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It’s the painting I auctioned off. The one Emerson saw at the charity gala. He knew something was wrong. He bought it. Of course he did.
And now it’s here.
My brother stands in front of a painting of his scars, hanging there in the water. I rendered them in blood, but that’s what they are. I can’t deny it to him. Every line in his body telegraphs sheer horror. It’s one of my bigger pieces. The canvas is six feet across. There’s no mistaking what it is—not for Leo, anyway.
He turns back to me, and the look on his face is even worse. It’s betrayal. I don’t think I’ve ever hurt him like this before. I didn’t think I could. The tiny ripples of hope from the conversation are swallowed in a rushing storm.
“You did this.” His hand is a fist on his knife. “For what?”
“I was just painting.” My heart is beating so hard, and so fast, that I think I might pass out. “I was just—I had to submit a piece for a charity auction, and that piece—”
“People saw this? They fucking bid on it?”
Carter’s confused now, his eyes darting from Leo to me. He doesn’t know what happened. Leo really didn’t tell anyone else. Emerson shifts behind me. He’s breathing evenly again. He’ll notice everything.
“They saw it and they bid on it. I didn’t tell anyone what it was. I didn’t tell anyone it was about—”
You.
Leo’s hurt. Suspicious. “I know what happens when he favors an artist. Did you ask him to buy this?”
“I didn’t ask him to buy anything.”
Another realization flashes silver in his eyes, like his knife.
“Leo, no. He didn’t ask me for this. You have to believe me.”
I had to make this painting. That was the only way I could process what Leo had told me. It’s how I’ve always done it. But I shouldn’t have sent it to that auction. I should have washed the whole thing in layers of white and burned it after I was done. I wasn’t thinking, and I made a mistake. A colossal mistake. The biggest mistake of my life.
Leo takes a single step and hurls the knife across the room.
It sticks in the painting with a thud, cutting across one of the scars.
