CHAPTER FIVE: THE PAINTING

# Chapter Five: The Painting

The limo ride home from the Met is silent, but it is not the same silence as before.

Before it was cold and empty. Now it burns.

Alexander sits across from me instead of beside me, his tuxedo jacket gone, his bow tie hanging loose. His eyes stay locked on me like he wants to devour me and punish me in the same breath.

"You spoke to her."

Not a question.

"Yes." My voice shakes, but I do not look away. "In the restroom."

"What did she tell you?"

"That you have a painting of me. That you watched me for years before you destroyed my father. Is it true?"

He does not answer for a long time. City lights slide across his face through the glass, on and off, on and off.

The limo stops on Fifth Avenue. The driver opens the door. Alexander steps out and offers his hand. I ignore it and climb out on my own, the red dress flashing under the streetlights.

We ride the elevator up in silence, eighty floors, my heart pounding loud enough that I am certain he can hear it.

The doors open onto the penthouse. He walks straight to his private study, the black door that has always stayed locked.

He pulls a key from his pocket and turns it.

"Come here, Chloe."

Every instinct tells me not to follow him into that room when he looks like this. My feet move anyway. Curiosity wins out over fear, the way it always seems to with him.

The study is dark, smelling of old paper and cologne and something like secrets. He switches on a low lamp.

And there it is.

On the far wall, behind a black velvet curtain, a painting no bigger than a small window. It steals every bit of air out of the room.

It is me.

Me, three years ago, in the Bennett Gallery. My old blue apron, paint still on my hands. Smiling at someone off canvas. Hair falling loose from its tie. No makeup. No diamonds. Just me.

I never sat for this. I never posed for any painter in that gallery.

My hand flies to my mouth.

"Who painted this?"

"I did."

The word drops like something detonating.

I turn on him, stunned.

"You paint?"

"I used to." His voice has gone quiet. "Before Knight Enterprises ate my life. Before my father died and left me an empire to run instead."

He steps closer to the canvas, and for the first time since I met him, something in his eyes softens.

"I came to your gallery three years ago. It was raining. I was supposed to meet a client on that street, but he canceled. I walked in to wait out the storm. You were there alone, painting a small canvas of Central Park in winter. You didn't see me at first. You were humming, completely lost in it."

My mind pulls back three years, unbidden. A rainy afternoon. Me alone in the gallery. I do remember humming.

"You looked up and smiled and said welcome to the Bennett Gallery, it isn't much but it's ours." He keeps going, like the memory has been waiting behind his teeth for years. "You made me tea in a chipped mug. No one in Manhattan had ever made me tea in a chipped mug. Everyone else offers me champagne and a deal."

"I remember." My voice comes out barely there. "A tall man in a dark coat. He stayed an hour and said almost nothing, and then he left."

"I never forgot your face." His eyes hold mine, steady. "I went home that night and painted it from memory. I haven't painted anyone since."

"Why didn't you tell me? Why did you ruin my father if you..."

"Because your father came to me six months after that day, asking for money. Said his gallery was failing, wanted two million to expand. I gave it to him because of you. Because I wanted to keep that smile alive somewhere in the world." His voice hardens with every word. "He lost it all in six months on bad investments. Then he lied to me, said thieves took it. He tried to make me look like a fool in front of my own board."

He turns to face me, his gray eyes full of old anger tangled with something closer to pain.

"I ruined him because he made me feel like a fool for believing in something beautiful. For believing in you."

I stare at the painting of my younger self, smiling so freely, and my eyes fill without permission.

"So you married me for revenge. And for obsession."

"I married you because I couldn't stand the thought of another man touching you." The words come out rough. "When I heard your gallery was being sold off to some old man from Queens, I lost my mind. I bought your debt in one afternoon. I rewrote the contract myself. I made sure it was my name at that altar, not his."

"You bought me. Like art."

"I collected you. Like art." He corrects it fast, almost too fast. "There's a difference."

"Is there?"

He closes the last of the distance between us until there is none left, the red dress crushed against his tuxedo pants. His hand rises to cup my face, thumb brushing a tear off my cheek before I even knew it had fallen.

"You're shaking."

"I hate you."

"I know." His voice drops lower. "Hate me. Fear me. Just don't look at me with pity. I cannot stand pity, not from you."

His head lowers slowly, slow enough that I have time to push him away.

I do not push. I cannot move at all.

His lips brush mine, soft this time, nothing like the hard claiming kiss at the church. This is hungry and uncertain and, somehow, almost tender.

I gasp and his tongue slips past my lips, wine and mint and something that is just him.

For one second I forget to hate him. For one second I kiss him back with every ounce of anger and confusion and loneliness this week has carved into me, my hands fisting in his shirt like I might fall without it.

He groans low and pulls me tighter, one hand sliding down my spine toward the zipper of the red dress.

Then he stops.

He tears his mouth from mine and presses his forehead to mine instead, both of us breathing hard, the air between us gone ragged.

"No." His voice comes out hoarse. "Not like this. Not while you're crying, confused, still certain I'm a monster."

"You are a monster."

"Then be a monster with me." His eyes burn into mine. "But don't hand me your kisses out of pity or fear. Give them to me because you want to. I'll wait until you beg for it."

He steps back, and cold air rushes into the space where he had been.

"Go to bed, Chloe. Lock your door. Dream about that painting, and what it means that a man who never paints painted only you."

I run from his study with the red dress flying behind me, my lips still swollen, my heart in pieces I cannot arrange back into order.

I lock my bedroom door and slide down it to the floor.

He has been obsessed with me for three years. He ruined my father because my father made him feel foolish for caring about me. He married me to own me, and, somehow, to protect me from someone else at the same time.

Which truth is the real one.

And why does some small, hated part of me feel flattered that Manhattan's coldest billionaire kept a painting of a messy Brooklyn artist above his desk for three years, like a secret he couldn't put down.

Somewhere on the other side of the penthouse, something shatters against a wall. A glass, maybe.

Then nothing.

Tomorrow I will ask Mrs. Alvarez about the half open drawer I saw in his study, the file with my father's name on it, and another name beside it I did not recognize.

*Knight.*

What if this was never only about the money. What if our fathers knew each other long before either of us existed to them.

I press two fingers to my lips, where his kiss still burns faintly.

One year. I have to survive one year with this beautiful, cruel man who may have loved me long before he ever decided to destroy me.