The 99th Game Was Mine All Along novel Chapter 12

That evening, Ariana lay in bed aggressively refreshing job boards and submitting applications to dance companies, her laptop casting a blue glow across her determined face in the darkened London bedroom.

The application process for elite European ballet companies was far more demanding than American ones. Applications required submission at least three months in advance, followed by a grueling series of auditions and technical assessments spanning weeks.

Only after clearing every hurdle could one secure even the most junior position.

Despite her legs not being fully rehabilitated, Ariana began what her mother called her "application blitz," simultaneously developing a punishing practice regimen in the small dance studio they'd installed in the townhouse basement.

Though Luigi's systematic revenge had prevented her from joining any professional companies during those three years, dance had remained her secret sanctuary. During those years, whenever he would disappear for "business meetings" (which she now understood were rendezvous with Leila), she would retreat to a small studio she'd rented off-campus. There, alone with just mirrors and music, she'd maintained her technique through endless repetition of fundamentals.

Dance had been her first love—before Luigi, before everything. She had allowed that passion to be overshadowed, but never extinguished.

Three months later, during her final audition for the National Ballet of England, Ariana performed with a technical precision and emotional depth that left the judging panel visibly moved.

As she completed her variation with a flawless grand jeté into a controlled arabesque, the artistic director exchanged glances with her colleagues—they had found their new soloist.

When the scores were revealed, she had received straight A's across every category—a feat accomplished perhaps once or twice a decade.

During the feedback session, the senior artistic director studied her with professional curiosity. "Ms. Collins, your technical abilities are extraordinary, but there's something puzzling in your performance history."

"Your training is impeccable—continuous since childhood without breaks. Yet after your junior year at Boston University, there's a complete absence of competition or performance for three years. Most dancers with your potential would be aggressively building their portfolio during that critical period. What happened?"

Ariana's grip tightened momentarily on the microphone, but her face remained composed. When she spoke, her voice carried neither bitterness nor regret, just simple fact.

"I got caught up in a toxic relationship that consumed those years," she said. "Classic story—wrong guy, wrong time."

Noting the panel's sympathetic expressions, she offered a serene smile. "But that chapter's closed now. Completely."

"From this point forward, my career is my only partnership. Dance doesn't lie, manipulate, or betray—it just demands everything, which I'm more than ready to give."

Her matter-of-fact handling of personal trauma impressed the panel as much as her technical prowess. She wasn't running from her past—she had processed it and moved beyond.

Ariana's meteoric rise within the National Ballet of England became the talk of the dance world. As the only auditionee in five years to receive unanimous top marks, she bypassed the corps de ballet entirely, starting as a soloist.

The company's cachet had reached such heights that even Luigi Maggiore—who had withdrawn from most public appearances—received a VIP package from a European investor eager to discuss a potential partnership over the performance.

His executive assistant, Michael, watched nervously as Luigi stared at the embossed invitation on his desk, mentally cursing the investor's catastrophic lack of research.

Since that night a year ago when Leila had destroyed Ariana's ashes in her final act of cruelty, Luigi had transformed into someone his staff barely recognized. Though Leila now served a lengthy sentence for desecration and the remaining ashes had been recovered and properly interred, Luigi could not bear even the most oblique reference to dance.

A German business partner had once arranged a dinner companion for Luigi—a former prima ballerina from the Berlin State Ballet—thinking it might honor his late wife's memory.

That partnership, worth hundreds of millions, had ended before dessert was served. The company was immediately blacklisted from all Maggiore ventures globally, without explanation or recourse.

Luigi's senior staff assumed he simply despised dance now, avoided the topic as if allergic.

But Michael knew the devastating truth. Luigi wasn't angry about dance—he was shattered by it. Every mention triggered the nightmares that left him screaming Ariana's name at 3 a.m., the office liquor cabinet perpetually restocked to help him self-medicate through the nights.

Always the same nightmare—flames consuming the woman he had finally recognized as his true love, too late to save her, too late for anything but endless regret.