possibly have her so distraught on such a wonderful night after such a beautiful performance. Her pointe shoes were hanging from her feet after having run so wildly away from the stage.
Her mother cooed softly to ease her away from tears, asking what could have her so upset after a performance that would be an excellent first addition to her professional dancing career. The girl shook her head, not wanting to interrupt her kind mother but she looked to them both to say with sputtering lips as she tore the silk ribbons from her hair as they felt like nothing more than a bad joke with the guilt in her chest,
"I've done something terrible."
Rosalee froze in shock to hear her pleading as if she was telling of a crime that had her hands bloody with guilt. Her grades were excellent. She wasn't a rebellious teenager. But her father looked down to her, knowing this was exactly what he expected after this boy came along. This boy whom he couldn't trust for a moment from the beginning.
"Is this about Natasha?" Rosalee asked, petting her daughter's head as she crumbled to the floor, nearly hysterical from the mix of performance anxiety and the terror of what she thought had happened to sweet Natasha.
"Yes, but -"
"But, what?!" Her father crowed, trying to pull the truth out of her in a demeaning stare.
She winced under his harsh glance and lowered her eyes down. There was never a time in her life when she didn't want to speak to her father, but now that impossible scenario had fallen into her lap. Her unsightly deed she had yet to reveal would likely be the death of her poor Papa, who had done so much to protect her. He asked her again, and she said after a long, painful swallow.
"There's more.."
