What Happens At The End Of Portrait Of A Scotsman?

I was a sketch artist acting for the police. On a secret mission, I was discovered by a murderer. My eyes were gouged out, and my body was dismembered, unceremoniously dumped in a garbage bin. On the brink of death, I called my boyfriend, a criminal investigator. However, he hung up on me because he was busy accompanying his first love to a prenatal checkup. A few days later, he received a painting that was a vital clue to finding the murderer, but he thought I was playing tricks on him. In his anger, he tore that portrait to shreds. After he found out the truth, he spent the whole night searching through the garbage to piece it back together.

My mother was the best portrait artist in the police station. She had a strong sense of justice and brooked no evil. However, all I got was a sharp retort when I called her to save me. "You know it's your sister's coming-of-age celebration today, and you're cursing her? Kidnapped, are you? Fine, the kidnappers can kill you for all I care." She assumed it was a prank call. So, she refused to go to the police station and do her job. I wasn't saved in time and was tortured to death. When the DNA report came out, she came to the scene all wobbly. She drew a portrait of me with my bones as reference, her hand trembling all the way. "Jessica? It can't be her. This is a mistake!" She tried again and again. Yet, it didn't matter how many times she redid it as the portrait showed my face. My mother, who had hated me my whole life, teared up.

I masterminded a half-billion-dollar art auction to wash money for Miles’s family. But at the celebration party, Miles gave all the credit to Rebecca. His childhood friend. The daughter of the family’s consigliere. I stormed into his study. “Miles, head curator was Rebecca? Are you sure about that?” He looked up from a cloud of smoke, pulling me into his arms. His voice was a low, soothing rumble. “Valerie, I know you want to prove yourself, but this was all Rebecca. Especially the Caravaggio. The real one, worth three hundred million. She’s the one who pulled it off.” His lips brushed my forehead, his breath hot. “I don’t love you because you can fix some old paintings. You’re my queen, always. My girl. You don’t have to worry about her.” I almost laughed. The anger was choking me. “She can’t tell the difference between oil and acrylic. How the hell would she know a real from a fake?” “Enough!” Miles cut me off, his tone leaving no room for argument. “I know what Rebecca can do. Don’t make a scene just because you’re jealous.” His hands tightened, trapping me in his smoky embrace. “Don’t disappoint me, Valerie.” But he already had. When I’d had enough of his favoritism and his blindness, I walked. And that's when he went crazy. Scoured the earth looking for me. Begging me to come back, saying he was blind, that he’d been wrong about everything.

At the bride selection ball, the queen herself chose me to be the crown prince's consort. Then my cousin Yvonne Johnson suddenly dropped to her knees in the middle of the hall and presented an erotic painting to the court. The woman in the painting had no face, but the rose birthmark at my waist had been rendered in chilling detail. Yvonne's eyes were red, her voice soft and cool. "I love my cousin dearly, but I can't deceive the queen. Your Majesty, please look closely. My cousin's virtue is compromised. She isn't fit to be the crown prince's consort." In a single night, my reputation was destroyed. I became the most shameless woman in the capital. Yvonne smiled at me, sweet as ever. "If your mother hadn't drawn your birthmark herself, no one would've believed that the eldest daughter of a duke's household would do something so indecent." My mother looked at me with an expression that held only resignation. "Your aunt once saved my life. I made a promise to Yvonne. I swore I'd give her the finest match in the world. But as long as you're here, you're in her way. Charlotte, my hands are tied." The ground dropped out from under me. It was my mother who'd had that painting made. She'd destroyed my name, my future, all to help her favorite niece marry the crown prince. Using my so-called disgrace as justification, she ordered me to hang myself. Meanwhile, my cousin married into the palace in glory, dressed in the gown and jewels that had been meant for me. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day of the bride selection ball.

Three years after my fiancé fell off a cliff while on a sketching trip in the mountains, I walked straight into his solo art exhibition by accident. And there he was, the man I hadn’t been able to forget for a single day, gently adjusting the scarf around a young woman’s neck. Every wall around us was filled with portraits he once promised he would only ever paint for me. Yet now, every single one of them was of her. Beside me, Timothy Hansen, his closest friend, the one who had helped me handle the aftermath back then, grabbed my arm. “Lexie, don’t do anything rash. Ethan had his reasons. He was rescued by Jane after the fall. He hit his head and lost his memory. It wasn’t on purpose that he didn’t come back.” I gave a wry smile. “So he lost his memory. Did you lose yours, too? If Ethan was alive all this time, why didn’t you bring him back? You watched me spend the last three years drowning in pain, surviving on sleeping pills. Was that entertaining for you?” Timothy said nothing. He didn’t even dare to look at me. Meanwhile, the girl—Jane Green—shrank back, hiding behind Ethan like a frightened animal. Then, Ethan finally looked at me, his expression cold and distant. “Ms. William, I didn’t come back because I didn’t want to. Jane is the one I love. As for the past, since I don’t remember it, just think of it as something from a past life.”

Damien Voss has spent his entire life fulfilling a role he never chose: heir to an empire, dutiful son, fiancé to Anastasia Brooke since they were fifteen. Their engagement was never about love it was a merger sealed in a childhood promise between two ruthless families but it works. They respect each other, understand each other, and keep up appearances well enough that no one has ever thought to question it. It’s enough, or it was, until an artist named Lucas Carter walks into their lives to paint their engagement portrait and walks out of a bathroom door at exactly the wrong or right moment. What begins as an accident becomes an obsession neither man can outrun. Damien buries his attraction under anger and denial. But desire has a way of resurfacing anyway, and when the two finally give in, Damien claims Lucas fully. stolen evenings, a version of himself he’s never let anyone see. As the affair deepens, Anastasia begins to notice the distance long before she has proof of why. With the engagement party closing in, Damien is forced to face what he’s spent his whole life avoiding: he doesn’t want the wedding, the arrangement, or the life that was chosen for him before he was old enough to have an opinion. But unraveling fifteen years of promises between two powerful families was never going to be simple and when the truth comes out, it won’t just break hearts. It will ignite a war between empires, threaten to destroy both families’ fortunes, and force Damien to decide what kind of man he’s willing to become. A story of forbidden desire, dynastic betrayal, and the cost of choosing yourself when everyone else has already decided who you’re supposed to be.