Page 35 of Canvas of Lies
He bounced his eyebrows. “Don’t knock it until you try it.”
My cheeks flushed hot, but I continued to glare at him. “Now you’re just trying to distract me,” I accused.
“Not at all. If I wanted to distract you, I would use my hands. And my mouth. And my—”
I slapped my palm none-too-gently over his mouth. “I get the picture, thank you very much. Are we discussing the actual situation or not?”
Nico waited patiently for me to remove my hand. Once I did, he nodded solemnly.
“You’re right. Time to focus on work. I suppose pleasure can wait. When’s the last time you were inside your father’s house?” He pulled his laptop out, along with a notebook and pen, and laid them on the coffee table in front of us.
“It was six months after your dad died, so I guess a year and a half or so?” I answered. “I stopped by to drop off a birthday gift for Beardsley. No one even bothered to tell me your dad wasgone. There might have been an epic screaming match involved when I found out.”
His eyes widened. “Screaming match?”
“Well, yeah. I always considered your father part of the family, and even if I hadn’t seen you in a while, you were one of my best friends, Nico. What kind of self-absorbed asshole neglects to mention that kind of news to his only child?”
“I should’ve told you myself. I’m so sorry.” Guilt twisted his mouth even as sorrow filled his dark eyes.
“Yes, you should have,” I said simply, “but you had enough on your plate at the time. There was no reason he couldn’t have told me. I was living across town, not on the moon. But in any case, I didn’t see the painting, not that I spent much time wandering around the house. I delivered Beardsley’s gift, ran into my father on my way out, screamed until my throat was raw, and stormed away from the house. I haven’t been back inside since that day.”
“Kitten.” Nico swallowed hard as he laced his fingers with mine on the couch between us. “The image of you swooping down into that cavern of a front hall like a Valkyrie on my behalf . . . it means more than you know. Thank you”
I scowled slightly, though I did love the feel of his big hand enveloping mine. “It’s really nothing to thank me for. Believe me, he deserved every word I threw at him. In any case, neither of us can turn back time so I could be there when you needed me the most, and it gives us no insight about the painting, either.”
He lifted our joined hands and kissed my knuckles. “I still appreciate what you did. I wish I could’ve seen it, though. You really are something special.”
For a long moment, I was silent. Regret was a heavy thing, as was grief.
Maybe, now that we’d found each other again, we could help to lighten one another’s load. I leaned my head against his shoulder and sighed softly when he pressed his lips to my temple.
Already, I felt lighter with him by my side.
“So, our options are straight up burglary, maybe some blackmail if we can find enough dirt, your truly terrible ransom scheme, a prolonged legal battle if we could prove the provenance of the painting belonging to your family . . . what else is there?”
Nico snorted. “If we had ten or fifteen million dollars on hand, convincing him to sell could be an option, maybe, but I still don’t believe he’d agree to that, not with our history. And no offense, but your father’s the shadiest lawyer I’ve ever known, so I think the legal battle is off the table, along with the ransom. If he knew you were involved in conning him, I’d be terrified of what he might do to get revenge.”
“And blackmail would require concrete proof of something.”
“Which I spent a long time searching for, with nothing to show for it. He covers his tracks too well.”
He paused, like there was more he wanted to say, but he fell silent.
“What about your computer programs?” I asked, studying the laptop.
“What about them?”
“Do they save information about the alerts you get? Like, any news footage mentioning the painting and my father, for example?”
Nico nodded slowly. “Yes. Most of the articles or news segments I’ve seen just showed a single photo of it in the frame, nothing that stood out to me as a clue as to where it might be hanging. I have logs of everything, though.”
For a second, I tapped my bottom lip. “What if we could arrange an interview with him in order to get some current footage of the painting from inside the house?”
“How would we do that?” he asked.
I shot him a sly grin. “I know a journalist who, with a few tips on the right wording to use, might be able to convince my father to agree to it. Unfortunately, her number was in my phone contacts. I don’t want to reach out through any official channels.”
“And then what? We break in and steal the painting?”
