The Ruined Canvases

Chapter 4 The Canvas Traces

(Dante's POV)

Five months. One hundred and fifty-two days.

I had not slept in our bed once. I worked in the office, drank black coffee, and listened to the climate system hum through the empty penthouse.

At night, the glass and steel rooms reflected only security lights. I left the bedroom door shut and took calls at the desk where her divorce papers had been found.

Millions went to private investigators, data miners, and mercenaries who owed me favors. They checked passports, cameras, private airfields, and every old contact attached to Aria's name.

Each morning brought another folder of possible sightings. Each ended with the same stamped word: **UNCONFIRMED**.

She had planned around every search I knew how to order.

Then an art-market contact sent me an invoice for an obscenely expensive order of Afghan Lapis Lazuli pigment. Aria once called that rare blue crushed stars.

It was the purest blue she knew, and ordering it drew notice. A forged passport could hide her face. Her choice of paint was harder to disguise.

An anonymous buyer in Paris had ordered it for a reclusive artist known only as "R." Her first private exhibition had already made her the favorite mystery of the European art press.

I booked a flight to Paris and told two men to come with me.

(Aria's POV)

Afternoon light stretched across the floorboards of my Paris studio. The place smelled of oil paint and turpentine. Nobody stood outside the door counting how long I worked.

I could leave a cabinet open or buy a tube of color without a three-day request. I still caught myself looking over my shoulder.

I held my right hand in the light. After five months of physical therapy, the tremor had stopped.

The same hand that once dropped a fork now guided my finest sable brush through a line no wider than a thread.

The gallery door struck the wall. Jean-Pierre rushed in, pale and out of breath.

"The security system has been disabled. Remotely."

I put down my brush. "How?"

"Someone used the temporary maintenance credentials from this morning's lighting inspection. The alarm grid went down for ninety seconds. Long enough to open the main doors."

Only Dante would steal a code in the morning and use it before anyone thought to cancel it.

The heavy oak doors at the far end of the gallery opened.

Dante stood between them.

He was thinner. His expensive suit hung loose at the shoulders, but his stare had not changed. Two of his men waited behind him.

For five months I had imagined him arriving angry. I had not expected the relief that crossed his face before his mouth set in the old, certain line.

He crossed the marble floor and looked me over, from my paint-stained jeans to my steady hand.

"Aria. It's time to come home."

An order, not a question. Five months away had changed nothing for him.

I put my right hand into my pocket and closed my fingers around a small plastic button.

The silent alarm connected directly to the Gendarmerie headquarters two blocks away.

Dante took another step. I pressed the button.

The plastic clicked beneath my thumb. No siren sounded, and the disabled panel stayed dark.