Chapter 3: The Mask in the Dark

Ella’s POV

The lock on my apartment door clicked into place, but it didn't make me feel safe. It never does.

I leaned my back against the wood, my breath coming in shallow, jagged hitches. I didn’t turn on the lights. I didn't want to see the reality of my life—the cramped studio, the half-packed boxes, the looming shadow of a past I couldn't outrun.

My hands were still shaking. Pathetic, I scolded myself, rubbing my palms against my silk dress. You’re Ella Sterling. You’re supposed to be the one who controls the room, not the one who falls apart the second the door closes.

I closed my eyes, but it was a mistake. Behind my eyelids, the image of that painting burned like an ember. The red.

That deep, suffocating crimson. For a second, I wasn't in a luxury auction house; I was thirteen again, standing in the hallway of my childhood home, staring at the floor. I could almost smell the metallic tang of it. I could see the pool of red spreading across the hardwood like a silent, growing monster.

"Stop," I whispered into the dark. "It’s just paint. It’s just oil and pigment."

I pushed off the door and stumbled toward the kitchen to pour a glass of water, my movements clumsy. My mind, usually my greatest weapon, was betraying me. It kept looping back to him.

Kelvin Blackwood.

He had looked at me as if he could see right through my skin. Most people are easy to distract; I give them a sharp joke or a stubborn argument, and they look at the mask, not the girl behind it. But Blackwood... he hadn't flinched. He had stood there like a mountain of cold, expensive suit and even colder intent.

He knew. I saw it in the way his eyes narrowed when I looked away from the canvas. He saw the glitch.

I slumped into my mismatched armchair, pulling my knees to my chest. My stubbornness had bought me some time, but it had also put me right in the crosshairs of a man who dismantles people for a living. I had tried to bargain with him, tried to use my wit to save the only thing left of my family's history, but I felt like I was trying to stop a tidal wave with a paper shield.

I looked at the window, the rain blurring the streetlights outside. For a moment, I felt a prickle on the back of my neck—the sensation of being watched. I shook it off.

He’s a CEO, Ella. He’s probably in a penthouse drinking scotch, not thinking about a girl in a third-floor walk-up.

But as I sat there in the dark, my heart finally slowing down, I knew better. Kelvin Blackwood didn't look like a man who let things go. He looked like a man who collected debts. And I had just handed him a blank check.

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