Elara's studio was the polar opposite of the Vane Estate. Tucked away in a pre-war building in Brooklyn, it was cramped, smelled of linseed oil and aged wood, and was cluttered with the chaotic debris of a life dedicated to art.
For Silas, it was a sensory overload.
"Watch your step," Elara said, guiding him by the waist. "There's a stack of canvases at three o'clock and a bucket of gesso at nine."
Silas moved with a strange kind of humility. In his boardroom, he was a god. Here, amidst the turpentine and dust, he was a student. "It smells... like old memories," he remarked, his nose wrinkling slightly.
"It smells like work," Elara corrected with a grin.
She led him to a heavy wooden workbench. On it, she had laid out several different materials: a slab of raw marble, a piece of deeply grained oak, a bowl of thick impasto paint, and a sheet of hammered copper.
"You said you wanted to fill the frames," Silas said, his hand hovering over the table. "How? I can't tell a blue sky from a black sea anymore."
"We aren't using color, Silas. We're using dimension." She took his hand and pressed it onto the slab of marble. "Close your eyes. Really close them. Tell me what you feel."
Silas obeyed. His lashes, long and dark, swept against his cheekbones. "It's cold. Smooth. But there's a vein here... a fracture."
"That's a vein of iron," Elara whispered, standing behind him. She wrapped her arms around his, guiding his fingers across the stone. "Now the wood."
"Warm," he muttered, his voice dropping an octave as he felt her closeness. "Rough. It has a history."
"Everything has a history, Silas. Even you." She moved his hand to the bowl of thick, wet paint. "This is impasto. It's thick enough to hold the shape of a stroke even after it dries. You can paint a landscape that you can read like Braille."
Silas turned in her arms, his face inches from hers. The light from the studio's high windows caught the silver in his eyes. "Why are you doing this, Elara? You're giving me a world I thought I'd lost."
"Because a Vane only looks at what is useful, right?" she teased gently, repeating his father's words. "Well, I'm showing you that beauty is the most useful thing of all. It's what keeps us human."
Silas didn't answer. Instead, he reached out, his hand finding the back of her neck. He pulled her into a kiss that tasted of the paint on his fingers and the raw, unscripted truth between them. In the quiet of the studio, the "Contract" felt like a million miles away.
The Snake in the Garden
While Elara and Silas were lost in the tactile world of the studio, back at the Vane Estate, a shadow moved through the master suite.
Henderson, the ever-silent butler, stood by Silas's bedside table. He wasn't cleaning. He was holding a small, high-resolution scanner over Silas's private medical files, which were hidden in a false-bottom drawer.
His phone buzzed.
[MARCUS: Do you have the scans? The Board meeting is in 48 hours.]
Henderson looked at the door, then back at the files. He had served the Vane family for forty years. He had watched Silas grow from a lonely boy into a cold man. But loyalty in the Vane house had always been a matter of survival, not love.
[HENDERSON: Uploading now. He is vulnerable. The girl is his only shield. If you remove her, he will fall.]
[MARCUS: Then consider her removed. I have a 'debt collector' who would love to meet Miss Vance.]