"May I have the pleasure to have a dance with this beautiful lady?"
Mantisha's heart started pounding vigorously. Her body seemed like not listening her thoughts, as a bitter feeling of betrayal or being broken surged to her mind. She was helpless, she had not felt this heartbroken even when her parents signed the divorce papers or her father did not as her to return.
The man was still stretching out his hand. He was totally unaffected by her trance. His deep blue eyes had a mischievous glint inside them, and the occassional reflection of the stage lights on his gold rims made his face mysteriously classy.
He did not budge at all. As if standing in front of her while stretching out his hands for so long didn't make him embarrass.
Mantisha's eyes were still on his stretched hand, a strange sense of nausea was bulging inside her stomach. She forced to make herself focused as she chanted that she trusted her willpower.
"I would like to. But I don't know how to dance. Forgive me for rejecting your kindness." Mantisha said in a barely audible voice.
"I wonder if Ms. Sen don't really know how to dance, or it's just am excuse to avoid bugs like me." He said with a playful smirk.
Mantisha was shocked to the core. How did he know about her!
"You... How do you..."
Instinctively, she was going to point her finger to him but he grabbed her hand, and with a slight pull, he made her come into the outer line of the dance floor.
"Join me, and I will answer." He muttered in a confident way.
Couples dancing with quite a fast pace and because it was one of the outer lines, she had to move from there to not bump with any other couples.
"Waltz?" He muttered in a horase tone.
"Anything, just make it slow." Mantisha replied somehow distractedly. Though her discomfort subsided a little but her mind was buzzing with questions and she was not sure how much she should ask or how much she was ready to listen.
"Just follow my lead." With a swing of his hand he revolved her, then hold her right hand in his left l as his right one was put on the back of her shoulder.
Suddenly the neon blue lights were dimmed and the soft cyan blue ones started spreading their lights. Reflecting on the dresses of the ladies on the dance floor, it had made a visible tiffany effect on the surrounding. On this point, the orchestra started playing 'The Second Waltz' and the couples started changing their dance styles. The dreamy scene with a tint of bluish hollowness made the sight more magical as the couples on the floor looked like they came from some magical realms.
"Do you like it?" That man asked in a low gentle voice. His eyes fixed on hers.
"So, it really was planned beforehand." Mantisha looked back at him. This time with confidence as she erased the previous confusions she had.
"It was worth it." He said as he closed the distance between them, with a mere whisper, a trace of smile still lingered in his voice.
"If you step back a little, following your lead would be easier for me." Mantisha said with a grumpy voice. She had no intention to entertain another weirdo who had tricked her to dance.
"How did you know my name?" She looked back to his eyes.
With another flip, he changed their posture, as he faced her back. Holding her shoulders he maintained their light dance movements, while saying,
"I don't know that yet. Just saw a random lady complaining about a Ms. Sen to be very ignorant. Seemingly, she was dissatisfied with that Ms. Sen for calling her uneducated. With the way they are still eying you, I assumed."
'So it was that 'I am known by everybody'. That ladies were sure looking for trouble for me.' Mantisha thought.
With another swing, she was facing him again. She looked at his face, this time more steadily. His high bridge of nose, angular face, thick eyebrows, everything about him seemed so familiar, unlike the man from yesterday, this man still bore a distant feeling with him. She did not stirred her eyes from him at all. As if she was searching for a little bit of flaws in him, but could not find one.
In just a breath, he explained it all. But somehow, the hunch of hers was kicking again in her stomach. Something was still missing.
'If he really was to find out my surname through them, why did he trick me to come to the dance floor? Why did he arrange a suitable music, a dreamy atmosphere beforehand? He just could not come here to impress me, right?'
With the corner of her eyes, she could see Evelyn was watching them, as well as the group of troublemaker ladies.
She knew it was forbidden to talk to the dance floor, yet she could not help it.
After a couple of minutes, the song ended. They bowed to each other, as he guided her towards the seat in a very gentlemanly way.
Then he asked her for a drink, and she declined him politely. He also did not persist anymore as he took his leave from there.
"How do you know him?" Evelyn appeared almost immediately after his leave.
"Huhh? Me? I don't know him. He just asked me to dance out of the blue."
'Tsk tsk tsk' Evelyn clicked her tongue. "At a party full of gorgeous, hot, sexy and classy ladies, he chose you. A tiny cute piece of doll..."
Mantisha was almost enraged with the first section of her words. But with the last part of her words, she lost her temper.
"Who are you calling little, tiny and all huhh?" Mantisha suppressed her angry tone as much as she could, but clearly it didn't work much. "Besides, am I not classy, or gorgeous?"
Evelyn almost laughed out loud by seeing her expression. 'It is too funny to tease her. She really looks like an angry kitten. She is so cute!' Evelyn thought to herself as she gulped down the surging laughter. To change the topic, she immediately said,
"Forget that. Just maintain a safe distance from that man. Consider it as an advice from a friend."
Mantisha was stunned. Was her hunch right? Was that man really not someone to be meddled with?
"Just, who the hell is he?" She muttered.
"Don't you know?" Mantisha shook her head in response of Evelyn's question.
"Matteo De Sica, the heir of the biggest food business chain of Italy. It was said that their family have some deep connections to the underworld, which was not verified but everybody suspects that. He is currently one of the favoured students of Mr. Adi Roy and staying in this country."
"Another ticking bomb that means." Mantisha blurted out her inner thoughts as Evelyn also agreed.
"I have no intention of getting closer to him." Mantisha said somehow absentmindedly, her focus loosing to the emotions she felt a while ago.
"Of course you should. Who knows if he had a weird kink of doing 'it' with innocent faced little girls like you. You have to be very careful..."
"You..." Mantisha pinched on her arms while blushing, as Evelyn laughed hard. None of them noticed how much closer they grew in this short while.
A few meters away, Steven put so much pressure in his glass that it cracked.
'Even after all my efforts, she still met with her doom!'
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