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I rolled my shoulders, not giving a single fuck. “I’ll write you a check.”
“I don’t care about the money,” he shot back.
“Then what do you care about?” I glared at the smug bastard. “Because it sure as hell isn’t me.”
He shook his head, his top lip quivering. “Keep testing my patience, woman.”
“Or what?”
“Basta,” Arlo muttered to Luca in Italian, ordering him to stop. His father extended his hand to the vacant chair at his side. “Sit here, Alexandrea. Please.”
Marcello pushed my chair into the table before he took his place on my left. He didn’t mutter a single word to anyone, his expressionless mask in place. Around his family, he was a trained soldier, a weapon forged for their deviant purposes.
Arlo tapped a platinum serpent ring on the arm of his chair and studied me with fascination. He leaned back, elbows rested on the arms. “How are your paintings for the gallery showing coming along?”
“Okay, I guess.”
Arlo’s eyes shifted to Luca, then back to me. “My Eva had her first solo show at the Blackwell Gallery. This could be the start of a brilliant career for you. I hope you’re ready for all the attention you’ll receive.”
I nodded. “I’m working on a few new pieces that will be ready in time.”
Arlo drank from his glass, intimidating me with his hardened gaze. His sons had inherited all of his best and worst features. For a man his age, Arlo was handsome. Maybe even charming, if you could overlook all the horrible things he’d done to keep his power.
“You have a lot to profit from a sold out show at Blackwell,” Arlo commented.
“Art has nothing to do with money.”
His lips curled upward. “So much like my Eva. She didn’t care about the money.”
“No respectable artist does this for the money. Once money gets involved, it takes the fun out of a creative outlet.”
“If Eva was alive, she would have been proud to call you her daughter-in-law,” Arlo said, his deep voice as smooth as silk. “You have accomplished a lot in a short time.”
My mouth fell open from his confession. It was the nicest thing he’d ever said to me.
“I wish I could have met her,” I admitted. “I would have loved to paint with her.”
“You have a similar style, a mixture of Eva and Jean Metzinger.”
“My mother hates Metzinger,” I told him. “She also hates cubism and Art Deco. And I hate her. So, naturally, I loved Metzinger, Picasso, and similar artists. And through their work, I found Evangeline.”
“Your mother hated Eva, too.”
My mother had often voiced her hatred of Evangeline’s paintings. She pitched a fit when my grandfather had sentQueen of Nothingto me for my seventeenth birthday, the year before he brought me to Devil’s Creek.
I nodded. “One night, when I was sleeping, my mom took a knife toQueen of Nothing, ripped the canvas to shreds. I loved that painting, and she ruined it.”
Arlo smirked, as if he understood why my mother chose that painting to deface. “Eva painted it for your mother. Your mother and Eva were always in competition.”
Compared to Evangeline Franco, my mother was a child painting with Crayola watercolors. She had no vision, style, or taste. Her work was flat and lifeless with zero emotion—like her.
“My mother was the queen of nothing?”
He nodded, and I burst into a fit of laughter. I’d always wondered why my mom was so mad that she destroyed it.
I smiled. “I made her pay for that.”
Outraged, I’d raced into my mother’s studio, which was a converted garage not attached to the main house. I dumped all of her oils on the floor and lit a match, savoring every second as I watched her work burn. After years of abuse, it was the least she deserved.
