“It’s not that bad of a neighborhood,” I’d said.
He looked me in the eye with the same focus he’d used to watch the street, his dark eyes a match for mine. “Are you sure you want to live here?”
Yes. I was sure then, and I’m sure now. The very next day a crew arrived at the building across the street. They gutted the apartment on the second floor. They hadn’t been finished for five minutes when the security team started setting up. This is the one thing Leo won’t compromise on, no matter how many times I tell him I’m perfectly safe here. The team stays.
Eva doesn’t understand why I want this place so much. Guilt expands in my throat. I’ve said no to them so many times since I graduated in May, but they can’t—or won’t—stop asking. Eva offers me a spare bedroom. Two spare bedrooms, if I want a studio. And Leo offers more money. Apartments overlooking Central Park. My own gallery. He doesn’t want me to worry about money.
It would be nothing to him. I know. He could support me for the rest of my life and never feel a pinch, because my brothers are awash in money. They wield it like they wield power. They’re confident in it. It’s theirs.
I want my own. My own money. My own apartment. My own way in the world. Anything else feels like drowning.
The heat kicks on, rustling my lace curtains. My two rooms plus bathroom are small and dusty, big enough to paint in but not much else, and I love it here. I love the knitted blanket I keep on the back of the couch and the tea kettle I got at an antique store and the bay window in the bedroom. I wedged a full-size mattress at the very back so I’d have more room for my easel and all my paints.
I breathe through the nagging guilt. It’s worse whenever I feel irritated by my siblings, especially Leo, especially the things he does to keep me safe. They’re not new. He’s been protecting me for as long as I can remember. And not from imagined threats. From very real people who lived in our house.
Enough of that. I’ve had a request for a commission.
I take out my phone, pull the blanket over my lap, and google the beach. Send my brother a text.
Daphne: I sold a painting today!!
I do not send a second text about the note. It feels wrong not to tell him, but telling him will turn this into a big deal.
Crescent Cove turns out to be a cove—pretty on the nose—with a tiny stretch of public beach in the middle surrounded on either side by private beaches. It’s a fancy little town about an hour away. Nothing dangerous about it. The beach will be empty this time of year. Perfectly safe.
Leo: You’ll be world-famous by spring.
A commission. I got a commission today. I’m ordering dinner for that. It’s worth celebrating. Dinner and Netflix, and tomorrow, a trip to the beach.
Chapter Three
Emerson
The report on my painter arrives in my inbox at the same time the painting arrives on my doorstep. A man in a thick, Army-green coat wraps his hands around the sides of the canvas, squeezing tight to keep it from falling. I don’t want him touching it. Not even through the protective wrapping. I step back to let him into the foyer.
“Where do you want it?” His eyes dart around the room, but there’s nothing to see. The entry table and matching chair in a dark cherry wood that warms in afternoon light. My dining table in the space to his left. The closed doors to a study. Behind us is the living room, but he won’t be going there. I don’t allow the impatience to grow. It’s expected, of delivery people, that they can’t control their need to stare.
“Here is fine.” He steadies it against the entry table and turns back. I already have his tip in hand. Another person has been in my space too long, and the email taunts me from the top of my inbox. Curiosity is a dry scorch at the back of my throat.
I don’t give in.
Yet.
The delivery man steps out onto the porch. When the door’s locked behind him, I move to the dining room window. The truck starts with a rumble, and he guides it around the circle drive and toward the gate. It opens for him, and only when it’s closed again do I allow myself to return to the painting.
I take it into the dining room and remove the coverings. It’s a mid-size piece, perhaps four feet across. I brace myself against any emotion at all. It’s possible, though not likely, that I will feel differently about the piece now that it’s here. Now that it’s mine.
The last of the wrapping falls away.
It’s like being slapped in the face with a cold wave. That ache I felt in the gallery is back. More intense now. I push all of it to the side and try to look at the painting without expectation, with all shoved to the side. I can’t do it. What I felt—it was real. It takes a minute to get myself under full control. To stop thinking of those slashes of light at the edges of a doorframe, searching for a way in.
I lay the dark-magic canvas down on the dining room table and leave the room.
Lucky for me, the information I need has already arrived. It’s waiting for me. The person who made this painting, who reached into my soul and shook it, is waiting for me. I keep my mind carefully blank on the way into my study. No expectations.
The image of the woman’s shadow behind her lace curtain floats weightlessly across my memory.
The artist, she—
A slip-up on Robert’s part. A woman. That’s all I know. Whoever painted this could be any woman in the city. In the world. I sit down at my desk and jiggle the mouse to wake up my computer. This is one report I want to read in full definition. Not on a cramped phone screen.
The email springs open at the first click. Scroll. I ignore whatever comments my man in the city has left and open the report itself.
Daphne Morelli, artist’s signature: D.M.
Seven photos of her initials on various pieces accompany this bit of information, and a photo of her. There are more photos. The urge to scroll down and devour them is strong, but I won’t. This is important. This requires patience, and attention.
Daphne Morelli is the daughter of Bryant and Sarah Morelli out of Bishop’s Landing.
My perspective shifts again. I arrive at the first photo that’s not of her artist’s signature.
It’s her. The woman from the street. Same black hair. Same lines of her body. A strange relief. I wanted her, and now she’s been delivered to me in this email. Yesterday, she was a woman on the sidewalk in a gray coat, but now she has depth. The photo is her last school ID. It turns out that her hair isn’t black—it’s a very dark brown, with dark eyes to match. Tiny chips of gold in those eyes. She grins in the photo, completely at odds with what everyone knows about her family.
The Morellis are infamous. In Bishop’s Landing. In the city. Everywhere. They are a nebulous danger that people talk about with their eyebrows slightly raised, as if to telegraph the risk of dealing with the Morelli family. Not financial risk, though there’s always an element of that in anything worth doing. They mean—don’t piss them off. Attack one Morelli, attack them all. A bit of a dynasty, unlike my brothers and me. They’re more like the Constantines, another wealthy family with whom they are in a constant petty rivalry. I suspect most of the rumors about the Morellis come from the Constantines, but I don’t particularly care.
Daphne doesn’t look dangerous. She looks innocent. Hopeful, I would say. Hopeful, rather than cynical and hard. Odd for a person with her last name. It must have been cultivated in her, that sweetness. Guarded somehow. Twenty-three, and she still has that light in her eyes. That light—it’s hiding something, if her painting is any indication.