ART AND VENGEANCE

CHAPTER FOUR

The car was a silent, black beast at the curb. It looked out of place on my street, where the asphalt was cracked and the fences leaned. The driver, a man in a crisp grey suit, stood beside the open rear door. He didn’t smile. He just waited.

My suitcase, an old navy blue one with a wobbly wheel, felt like the only familiar thing in the world. I had packed my clothes, my tools, and a single photograph of my mother in her studio. Everything else stayed behind, frozen in time under dust sheets. It felt less like leaving and more like fleeing.

“Ms. Rossi,” the driver said, not a question. He took my suitcase and placed it in the trunk without a sound.

I slid into the back seat. The interior smelled of clean leather and cold air. The door shut with a soft, expensive thud, sealing me in. As we pulled away, I didn’t look back. I couldn’t.

My phone felt heavy in my hand. I stared at the text thread.

‘I accept. Elara.’

‘A car will collect you at 8 AM. Be packed. K.T.’

K.T. Just initials. He couldn’t even give me his full name in a text. It was the proudest, coldest thing I’d ever seen. It screamed that this was a business arrangement, and I was a task on his checklist. The anger that rose up was hot and sharp, but it quickly drowned in a wave of cold, sinking regret.

‘What have you done? the voice in my head whispered. You’ve sold yourself to a man who signs texts like a royalty statement.’

Sweat of regret ran through my chin, I couldn't make a decision, I was stuck. The city blurred past the tinted window. We weren’t heading to an airport terminal. We drove onto a private tarmac where a sleek, silver jet waited, its stairs down like a predator’s jaw. This wasn't just wealth. It was a different planet.

The driver opened my door. “Your flight to Venice, Ms. Rossi.”

My feet on the tarmac felt unsteady. The jet engine whined softly. At the top of the stairs, a flight attendant nodded. “Welcome aboard, Ms. Rossi. Mr. Thorne is already inside.”

Of course he was. He wouldn’t wait for me.

I stepped into the cabin. It was all pale cream and polished wood. And there he was, Killian Thorne, in a seat that looked more like a throne. He was typing on a laptop, his focus absolute. He didn’t look up.

The regret turned into a hard, icy lump in my throat. I was in a cage. A beautiful, soaring, gilded cage.

“Sit,” he said, not glancing from his screen. “We depart in four minutes.”

I took the seat farthest from him, by a window. The flight attendant offered me orange juice in a crystal glass. I took it, my fingers trembling so slightly I was afraid the ice would clink. I focused on the cold feeling of the glass to steady myself.

As the jet began to move, reality pressed down on me. I was leaving everything I knew to marry a stranger for money. The shame was a physical weight, making it hard to breathe. I was doing the very thing my mother would have hated. I had become the kind of person she gently refused, someone who traded what mattered for what was easy.

But it wasn’t easy. It was the hardest choice I’d ever made. And the truth was, I didn’t have a choice. Not a real one. The other path led to losing every single thing she’d left me. This path, at least, let me save one piece of it.

“The contract.” His voice cut through the roar of takeoff. He slid a thick document in a black folder across the table between us. “Your lawyer’s notes have been incorporated. Read it. Sign the final page.”

I opened the folder. The words swam ‘legally binding, confidentiality, non-disclosure, dissolution clause.’ My eyes snagged on the financial terms, the five million dollar payment, the endowment for Everhart, the deed to the studio. The numbers were so large they felt fake. But they weren’t. They were the price of me.

I flipped to the last page. A line for my signature waited, blank and accusing. Next to it was his signature, already there. Killian Thorne. A bold, black s***h of ink. So much more powerful than “K.T.”

My hand hesitated, the pen hovering.

He finally looked at me. His eyes were that same pale, assessing grey. “Regret is a waste of fuel, Ms. Rossi. You made a calculation. I suggest you follow it through to the result.”

He said it without malice. Just a simple fact. It was that calm, sure tone that broke through my panic. He saw my fear and called it a waste. At that moment, I didn’t see a monster. I saw a machine. And you couldn’t reason with a machine. You could only operate it, or be crushed by it.

I wasn’t ready to be crushed.

I thought of the angel in the fresco, hidden for five hundred years. Waiting for someone with the right skills, the right light, to find it. And it was clearly not meant for a person like this.

I put the pen to the paper. I signed my name. ‘Elara Rossi.’

It didn’t feel like a victory. It felt like a sentence being written. But it was my sentence. I had chosen it.

I looked up from the paper and met his gaze. “When are we getting married”

A flicker of something, surprise, perhaps, passed behind his eyes. It was gone in a second. He gave a single, slow nod, as if I had finally asked a useful question.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “The wedding is at ten. The palazzo is at four.”

Then he turned back to his laptop, the conversation clearly finished.

Tomorrow? No prior information? Just like that? I was with someone who does what he deems fit, what will become of me? I turned to my window. We were above the clouds now, in a world of endless white and brilliant blue. There was no going back. The regret was still there, a cold companion in my chest. But alongside it, for the first time, was a spark of defiant curiosity.

I was trapped in his gilded world. But tomorrow, I would walk into a palace of sighs and put my hands on a piece of forgotten history. He might own my name for six months. But for those six months, I would own my freedom too. And that, I decided.