Page 64 of His Vow

"I'm not finished." I took a breath. The woman who used to avoid hard truths was looking directly at the hardest one. "You lied to me every single day. You made me fall in love with a version of you that was built to get through my door. I understand why. I've seen what my father did. I've read the files. I know what he is now." I swallowed. "But understanding why doesn't mean I forgive how."

I stepped closer. Not with warmth. With the precision of a woman who had chosen every word before she walked into this room.

"You used me. Don't dress it up. Don't tell me it became real. Don't tell me you fell in love somewhere along the way." My voice was steady. "I need you to hear this. I didn't do this because you showed me the truth. I didn't do this because of your phone call. I did this because I finally looked for myself." I held his gaze. "You don't get credit for my courage. That's mine."

He was looking at me the way he'd looked at me the first night — across the gallery, the stillness that had its own gravity. Except now I knew what was behind it. The sadness the sketch caught. The man underneath the weapon. I could see him — the real one, the one who called me in the dark and cracked open and said I love you like it was the first time he'd ever meant anything.

I saw him, and it wasn't enough.

"I loved you." Quietly. "I loved you, and you knew it, and you used it. That's what I can't get past. Not the vendetta. Not my father. The fact that you held something I gave you freely and turned it into a tool."

His mouth was open. The words were forming. I could see them pressing forward, the I love you pushing against his teeth again. I could feel the pull. The same gravity from the phone call. The thing between us that hadn't died despite everything that should have killed it.

I turned. Walked out. Didn't wait for him to speak. My heels clicked down the corridor, past the conference room, past the reception desk where a woman glanced up and looked away. The elevator doors opened. I stepped in and pressed the button.

The doors closed, and I leaned against the wall and pressed my fist to my mouth and breathed through it until the shaking stopped.

TWENTY

SOLEIL

The gallery was stripped to its bones.

No collectors browsing. No champagne on the tables. No opening night hum of voices and heels on concrete. Just the paintings on the walls — Rafael's remaining work — and the silence of a room that used to feel full and now felt like a question I didn't have the answer to.

I stood barefoot on the concrete floor with a terrible coffee and a spreadsheet Margaux had printed three times because the numbers kept changing, and none of the changes were good. The lease was under review. The collector pipeline had dried up. The Hargrove Foundation was gone. The programming budget was a number Margaux recalculated with tighter lips each time she ran it.

"We can stretch through March," she said from behind the desk, her pen moving across a legal pad. "After that, we need new funding, or we downsize."

"We're not downsizing."

"Then we need new funding." She looked up. The brie stain was gone from her cuff. Everything about Margaux was sharp today. "Rafael's second show is postponed. You know that."

"I know."

"He's going to be disappointed."

"I know that too."

She set the pen down. "Whatever you decide, I'm here. The gallery survives either way. We'll figure it out."

I looked at her across the desk. The one person who had never performed for me. The one person in the room who was never pretending. My throat tightened. I nodded.

The door opened.

The woman who walked in was small — 5 ft. 3 in, maybe less. Short natural hair, a muted coat buttoned to her chin, sharp cheekbones that caught the gallery's overhead lights. Her eyes moved across the room. They landed on the grandmother's kitchen. Her lips pressed together.

I knew her face. The name from the files. The signature — small, unsteady, the handwriting of someone whose hand was shaking.

I walked toward her. My bare feet were silent on the concrete.

"Adira."

She turned. Her eyes found mine and held them. Up close, her face was fuller than the photograph I'd seen — healthier, the sharpness in her cheekbones softened by years of rebuilding. Her eyes were careful. Not cold. Considered.

"Soleil."

Margaux looked between us. She picked up her bag, her legal pad, and her phone. She walked into the back room and closed the door without a word. Instinct, not instruction. She knew when a room needed to be smaller.