Chapter 11 - The Architect of New Shadows
The scent of wet oil paint and cold lake breeze filled the high-ceilinged studio in Kenilworth.
Through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall, Lake Michigan churned in restless shades of pewter and foam under the late November sky.
It had been two months since the morning at Holy Name Cathedral.
Two months since Derek Vance was marched out of the Cook County courthouse in handcuffs to await sentencing on federal fraud charges.
Two months since my mother called my phone forty times in a single weekend, leaving weeping voicemails begging to know where I had gone.
I hadn't answered a single one.
Instead, my days were governed by turpentine, raw linen canvases, and the quiet rhythm of an estate that had completely reorganized itself around my footsteps.
The third-floor servant bedroom was a memory.
My clothes now hung in a cedar dressing room adjacent to the master suite, where bespoke cashmere sweaters and silk trousers replaced the starched polyester uniforms of my past.
Yet, I still woke up every morning at five o'clock.
Habits carved into bone over a decade of survival do not disappear simply because someone hands you an platinum ring.
I dipped a wide hog-bristle brush into burnt umber, dragging it across the large canvas resting on the heavy oak easel.
I was painting the view of the lake during an approaching thunderstorm—the exact moment the water turns from blue to ink black.
A soft knock tapped against the studio’s reinforced oak door.
Victor, dressed in his usual crisp charcoal suit with an earpiece curling behind his ear, stepped inside holding a leather folder.
“Miss Miller,” Victor said, dipping his chin respectfully.
He never called me by my first name without the honorific, no matter how many times I told him I used to mop the corridor he walked on.
“Mr. Rossi asked me to deliver the courier logs from downtown.”
I set my palette down on the glass rolling cart.
“Did my mother try to enter the building again?”
Victor’s expression remained carved from granite.
“Mrs. Miller attempted to access the administrative lobby of the Art Institute yesterday afternoon claiming she had family business regarding your fellowship grant.”
A weary sigh escaped my chest.
“Did she make a scene?”
“Security escorted her to the curb before she could reach the elevators,” Victor replied smoothly.
“Per Mr. Rossi’s standing directive, the municipal police were not called, but a formal trespass warning was served at her residence in Highland Park this morning.”
I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window, wrapping my arms around my oversized woolen cardigan.
Margaret Miller wasn't looking for me because she missed her daughter.
She was looking for me because Julian’s family had completely severed ties with Chloe, pulling their social influence and leaving my sister radioactive in Chicago’s elite circles.
The high-society friends my mother had spent thirty years cultivating had suddenly developed collective amnesia, crossing the street to avoid her at the grocery store.
She needed the Rossi name to survive the social winter she had brought upon herself.
The sound of heavy tires rolling across the crushed gravel outside signaled the arrival of Roman’s convoy.
Three black Suburbans pulled into the private motor court beneath the studio balcony, followed by the familiar low rumble of the armored Maybach.
My pulse did that same erratic, thrilling skip it always did whenever Roman arrived.
Over the last eight weeks, the line between our initial contract and the reality of our shared life had disintegrated entirely.
He had not pushed me.
He had not demanded that I share his bed simply because he had bought my freedom and handed me the keys to my dream.
Instead, he had courted me with a ferocious, patient intensity that disarmed every defensive wall I possessed.
He brought me rare art monographs from auctions in Paris.
He sat at the end of my studio in the evenings with a glass of scotch, reading international shipping ledgers while watching me mix colors for hours in unbroken silence.
And whenever he touched me—a hand at the small of my back, a lingering kiss against my collarbone before leaving for the docks—it felt like a man claiming what he knew had always belonged to him.
The heavy door of the studio swung open, and Roman stepped inside.
The cold autumn air clung to the dark wool of his long coat.
He shrugged it off, tossing it onto the leather sofa, his dark eyes immediately finding mine across the paint-spattered floor.
“You missed lunch,” he said, his gravelly voice instantly warming the vast room.
He walked toward me with that slow, predatory grace, his gaze sweeping over my oversized sweater, my bare ankles, and the streak of Prussian blue paint on my cheek.
“I lost track of time with the underpainting,” I replied, stepping toward him until my chin was tilted upward to meet his eyes.
Roman stopped in front of me, reached out, and dragged his thumb over my cheekbone, wiping away the wet paint with casual possessiveness.
“You are working too hard, Little Bird.”
“I have ten years of lost time to paint over, Roman,” I whispered, leaning slightly into the warmth of his hand.
His thumb traced the line of my jaw, coming to rest at the corner of my mouth.
“Your sister called my private office today,” Roman said quietly, his eyes darkening.
The statement made my entire body go still.
“Chloe called your office? How did she even get that line?”
“She waited three hours in the rain outside the South Side container terminal until my car pulled through the security checkpoint,” Roman said, not a hint of emotion in his tone.
“Victor pulled her off the bumper before she threw herself in front of the escort vehicle.”
My stomach knotted with a sharp, familiar pang of anxiety.
“What does she want, Roman? The indemnity agreement cleared her of the criminal liability. The restitution is being covered.”
Roman pulled his hand away from my face, reached into his breast pocket, and produced a folded piece of lined stationery covered in my sister’s familiar, hurried handwriting.
“She doesn't want money, Sadi.”
May you like
He handed the paper to me.
“She wants you to come home.”
