Mateo's POV - Galerie Morgane, Paris
The opening night crowd was small but discriminating—the kind of Parisians who discovered artists before the rest of the world caught on. I stood in the corner of Galerie Morgane, nursing a glass of wine that cost more than I'd spent on food all week, watching people examine my paintings with the serious attention French collectors gave to serious art.
"Celui-ci est remarquable," an elderly woman murmured to her companion, stopping before my painting of the Belleville market at dawn. She wore the kind of understated elegance that screamed old money—no jewelry except wedding rings worn thin by decades, a cashmere coat that had probably cost more than my studio rent.
Céleste appeared at my elbow, her satisfaction evident. "Madame Rousseau hasn't bought anything new in three years. If she's interested, others will follow."
"Monsieur Delacroix?" The woman approached me directly, her English crisp with the accent of someone educated at Swiss finishing schools. "I wondered if you might tell me about this piece. The light—it reminds me of Marseille."
"Vous connaissez Marseille?" You know Marseille?
Her face lit up. "Mais oui! My late husband was from there. A poet who never achieved fame but understood the soul of the Mediterranean." She studied the painting again. "This captures something I haven't seen since his work—the dignity of ordinary morning rituals."
We talked for twenty minutes about light and memory, about how certain places marked themselves on an artist's vision forever. When she left, she'd placed a red dot beside three of my paintings.
"Félicitations," Céleste said as the evening wound down. "Your first Paris sales."
But more than the sales, it was the conversations that mattered. People didn't just look at my work—they engaged with it, found pieces of their own stories reflected in the faces I'd painted. This was what Henri had meant about the difference between decoration and art.
Walking back to Montmartre afterwards, I felt something I hadn't experienced since arriving in Paris: genuine hope about the future.
One Week Later - Mateo's Studio
"Les lettres, c'est thérapeutique," Henri said, settling into the rickety chair I'd salvaged from a flea market. "Tu devrais essayer." Letters are therapeutic. You should try it.
I looked up from the canvas I'd been working on—a street scene of Pigalle in winter, all gray light and determined faces. "Letters to whom?"
"À ton passé. À tes regrets. À cette femme, peut-être." To your past. To your regrets. To that woman, perhaps.
The suggestion startled me. "What would be the point? I can't send them."
"Précisément." Exactly. Henri's smile was enigmatic. "Quand on écrit sans espoir de réponse, on écrit la vérité." When you write without hope of response, you write truth.
That night, I sat at my small table with a pad of paper I'd bought from the tabac downstairs. For an hour, I stared at the blank page, wondering how to begin a letter to someone I'd tried so hard to forget.
Charlotte,
I don't know why I'm writing this, except that Henri says it will help me understand what I learned from knowing you. Not the version of you I painted obsessively for months, but the real person I glimpsed in those morning conversations at the gallery.
I've been in Paris for four months now, and for the first time since I was a child, I feel like I'm painting from my authentic self rather than from what I think will sell or impress people. It's strange—I came here to escape thoughts of you, but I've discovered that you were never the problem. My fantasy of you was the problem.
The you I painted was someone who could lift me out of my ordinary life into something elevated and golden. But the you I knew—briefly—was someone trying to figure out how to live authentically within the constraints of her world. I think I understand now that we were both trapped, just in different cages.
I hope you found your way out of yours the way I'm finding my way out of mine.
M.
I folded the letter and put it in my desk drawer with the others I'd written over the past week. Letters to my younger self who'd thought commercial success meant artistic validation. Letters to my father, dead ten years now, explaining why I'd chosen paint over a practical career. Letters to Charlotte grew shorter and more honest with each attempt.
Henri was right. Writing without the possibility of response forced a different kind of truth—one that didn't need to persuade or justify or charm—just a simple acknowledgement of what had been and what was becoming.
Charlotte's POV - Sterling Foundation Offices
"The financial forensics are complete," Margaret announced, spreading documents across the conference table like a dealer revealing a winning hand. "And it's worse than we suspected."
I leaned forward, studying the spreadsheets and bank statements our investigators had assembled over the past month. The numbers told a story that made Thomas's affairs seem like minor character flaws.
"The Beaufort Children's Foundation—his flagship charity—has been funneling money through shell companies for the past three years," Margaret continued. "Money that was supposed to fund after-school programs has been redirected to his development projects."
Mrs. Sterling's expression was glacial. "How much?"
"Eight point seven million dollars. Donated by people who thought they were helping underprivileged children."
The room fell silent. Even Eleanor, who'd prosecuted white-collar criminals for two decades, looked shaken.
"This is criminal fraud," Diana said flatly. "Not civil. Criminal."
"Which means we're no longer just fighting a development project or a reputation war," I said, the implications settling over me like cold water. "We're talking about prison time."
"If we can prove intent," Margaret cautioned. "Financial crimes this sophisticated require demonstrating that Thomas knowingly and deliberately defrauded charitable donors. That's not easy."
Mrs. Sterling stood and walked to the window, her reflection ghostlike against the afternoon sky. "Charlotte, how well do you know Thomas's business operations?"
"Not well. He never discussed details with me."
"But you attended events together. Met his associates, his investors."
I thought back to the months of carefully choreographed appearances—charity galas where Thomas had played the philanthropic business leader, private dinners where he'd networked with potential partners. How many of those conversations had I overheard without understanding their significance?
"There might be something," I said slowly. "At the Pembertons' anniversary party last year, I heard Thomas on the phone with someone about moving money between accounts. He said something about 'keeping the foundation numbers clean' before the audit."
"Do you remember anything else? Names, dates, specific details?"
I closed my eyes, trying to reconstruct a conversation I'd barely paid attention to at the time. "He mentioned someone named Victor handling the 'creative accounting.' And he said they needed to finish the transfers before the end of the fiscal year."
Margaret was already typing notes into her laptop. "Victor Brennan. He's been Thomas's CFO for five years, and his name is on half these shell company documents."
"The question is whether Victor will cooperate with investigators or go down with the ship," Eleanor mused.
"Men like Victor Brennan are typically more interested in self-preservation than loyalty," Mrs. Sterling observed with the dry wisdom of someone who'd watched powerful men fall for decades. "Especially when the alternative is federal prison."
I stared at the evidence spread before us, feeling the weight of what we'd uncovered. This wasn't about broken hearts or wounded pride anymore. This was about justice for families who'd trusted their donated dollars to help children, about communities being displaced for projects funded with stolen charity money.
"What's our next move?" I asked.
"We turn this over to the FBI," Margaret said. "And we prepare for Thomas to escalate even further. Cornered animals are the most dangerous."
That Evening - Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills
The gallery opening was supposed to be a welcome distraction—contemporary works by emerging European artists, the kind of sophisticated event that reminded me why I'd fallen in love with art in the first place. I moved through the white-walled space, letting the paintings wash over me like a visual meditation.
Then I stopped.
The piece was smaller than the others, tucked into an alcove near the back of the gallery. A street scene painted in oils, showing an elderly woman feeding pigeons in what looked like a Parisian square. The light was extraordinary—soft and golden but somehow melancholy, capturing that particular quality of European autumn mornings.
But it was the signature in the bottom corner that made my breath catch: M. Delacroix.
"Magnificent work, isn't it?" The gallery assistant had appeared beside me, her voice warm with genuine appreciation. "This is from a group show in Paris. The artist is French, but he spent some time in Los Angeles. You can see the influence in how he handles California light in his earlier pieces."
I stared at the painting, my heart doing complicated things in my chest. The brushwork was unmistakably Mateo's—those confident strokes that could make even ordinary moments look sacred. But this was different from the work I remembered. More mature, somehow. Less concerned with beauty for its own sake and more interested in truth.
"Is it for sale?"
"I'm afraid it's already been reserved by a collector in New York. But we have his catalog from the Paris show if you're interested."
She handed me a small booklet, and I flipped through pages of work that showed Mateo's evolution over the past months. Street musicians and construction workers painted with the same reverence he'd once reserved for ethereal landscapes. Immigrant families are rendered with dignity and complexity. The ordinary world is made extraordinary through careful attention and genuine empathy.
This was the artist I'd glimpsed in his Venice studio, before my presence had complicated everything. This was who he was when he wasn't trying to paint his way into my world.
I bought the catalog and left the gallery, walking slowly to my car as the evening light faded over Beverly Hills. Sitting in the parking lot, I turned to the artist statement at the back of the booklet:
"These paintings represent my return to the foundational belief that art should serve truth rather than commerce, community rather than individual ambition. After years of painting what I thought people wanted to see, I've learned to paint what I need to say. Home, I've discovered, isn't a place you find—it's a perspective you choose."
I read it three times, then closed the catalog and drove home to Malibu, where the sound of waves against rocks would help me think about the strange paths that lead us back to ourselves.
Tomorrow, I would continue the fight against Thomas, would work to build something meaningful from the wreckage of my old life. But tonight, I allowed myself to wonder about a man in Paris who'd learned to paint truth, and to hope that somewhere across the ocean, he was as free as he sounded.
The thought didn't hurt anymore.
Instead, it felt like a quiet benediction—proof that sometimes, letting someone go is the most loving thing you can do for both of you.