Page 4 of Casanova LLC

“Yes.” He’d asked a ridiculous question; I’d given a ridiculous answer.

It was something about it being him that buckled me. He reminded me of the beginning of it all. How, when given the option to make another choice, I’d chosen to continue down a path that led, five years later, to this.

Sometimes the moment you thought was the beginning of something, like marriage, was actually the end of something else. Like yourself.

The coldness of the flagstone cut through my black paper-bag-waist trousers—I only wore pants I could cinch to keep from falling off me these days—but I barely felt it. “I’m sorry.” I looked up at him, the sun perfectly placed behind his head, flaming the tips of his wavy dark hair chestnut. “I’m so sorry.”

He peered down at me. “You didn’t know.”He said it like a discovery.

I shook my head.

His hands found his hips and he sighed. A sound I’d heard come out of my own mouth more in the last six months than in my entire life previously.

“How many of your paintings did he take?” I asked.

“Twelve.”

“Counting mine?”

“Not counting yours.”

I looked straight out, through the glass pony wall, out over the Hudson. “I’ll find them. I’ll make it right. We’re cataloging next week. I’ll find them and I’ll carve them out of the lot.” Then something occurred to me. “Do you know how much they’re worth now?”

“No more than what they were worth then. For appraisal purposes, thirty thousand, probably. For me personally, priceless.”

Hadn’t I just thought something similar about the painting of his I had fought to keep? I managed a small, reflective smile. “I understand both valuations.”He was so talented. With Richard behind him, driving the price up, he would have sold those first twelve for easily ten times that amount. “What was the deal, again?”

“He was going to take a ten percent commission.”

“That’s…low.”

He just looked at me. His jaw ticked.

“Do you want to continue with the deal? Because I have a few favors left. In the art world at least. We could do a show?—”

“I don’t want the money. I want what is mine where it belongs. With me.”

Lucky paintings, I thought. Then wondered where the thought had come from. Then took a moment before answering. “You do understand, given the”—I waved vaguely at the building, hoping he took that to mean the state of literally everything—“that they’ll need to be catalogued and appraised first. Court orders and such. Then they’ll need to be bought back before they can be returned to you. It might take some?—”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t technically own them anymore. I don’t own anything anymore.”

There was a long silence. Eventually, his hands dropped from his hips, he unbuttoned his jacket and squatted down, knees pointing at my chest. The fire cast a flicker on his face, even in daylight.

“It’s that bad?”he murmured.

I could only nod.

“I figured the press was exaggerating.”

“They weren’t.”

“What do you have left?”

His candor was refreshing. No one else had just flat-out asked me. “My company. Visage. You know I started it before we married and he never put a dime into it.” He looked skeptical at that. “They’re doing an audit. Should be finished next week. I’ll be vindicated. It’s mine alone.”

“It can support you?”

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