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“Where are you taking me?” I slapped his arm, desperate to get away from him. “Let me go, Luca.”
He grinned like a maniac. “It’s a surprise.”
Luca tugged on my hand and picked up his pace. My feet hurt from walking so fast, but he wouldn’t slow down until we were standing in front of the elaborate French doors at the end of the long hallway.
“This is my mother’s studio,” he said with his eyes on the doors. “No one has been inside for years.” He snapped his head at me. “I thought you’d like to see it. You’ll need to understand her better to recreate her paintings.”
He opened the door. My jaw dropped as we walked into a massive room that had a domed ceiling, hand painted by the legend herself. Until that moment, I thought the fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was the greatest work of art I’d ever seen.
Dozens of emotions poured out of me as I spun in circles, studying every detail of Evangeline Franco’s masterpiece.
“Wow,” I whispered. “I’m speechless.”
“My mother had that effect on many people.”
“She did this by herself? It must have taken her years.”
He nodded. “She started after Marcello was born and finished a few months before her death.”
“That’s some serious dedication.”
I stopped in front of Evangeline’s self-portrait and stared at her in awe. She was gorgeous, with flawless skin and long black hair that looked like fine silk draped over her shoulder. Her sons had inherited her big sapphire eyes and long, black eyelashes.
“How did she capture the detail so well in her own face?” I mumbled, without meaning to speak aloud.
“My mother sat in front of the mirror.” He pointed to the exact spot in the room’s corner. “She memorized every detail of her face before her brush moved across the canvas.” He smiled at the painting. “She wore a simple but elegant black Chanel dress and her favorite Mikimoto pearls. The entire time she laughed and smiled, cracking jokes about how vain she must look painting herself.”
I chuckled. “She was an amazing woman.”
“Everyone loved and adored her,” he said, as his eyes met mine. “Even people who didn’t know her.”
Luca moved to the next canvas on the wall.
“I have this painting,” I told him. “It was the first Evangeline Franco piece I owned. Pops surprised me with it.”
“My mom painted a second edition for Carl. They were good friends.”
I raised a curious eyebrow. “They were?”
He nodded. “My mother hated your grandmother, but she was close to Carl. She had a lot of pain in her joints from painting. He prescribed her medications to help. She also suffered from migraines from breathing in the fumes.”
We stared at the canvas splashed with a mixture of reds, yellows, blues, and greens. I could make out the shape of a face, but I couldn’t tell if they were male or female. Her style was a mixture of Cubism and Art Deco, the two I also favored. Evangeline titled itThe Truth About Liars. It was my favorite piece of her entire collection.
Luca pointed at a long bench next to an easel covered with a tarp. “I sat there when she painted it. She was so mad that day, even though she tried to hide it. I helped her choose the paint for her palate, and then she started flinging her brush at the canvas.”
“I’m sure there was more skill to it than throwing paint.”
He shook his head. “I’d never seen her like that. She was so angry with my father over something. They fought a lot in the last few years before her death. I thought she’d lost her mind when she started screaming, ‘I will always tell the truth even when you lie.’ I think she was talking to my dad.”
“Some of the best art comes from pain. That’s when the muse takes over.”
Luca studied my face, then his eyes slowly drifted down to my lips. “Congratulations. You earned this position, Drea. The board of the Franco Foundation unanimously agreed you are the most qualified.”
“And you? Did you give me this job to make me change my mind about you?”
He shook his head. “No. I would never let someone who wasn’t talented imitate my mother’s art. You’ll start at the foundation after your exhibition at the end of the month.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, even though I hated having to thank Luca for anything.
