Novel & Cerita Portrait Of An Unknown Woman

I hear a scraping sound, and I turn my head to see Robert picking up a stack of small portraits from one of the iron boxes in the corner. “What are those?” I ask. He’s staring at one of the pictures, and when I go peek over his shoulder, my face instantly feels hot, and I look away. “That’s p**n! The medieval version of it, anyway.” The red-haired woman is posing in a rather sultry manner, scantily clad. The painting is amateurish in nature. “Will you stop gawking at it?!” I blurt at Robert. “She looks like me!” “I know,” Robert replies, his voice strange. “There are more.”

It's the only one that really stands out in terms of details. The frame contains a detailed drawing of a woman—a beautiful one. Her long, wavy brown hair cascades down her shoulders, and her pink lips are parted with such elegance, complementing the sultry way she poses her face for the portrait—or picture, even. She looks like a model, but something tells me she's not—at least not professionally. I believe so because I work at one of the biggest modeling agencies, and I handle every top model who’s ever walked past the company's door. If this woman is a model, she’d definitely be a top one, given her frame is resting on a billionaire’s wall.

Brandt set a manila folder on the desk between us without preamble. ‘The woman you asked about. I’ve compiled what’s available. It isn’t everything, given the tight time frame, but it’s enough to establish the broad picture.’ I opened the folder. The photograph was paper-clipped to the inside cover. A woman who looked to be in her early sixties but I knew was in fact a decade younger. The thick makeup did a passable job at hiding the damage – the deep-set lines, the hollowed cheeks, the particular greyish cast of skin that has been treated badly for a long time.

Maybe she is not that materialistic, I thought. Something caught the corner of my eyes. A canvas that laid face down by the dresser. I went over there and picked it up. It was a painting of a half-naked woman. She looked very similar to Rose yet different. She had the same long dark hair, big green eyes, and full lips but her features surrounding her nose were different. I wondered if it was her mom.

I do not recognize either of them. Halfway into the room I let my feet stop guiding me. I pause, gazing up at the large portrait. It has to be decades old. There is a woman draped in a magnificent yellow sundress, dark eyes, and equally dark auburn curls cascading nearly to her waist, done up on the sides with golden nets and purple ribbon. And there is a man on her arm. Exceptionally handsome, piercing blue eyes, shoulder-length sandy brown hair, a vertical scar that runs the length of the right side of his face, just over his eye…

“It’s morbid.” “People gotta get their thrills somewhere,” William muttered, peering into a drawer. Alexandra stopped suddenly, nodding toward a nearby painting. I turned. It was a gloomy family portrait—father, mother, three kids. The artwork looked old, but there was something deeper—something wrong about it. The figures seemed to glare at us, hollow-eyed and mournful. “Great example of American Primitive, don’t you think?” a woman’s voice broke the silence. We turned as a young woman in a sleek black dress stepped down the spiral staircase. She was smiling politely, poised and confident.

Above the basket, centered on the wall, hung a life-sized portrait. In the picture stood a woman. She was tall and ethereal. She had long dark hair with caded or bare shoulders. She was wearing a flowing pink dress. Her face was breathtaking. She had high cheekbones, full lips curved in a secret smile, and eyes that had the exact shade of mine. I stepped closer. She looked… familiar. Not like someone I’d met. But I couldn't explain it but she just looked familiar!

Sophia asked, confused. “I use nature as a model for my landscape paintings. The rest… comes from my imagination.” Sophia was stunned, her jaw practically dropping to the floor. Did Albert seriously expect her to believe that? Because just look at all the paintings in this room, the woman lying on the bed bathed in white tones, the woman in the flower garden wearing a straw hat and a blue dress, and all the other paintings featuring female figures. None of them revealed their faces, but even so, Sophia noticed a distinct similarity between them, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

Above the shrine hung a portrait, framed in ornate gold, that instantly captured my attention. The woman in the painting had an arresting presence. Her hair cascaded in waves of silver, catching the dim light from the candles, and her expression exuded a quiet strength and regality that I had never seen in person. "Who is she?" I wondered aloud, feeling a sense of reverence wash over me. Below the portrait, a small nameplate held an inscription in a language I couldn't decipher.