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“What are you doing?” I ask.
“He touched what was mine,” my mate replies, his voice colder than ice cubes.
I breathe hard and place a hand over my chest. In my entire twenty-five years, no one has ever stood up for me. The backs of my eyes become hot. My mate just risked getting caught to make sure I was safe.
“Thanks,” I whisper, my voice thick with gratitude.
When Mr. Roberts groans, some of the tightness in my chest releases, and I exhale a long breath.
“That was the man who knocked on the door upstairs?” my mate asks.
“Yes.” I walk around the desk to where Mr. Roberts sits slumped against the wall.
“What just happened?” the older man asks, sounding dazed.
My jaw tightens. The old me might be concerned about my boss or even worried about being fired, but this entire encounter has been suspicious since the moment he asked about my output.
I grab the collar of his shirt. “You’re going to tell me why you’re so eager for me to produce more paintings when they don’t even sell.”
“What are you talking about?” He tries to rise, but a shadowy tentacle whips past my line of sight and wraps around his neck.
Mr. Roberts chokes. “Stop this.”
“Tell the truth and I’ll ask him to loosen the noose,” I say.
“But it’s some kind of tentacle,” my boss grits out through clenched teeth. “Let go or I’ll call animal control or the police.”
My jaw tightens. He’s exactly the kind of person who would get my mate locked up and subject to painful experiments. Ignoring his threat, I focus on the subject he’s trying to avoid.
“What are you planning on doing with the paintings?” I ask with more bite.
“Sell them,” he rasps.
“I gathered that, but to who?”
“Geraldine McCue,” he replies. “The blonde regular in the business suit. She wants to buy them.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re talented.”
“He’s concealing something,” says my mate.
I follow the tentacle to the most shadowy corner of the room. “How can you tell?”
“His scent just changed.”
For the next ten minutes, my mate shakes Mr. Roberts until he makes a stuttering confession. He’s been passing on my paintings to the regular but not the ones displayed on the wall. When I’m on my shift, he takes them from my studio and frames them, then Ms McCue sells my artwork in her gallery and keeps a fifty percent commission.
By the time he finishes talking, I’m swaying on my feet, and my gut churns with enough nausea to make me want to spit. It’s bad enough that he’s been stealing my art but having it auctioned at a fancy gallery?
“How much did the last one sell for?” I ask.
“E-eleven grand, but I can give you half.”
My jaw drops. With that kind of money, I could afford a better apartment. Hell, I could afford a better life. “How many of them have you sold?”
“Once a month, I take a picture from your stack of finished art,” he says through clenched teeth. “I’ve done it since you started here.”
