I hold out the envelope. “To Ms. Hale,” I say. “Guest wing, second floor, north suite. Deliver at nineteen hundred. Tell her 21:30 in West Hall, private wing. Non-negotiable.”
“Yes, Mr. Ward.”
“Use that phrase,” I add. “If she tries to move it, do not explain. Record the request, bring it to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
He puts the envelope into the front pocket of his portfolio, writes the time and the instruction at the bottom of his sheet, and leaves.
I sit again and turn the television volume up two clicks. Caldwell is taking questions. He smiles without humor. He learned the trick professional liars use, where they let their eyes go earnest while their mouths pretend they don’t enjoy it.
“Senator,” a reporter off camera says, “critics argue these programs protect vulnerable populations and exposure could put lives at risk. What do you say to that?”
“I say sunlight is a disinfectant,” he answers, not missing a beat. “If these programs are doing what they say, they have nothing to fear from transparency.”
The last time a man said that sentence in a room I was responsible for, a woman named Lena died because a light went on where a lock should have. Caldwell doesn’t know that name. He only knows what the polling topline says to put in his mouth. I make a note on my pad:pull cases where orders of protection failed under public exposureand email it to Hamilton & Reyes with a single instruction:Use these, not rhetoric.
Aurora against the wall floats up in my head like a photograph would if I’d allowed one to be taken: eyes and pulse and heat, a held line between restraint and the way my fingers wanted more than information. She didn’t run. She leaned in.
She came to me.
Now she stays.
Chapter 29 – Aurora
My phone buzzes under a heap of laundry. I dig it out.Nadiaflashes across the screen.
I answer with the line I use when I want to sound in control. “Checking up on me?”
“Don’t do that,” she says, skipping hello. Nadia never wastes the first ten seconds. “I read the grant agreement you forwarded. All of it.”
“Efficient as ever,” I say.
“Aurora.” Her voice flattens into the tone she uses with men who try to approve their own invoices. “These NDAs are draconian. Liquidated damages that could buy a building. Arbitration inhisstate. Five-year gag clause that survives termination. A reverse-morals clause that puts the ‘integrity of Foundation programs’ above your ability to talk about your own work. Who sent this to you and how fast did they pressure you to sign?”
“No one held a gun to my head,” I say, pacing because if I sit she’ll hear the way my chest tightens. “I sent it to you so you could tell me what I already suspected. It’s bad.”
“It’s worse than bad,” she says. “It’s a leash. It’s designed by someone who knows exactly how much an artist will tolerate if you attach a zero to the end of a promise.”
“Everyone knows,” I say. “That’s the trick, right? Make the cage look like a commission.”
“Aurora. I’m not playing with metaphors,” she says. “It is a contract that would punish you for breathing wrong iftheydecide that your breath harms the brand. They can claw back your entire stipend and then sue you for their attorneys’ fees if you so much as hint that a Sanctuary is anything other than the PR line they approve. They control the definition of harm. It’s not standard. It’s predatory.”
The word lands, accurate and cheap at the same time because I’m the one who’s been using it. I rub the heel of my free hand over the eyebrow I furrow when I paint tight lines too long. “It’s the Ward Foundation,” I say. “They can afford the best lawyers to make the rules. We aren’t shocked.”
“This is not about shock,” she says, a notch softer. “It’s about your life. If you take a picture someone doesn’t like and post it, it’s arbitration in their backyard. If you speak on a panel and a journalist ‘interprets’ your sentence as criticism of their confidentiality, damages if you leave early, there are exit penalties that wipe you out and a non-disparagement clause that keeps you from saying why. What were you thinking when you said yes?”
That lands under the ribcage where shame lives. I stare at the sketch of his hand, so I don’t show it in my voice. “I was thinking about work,” I say. “About not living off scraps and favors. About rent that comes due whether or not critics keep liking me. “And,” I add, because Nadia is a friend who hates half-truths, “about access. If I want to paint the truth of what this thing is, I have to be inside it.”
“Aurora, that’s how they get you to say yes,” she says. “They dangle ‘access’ so you’ll accept a muzzle and call it a microphone.”
I pace to the window. Rain strings the glass. A black SUV creeps along the far drive and disappears behind the hedge like an apology. “I’m not a child,” I say. “I knew what I was doing.”
“Then hear me as an adult you asked for advice,” she says. “You can still get out. The contract isn’t countersigned yet; that note in the corner about ‘execution’ gives you a window. I can send a declination right now. We propose renegotiation—strike liquidated damages, shorten the gag, remove the venue lock, clarify what ‘harm’ means. If they balk, you walk.”
Walk to what? I don’t say. Back to my studio and a stack of unpaid wholesale frames. Back to a city where a senator wants a headline and a foundation wants my face until they don’t. Back to a life that felt simple because it was smaller.
“It’s not just the contract,” I say. “There’s the boy I drew today. There’s the work they’re doing that I saw with my eyes. I can’t pretend it’s a scam because the clauses are ugly.”
