Page 70 of Last Resort (The Collector Trilogy 3)

“Sin said it was Leo. He’s the one with the temper.” I feel his air quotes come through the phone. “The rumors in the city say the oldest one’s the killer.”

“Leo seemed pretty comfortable with the prospect of killing me. The knife I pulled out of my wall was recently sharpened. Very high quality.”

Dead silence.

“Will?”

“Out of your wall?”

“He threw it into a painting. The exact center of the painting, actually.”

“Were you standing in front of the painting?”

“No. If I had been, I’d be dead. The painting was a separate issue.”

“You know what? I don’t want to know. Go watch Daphne paint. Text me if Dad shows up. And don’t piss off the Morellis again, for God’s sake.”

“I’ll send the piece for your living room tomorrow.”

There’s a beat of hesitation that would usually be filled with a cutting joke or a related insult.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Will says, and then he hangs up.

Upstairs, Daphne is painting in the light-flooded studio. She has never looked more like a hummingbird. Bare feet. Delicate wrists, lifted toward the canvas. I want this image locked into my mind forever. I feel it secure itself to the gallery wall and then, just as pointedly, feel my mind settle into the moment. The real, unadulterated moment. No part of this room needs to be held at a distance. I don’t have to push it away. I find myself pressing my knuckles into my chest over a strange, sweet pressure. It’s safe here.

And it takes my breath away. Goosebumps run in long trails down my arms. Across my back. I wasn’t bullshitting Will in the slightest. This is like being dropped into the past and walking in on Monet or Anguissola. How many people at the time knew what a gift it was?

I’m bearing witness to Daphne’s best work.

All artists have periods of transformation, some more subtle than others. It’s happening before my eyes. Daphne might not even recognize it herself because the form builds on what she’s done before. I doubt anyone on earth has made a comprehensive study of her work.

But I have.

My heart races to see it. Races, then settles, because it knows I have to stay alive for this.

Daphne takes the strawberries from me one by one, popping them in her mouth as she paints. Her palette is a mess. She’s shoved her sleeves up to her elbows. I gave her one of my shirts. The paint will never come out. I’m happy to sacrifice it for the cause.

She doesn’t seem to notice me.

It fills me with joy.

I haven’t felt joy very often in my life. Joy like this—warm and aching and unsullied—is rare. I’ve experienced it a handful of times at the Met. Once or twice at a showing. Nothing this powerful. It’s marking my soul in the same pattern as her brush strokes.

She doesn’t see me as another person. My presence doesn’t interfere with her work. Daphne isn’t self-conscious. She doesn’t glance at me to see what I think or wait for my approval. She’s as safe as I am.

Which is why this painting will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Because Daphne is not painting a feeling of safety or permanence. She’s recording a metamorphosis. A death to become life.

There is not a single blue on the canvas. Waves rise to the center, push against the edges, but they’re not the familiar cool of the ocean in summer or even the blue-black of the deep.

Red heat wells from the lower edge of the canvas, burning toward orange.

Daphne’s ocean is on fire.

This is what our relationship will do to her if I let it continue. It won’t happen the way she thinks. My little painter imagines that my house represents her freedom. And it will, for a while.

Then she’ll see.

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