THE CRIMSON VEIL

CHAPTER 1 Elara's POV The eviction notice was taped to my apartment door when I got home. I stood in the hallway staring at it, my grocery bags in my palms, as i tried to remember how to breathe. Thirty days. I had thirty days to come up with three months' back rent or I'd be on the street. I unlocked the door and walked inside, dropping the groceries on the counter. The apartment was tiny, barely five hundred square feet, with a window that overlooked a brick wall. But it was mine. Or it had been mine. Now it was just another thing I was losing. I sat down at my kitchen table, and stared at the painting propped against the wall. A small 19th-century portrait I'd been hired to clean. The client was paying me eight hundred dollars. That would have felt like a fortune six months ago. Now it felt like nothing. My phone buzzed. I looked at the screen and felt my stomach drop. A text from the gallery owner I'd been working with for the past year. Elara, I'm sorry but we have to cancel the Morrison restoration. Budget cuts. I'll send your deposit by the end of the month. The deposit was three hundred dollars. For a job that was supposed to pay three thousand. I set the phone down carefully, like it might explode if I moved too fast. That was it. That was my last major commission. Gone. I'd been trying to build my art conservation business for three years. Three years of hustling, of taking jobs that barely paid, of working sixteen-hour days trying to make a name for myself in a field dominated by people with fancy degrees and family connections. I had talent. I knew I did. I could restore paintings that other conservators said were too damaged to save. I could see things in the layers of paint that others missed. But talent didn't pay rent. Connections paid rent. Money paid rent. And I had neither. I pressed my hands to my face and tried not to cry. Crying wouldn't help. Crying wouldn't change the numbers in my bank account or make my landlord suddenly develop a heart. My phone buzzed again. I almost didn't look. Couldn't handle another cancellation, another rejection, another reminder that I was failing at the only thing I'd ever wanted to do. But I looked anyway. An email. From an address I didn't recognize. My finger hovered over the delete button. It was probably spam. Or a scam. Nobody sends a secret job to struggling conservators working out of studio apartments in Queens. But something made me open it. Dear Ms. Voss, I am writing for Mr. Lucien Arkhov about a private project. He has an old oil painting from the 1600s that needs repair. Someone recommended you for this work. This job is urgent, and we would need you to start right away. The payment is $50,000. You will receive half before you begin and the other half after you finish. If you are interested, please reply to this email within 24 hours so we can arrange a meeting. Regards, C. Morrison Executive Assistant to Mr. Lucien Arkhov I read it three times. Then I read it again. Fifty thousand dollars. The number sat in my brain, too big to feel real. That was more than I'd made in the last two years combined. That was rent for a year. That was equipment I desperately needed. That was a chance to actually build something instead of constantly scrambling to survive. My hands started shaking. I set the phone down and stood up, pacing my tiny apartment. Five steps to the window. Five steps back to the table. This had to be a scam. Nobody offered fifty thousand dollars for a single restoration job. Especially not to someone like me. No reputation. No connections. No prestigious degree from some fancy European institute. I was nobody. A struggling conservator who could barely afford groceries. Why would a billionaire even know my name? I sat back down and googled Lucien Arkhov. Pages and pages of results flooded my screen. Billionaire tech mogul. CEO of Arkhov Industries. Net worth estimated at fifteen billion dollars. Rarely photographed. Never interviewed. The few images I found showed a man in his mid-thirties with dark hair and sharp features. Most photos were taken from a distance or at angles that obscured his face, like he actively avoided being seen clearly. There was something about his eyes in the photos, even from far away. Cold. Intense. Like he was looking through the camera at something only he could see. He looked like someone who'd never been told no in his entire life. I went back to the email and read it for the fifth time. Your name came highly recommended. By who? I'd barely worked with anyone important enough to recommend me to a billionaire. Most of my clients were small galleries, private collectors with limited budgets, people who hired me because I was cheap. But fifty thousand dollars. God, fifty thousand dollars. I could pay my rent. Could buy the equipment I needed. Could maybe, finally, stop living month to month wondering which bill I'd have to skip to afford food. I could breathe. My finger hovered over the reply button. This was stupid. This was probably dangerous. You didn't get offers like this without strings attached. Without catches. Without something being very, very wrong. But I had thirty days until eviction. I had two hundred and forty-three dollars. I had nothing left to lose. I started typing. Dear Mr. Morrison, Thank you for reaching out. I would be very interested in discussing this opportunity with Mr. Arkhov. I'm available. Best regards, Elara Voss I stared at the words for a long moment, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. Then I hit send before I could change my mind. The response came in less than five minutes. I was still sitting at my table, staring at my inbox, convincing myself I'd just made a terrible mistake when the notification appeared. Ms. Voss, Excellent. A car will come pick you tomorrow at 9 AM from your residence to bring you to the Arkhov estate. Please bring your portfolio and any tools you feel necessary. Looking forward to meeting you. C. Morrison I read it again. Then again. A car. Tomorrow morning. The Arkhov estate. This was real. This was actually happening. I stood up and started pacing again, faster this time, my mind racing through everything I'd need to bring, everything I'd need to prepare. My portfolio. My tools. My best professional clothes that were slightly too big because I'd lost weight from not eating regularly. I needed to look competent. Professional. Like someone worth fifty thousand dollars. Even though I felt like a fraud. Even though every instinct was screaming that something about this was wrong. But fifty thousand dollars. I stopped pacing and looked around my tiny apartment. At the eviction notice still sitting on my counter. At the half-finished painting that represented my entire current income. At the empty cabinets and the overdue bills stacked on my desk. I couldn't afford to say no. I had thirty days until I lost everything. And tomorrow morning, a car was coming to take me to a billionaire's estate to look at a painting worth fifty thousand dollars. It was the break I desperately needed. Or it was the biggest mistake of my life. I'd find out tomorrow.