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Do you have connections at the museum in Paris? I need a favor.

I send it and put the phone away again.

Gabriel says, "Come. I want to show you the piece I mentioned."

Aria follows him toward the gallery entrance, still listening, still bright, still open in a way that makes me feel like I'm standing outside something I want and don't know how to ask for.

I should leave.

I don't.

Instead I drift closer to the gallery window, drawn by the pull in my chest that won’t shut up.

The front room is visible through the glass—tall ceilings, pale walls, careful lighting. A few pieces already hung for the upcoming show. And there, on the far wall where the light falls just right, is a painting I've never seen before.

I know it's me immediately.

A faceless man in a dark suit standing before a floor-to-ceiling window, phone to his ear. Broad shoulders. Rigid posture. The skyline rendered in cold blues behind him. A desk visible at the edge of the frame. Glass everywhere—the window, the reflections, the sense of a man sealed inside something transparent and inescapable.

My chest locks.

Because I know that room.

That's the penthouse. That's my conference room. That's the exact view from the chair where Aria sat across from me and signed a contract that reduced our lives to clauses and timelines and careful, clinical language.

That's how she saw me.

Not across a dinner table. Not in a doorway. Not in any of the moments since that might have softened the image.

That day. That version. The man behind the glass who looked at her like a line item.

"You're drawn to this one."

I turn.

A young woman—gallery staff, based on the lanyard and the careful posture—has appeared beside me. She follows my gaze toward the painting with the kind of proprietary pride people get when they're excited about something they had no part in creating.

"It's stunning, isn't it?" she says. "Everyone who comes in stops at that one. There's something about it—haunting, I think. The loneliness in it."

I say nothing.

She doesn't seem to need me to.

"The gallery owner met the artist only a few days ago," she continues, leaning slightly closer like she's sharing something confidential. "She was painting by the water, and he knew immediately. You can always tell, he says, when someone has real talent—the kind that's been buried rather than missing." She shakes her head with a small, admiring exhale. "Between you and me, I wouldn't be surprised if she skyrockets. She's incredibly gifted. And she doesn't even seem to know it yet."

The words land one after another like blows I didn't see coming.

Buried rather than missing.

She doesn't even seem to know it yet.

I look back at the painting.

At myself.

At the man behind the glass who hired a woman with this much raw, devastating talent and put her to work scheduling meetings and fetching coffee. Who looked at her every day for months and saw an efficient assistant. A useful presence. A role to be filled.

Who never once asked what she'd given up to be there.