Chapter 2 – Shadows
2094 Words
GEMMA
I stood in the middle of my gallery long after the tourists left, the card pressed between my fingers like it might burn me.
We need to talk about your father.
I read it again. And again. The handwriting was small, cramped—nothing like the clean, sharp typeface of his name.
My father.
Richard Lawson.
The man who gave me his name but nothing else. The man whose lawyer sent letters threatening to sue me if I used that name for anything profitable. The man who looked through me at my grandmother's funeral like I was a piece of furniture left in the wrong room.
I had not talked about him in years. Not because I did not think about him—I did, more than I wanted—but because there was nothing to say. He made his choice when I was seven. He made it again when I was twenty two and refused to join the family business. He made it every day since by pretending I did not exist.
Now some man in a thousand dollar suit walked into my gallery and left me a note telling me we needed to talk about him.
I folded the card in half and shoved it in my back pocket.
My hands were shaking. I did not know if it was anger or something I did not have a name for.
I walked to the back office and closed the door. The nonprofit application sat exactly where I had left it, sixty two pages of hope I could barely afford. I sat down, pulled the card out again, and stared at it until the words blurred.
No phone number. No email. Just his name and those six words.
My phone buzzed. I almost did not look. But it was Leon—my only employee, my closest friend in the city, the man who had shown up three years ago with a résumé and ended up staying for the coffee and the chaos.
How is the morning treating you? Need me to come in early?
I almost typed fine. Instead, I typed: Someone came by. An investor. Left a weird note.
His reply came fast. Weird how?
I looked at the card again. Then at the envelope still sitting on my desk, the letter from Steele Capital Holdings sticking out like an accusation.
He wants to talk about my father.
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
On my way.
I put the phone down and leaned back in my chair. The ceiling had a water stain I had been meaning to fix for months. The walls needed paint. The windows needed new seals. Everything needed money I did not have.
And now a man who could buy this building ten times over wanted to have a conversation about the one person I had spent my whole life trying to forget.
The door opened thirty minutes later. I heard Leon's heavy footsteps before I saw him—he never learned to walk quietly, not that he tried. He appeared in the office doorway with two cups of coffee and the particular expression he wore when he was trying to decide how angry to be.
He set one cup in front of me.
"Hello to you too," I said. "Forgot to greet me again."
He shrugged, the closest he ever came to an apology. "You said weird note. Greetings can wait."
I laughed despite myself. Leon had never been one for formalities. When he first walked into my gallery three years ago looking for a job, he had introduced himself by saying, "Heard you need someone who knows how to hang a painting without putting a hole through the wall." He had been showing up without knocking ever since.
I handed him the card.
He read it. Turned it over. Read it again. His jaw tightened the way it did when he was counting to ten in his head.
"Marcus Steele," he said slowly. "The Marcus Steele? The one who has been trying to buy this place for a year?"
"One of the offers came from his company. The others were shell companies I traced back to London. I am guessing they were all him."
"And he just walked in here. Before opening hours. And left this."
I nodded.
Leon set the card down carefully, like it might explode. "What did he say to you?"
I told him. Everything. The knock, the envelope, the way Marcus Steele stood in my gallery looking at Mariela's paintings like they were evidence. The way he asked why I kept refusing. The way he knew about my grandmother.
When I finished, Leon was quiet for a long moment.
"He knows your grandmother," he said. Not a question.
"He said it like he knew her. Like he had done research."
Leon picked up the card again. "So what does a London billionaire want with Richard Lawson?"
I took a sip of coffee. It was bitter. I had not put sugar in it.
"That is what I keep asking myself. What does anyone want with Richard Lawson?"
Leon did not answer right away. He sat on the edge of my desk, the wood groaning under his weight, and looked at me with the expression he got when he was about to say something I did not want to hear.
"Maybe it is not about your father," he said quietly. "Maybe it is about what your father did."
I set the cup down. "What do you mean?"
"You ever wonder why he cut you off so completely? Why he let you walk away with nothing? Why your grandmother had to raise you, feed you, put you through school, leave you this place—and he never lifted a finger?"
The question landed in my chest like a stone.
"He did not want me," I said. "It is not complicated, Leon. He wanted a son. He got me. He moved on."
Leon shook his head slowly. "I have known you for three years, Gemma. I have watched you run this place like it is the only thing keeping you alive. I have watched you build something beautiful out of nothing. And I have watched your father's lawyers send you letters every time you so much as breathe in the direction of anything that could make you successful."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping.
"That is not a man who moved on. That is a man who is scared."
The word hung in the air.
Scared.
I had never thought of Richard Lawson as scared. He was cold. Calculated. Cruel, maybe. But scared? The man had enough money. He had a wife who did whatever he told her. He had a name that opened doors.
What could he possibly be scared of?
"What if he did something?" Leon said, his voice barely above a whisper. "What if Marcus Steele is not trying to buy your gallery because he wants it? What if he is trying to buy it because it is the only thing your father left behind that is still standing?"
My blood ran cold.
The gallery. Grandma Rose's gallery. The only thing she owned when she took me in, the only thing she never let anyone touch.
If anything happens to this place, Gemma, you fight for it. You hear me? You fight.
I heard her voice like she was standing next to me.
I looked at Leon. "You think my father wants this place gone."
"I think someone does," he said. "And I think you need to find out why."
I picked up the card again. Marcus Steele's name stared back at me.
I did not have his number. I did not have an email. I did not have anything except the name of a man who walked into my gallery, looked at my paintings like he was looking for something, and left me with a question I could not stop asking.
My phone buzzed again. I glanced down.
Unknown number. One message.
Tomorrow. 8am. The gallery. Come alone.
- Writer
