ONLY DREAMS OF YOU

Gilded Cage

Scene 1: The Penthouse Prison

Sunlight stabbed through floor-to-ceiling windows, glinting off the steel easel Jason had installed overnight. Staria traced its cold edges—a cage masquerading as a gift.

"Your new studio,"Jason declared, tossing her a key. "Use it wisely."

The door locked from the outside.

Beyond the glass, Manhattan sprawled like a concrete Eden. Below, Central Park’s emerald folds taunted her. Three years, she reminded herself, unpacking her meager art supplies beside Jason’s provided arsenal of sable brushes and Italian oils.

A knock. Lena Moretti, Jason’s mother, entered regal in black silk, eyes like tarnished silver.

"He dreams of you too, child," she murmured, placing a tray of espresso beside Staria’s clay-stained hands. "Blood dreams. Fire dreams. The Moretti men always dream of their ruin before it comes."

She left a faded photo: Jason, aged ten, clutching a paintbrush beside a burning villa.

Scene 2: The Serpent in the Gallery

Jason’s "art consultant" arrived at dusk.Carson Blackwood swept in smelling of sandalwood and deceit.

"Staria Thorne! Your ‘Shadow Self’ piece was... revelatory," he purred, kissing her knuckles. His thumb lingered too long. "A crime you’re trapped here playing wife."

He toured her studio, criticizing Jason’s "philistine taste" while admiring her half-finished canvas a nightmare of falling bodies.

"Careful," Carson whispered, nodding at the guard outside her door. "Jason’s last wife? Sofia. She painted too. Wild, tragic things... until she ‘disappeared.’" He slid a tube of cadmium red onto her palette. "This was her favorite color."

Scene 3: Dinner with Demons

Dinner was a battlefield. Crystal goblets, white orchids, Jason dissecting steak with surgical precision.

"Carson’s mentoring you?" Jason’s knife scraped the plate. "He collects broken things. Especially beautiful ones."

Staria dropped her fork. "Unlike you? Collecting wives to clear debts?"

Jason’s fist clenched. The scar on his brow pulsed.

"Sofia drowned in the Hudson. Suicide, they said." He leaned close, his breath hot on her ear. "Carson was the last to see her alive. Ask him why her final painting was his face, screaming."

Scene 4: The Dream Studio

Midnight. Staria couldn’t sleep. She crept to her studio, unlocking it with the key Jason gave her.

The vision struck like lightning:

Canvas after canvas Sofia’s work. A triptych of terror:

1. A man (Carson!) holding a syringe to a woman’s neck in a rowboat.

2. The same woman floating in green water, red hair fanned like blood.

3. Jason weeping before an easel, burning Sofia’s final painting.

Staria stumbled back, knocking over Carson’s gift the tube of cadmium red. It split open, spilling pigment like a wound. Inside... a micro SD card.

Scene 5: Whispers in the Dark

On the card: security footage.

Sofia, alive, arguing with Carson in this very studio

Carson forcing a needle into her arm.

Jason bursting in too late Sofia limp in his arms.

A shadow filled the doorway. Jason.

"You weren’t meant to see that yet," he said, voice raw. He knelt, wiping red pigment from her trembling hands with his handkerchief.

"Sofia was my cousin. Carson killed her because she painted his future prison bars." His thumb grazed her wrist. "Now he’ll come for you. Because you dream of my future... and his end."