The tentative truce held for a week. A fragile, delicate thing built on shared glances and carefully neutral conversations. Demetri didn’t mention Sasha leaving for university. Sasha stopped flinching every time he entered a room. They began eating dinner together, the conversations stilted but present, often facilitated by Nora who acted as a gentle, persistent bridge.
The subject of art became their neutral ground. Demetri, to Nora’s astonishment, had a warehouse of pieces—not the cold, abstract works that filled the penthouse, but vibrant, emotional paintings from his early days building his empire. He had an eye, a deep, intuitive understanding of composition and feeling that he’d buried beneath ledgers and takeover bids.
One evening, he showed Sasha a small, breathtaking landscape o
