Fading Colors.

~ Amara ~

The library at Moore Crest was the only room that didn't make me feel like I was trespassing. It was a vast, circular space with floor-to-ceiling shelves and a rolling ladder that creaked in a way that reminded me of home. Most days, I hid here to avoid Maribel’s judgmental stares and the suffocating silence of the guest wing.

Today, I had pushed the heavy mahogany table near the window. I needed the light. In my hands, I held a charcoal pencil, its tip worn down to a nub. Before me sat a canvas I’d smuggled in from my last visit to Noah’s place.

I started with the outline of a truck. Not the sleek, silver ones the Moores owned, but the dented, reliable K-Logistics rigs that used to fill our driveway. My hand shook slightly as I tried to capture the specific way the paint peeled off the passenger door.

As I worked, the smell of the charcoal took me back. I was seven years old, sitting on the floor of my father's office while he argued with a vendor on the phone. I had been humming a song, a small, happy tune, until he snapped his fingers at me without looking up.

“Quiet, Amara. I’m working,” he had said.

I had stopped humming. I had stopped making noise altogether. I learned that day that if I was still enough, I was invisible, and if I was invisible, I wasn't a problem.

I looked at the canvas. The colors were all wrong. I wanted to paint the sunset over Linden Row, the way the light hit the neighbor’s broken fence, but all I had were shades of gray and black. Everything in this house was gray or black. Even the air felt like it had been drained of color.

A faint click echoed from the hallway. My heart hammered against my ribs. I knew that sound—the heavy, rhythmic tread of expensive Italian leather on marble.

Gideon was home early.

I scrambled to pull a stack of heavy business law books over my canvas. I didn't want him to see it. I didn't want him to see anything that belonged to the real me. To him, I was just a contract, a "clean" asset that didn't require maintenance.

The double doors swung open. Gideon stepped inside, his dark coat still dusted with the light rain from outside. He didn't look at me at first; he was focused on his phone, his thumb moving rapidly over the screen.

“Maribel said I’d find you here,” he said. His voice was that familiar, low baritone that always seemed to vibrate in the pit of my stomach.

“I was just reading,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

He finally looked up. His eyes were like flint, cold and unreadable. He walked toward the table, his presence filling the room until the air felt thin. He stopped a few feet away, his gaze falling on the stack of books I’d used as a shield.

“Corporate Governance and Ethics?” He raised an eyebrow. “Heavy reading for a Tuesday.”

“I want to understand,” I told him, keeping my hands flat on the table to hide their trembling. “To be a better partner.”

He didn't smile. He didn't even acknowledge the effort. “The board is happy with the optics, Amara. That’s all the ‘partnership’ requires”.

He reached out, his hand hovering near the edge of the books. For a second, I thought he would move them. I thought he would see the charcoal smudge on my thumb or the edge of the canvas peeking out.

Instead, he just straightened a stray pen on the table.

“We have a dinner with the Lockes on Friday,” he said, already turning back toward the door. “Wear something professional. Selene will send over some options.”

“I have my own clothes, Gideon,” I said. It was a small spark of rebellion, one that died the moment he turned back to face me.

“We discussed this,” he said, his tone flat, devoid of anger but heavy with expectation. “Consistency is key to the image. Let Selene handle it”.

He left as quickly as he’d arrived, the heavy doors thudding shut behind him.

I waited until I heard his footsteps fade into the distance before I moved the books. The charcoal truck looked lonely on the white expanse of the canvas. It looked like a ghost haunting a museum.

I picked up the pencil, but the urge to create was gone. I had spent twenty-four years learning how to take up as little space as possible, and in this house, I was finally succeeding. I was becoming the silence Gideon wanted.

I reached out and rubbed my thumb over the drawing, smearing the charcoal until the truck was nothing but a gray, formless blur. Fading colors. Fading memories.

I stood up and began to put the supplies away, tucking the ruined canvas behind a row of encyclopedias where no one would ever look.

The library went quiet again. It was a perfect, stable, Moore-approved silence.

And it felt like a grave.