Chapter One: Ashes in the Air
The scent of smoke still haunted her. Bitter, heavy, unrelenting, it lived in her memory the way it had once clung to her hair and skin. Five years had passed since that night, yet in the glittering gallery of New York, beneath chandeliers and champagne, Aria Moretti felt the fire breathing again.
Her painting loomed over her. Crimson devoured black, gold licked at shadow, a faceless figure lost in the blaze. The critics called it genius. Strangers lifted their glasses and whispered words like masterpiece.
They didn't know. They couldn't.
To them, it was art.
To her, it was evidence.
Her throat tightened. She reached for her champagne flute and steadied her hand against the trembling that wanted to betray her. Every stroke on that canvas was a confession she should have destroyed, but instead she had hung it on a wall for the world to see.
"Ms. Moretti!"
The voice cracked through her thoughts like a whip. A journalist surged forward, pen poised, his eyes glittering with hunger for a headline. "Your exhibition tonight Inferno Reclaimed tell us, is this your way of confronting the past you once disappeared from?"
The word past struck her like glass. She curved her lips into the smile she had perfected in mirrors. Elegant. Distant. Untouchable.
"I let the paintings speak for themselves," she replied.
But the questions didn't stop.
Another critic leaned closer, voice eager. "Your flames are uncanny. Too real. One could almost believe you've stood inside the infernos you paint. Tell me,why fire? What does it mean to you?"
Aria's pulse roared in her ears. She forced herself to sip the champagne, to taste its sweetness instead of the bitterness rising in her throat.
"Fire is destruction," she said evenly. "But it is also rebirth. Both truths live on my canvas."
Pens scratched. Flashes popped. The crowd drank in her words.
And then came the question she dreaded.
"Is fire your only muse? Or is there someone else? A husband, perhaps? Children?"
Her body froze, though her face remained flawless. Children. The word dug under her skin like a thorn. She felt it press against her ribs, sharp and merciless, yet she lifted her chin with practiced grace.
"Solitude," she said softly, "is the most loyal muse I know."
The group chuckled, charmed by her poise. To them, it was wit. To her, it was survival.
And then the air changed.
It began as a ripple, subtle and invisible, until the entire gallery seemed to feel it at once. Voices softened. Laughter faltered. Heads turned toward the entrance as if commanded by some unseen hand.
Aria's breath caught. Her fingers tightened around the fragile stem of her glass.
He was here.
Nathaniel Pierce.
His name moved through the room like a current. Conversations bent around it, whispers carried it from one corner to the other. Nathaniel Pierce. Billionaire financier. Art collector. Power carved into human form.
Aria didn't need to see him to feel him. Her body remembered before her eyes confirmed it ,the way the air thickened, the hush that followed, the pulse that hammered in her chest.
She turned slowly, as though resistance could delay the inevitable.
And there he was.
Tall. Commanding. The navy blue suit he wore clung to his frame with precision, the fabric catching the chandelier light like midnight silk. No ordinary man wore color like that in a sea of black and grey. It was a declaration, bold and unapologetic. His presence was not loud, but it did not need to be. The crowd parted instinctively as he stepped inside, his expression unreadable, his eyes dark with the weight of someone who had seen too much and forgotten nothing.
Her breath hitched. Five years. And yet in an instant, it was as though no time had passed at all.
The journalists noticed him too. Their questions shifted.
"Mr. Pierce, over here!" Cameras flashed. He nodded politely, acknowledging, dismissing, never breaking stride. And then his gaze found hers.
It struck like lightning.
Aria's body betrayed her. Heat rushed to her skin, her grip on the glass faltered, and for one dangerous second she almost looked away. But Nathaniel's eyes locked her in place. They were not the eyes of a man greeting an artist at an exhibition. They were the eyes of a man staring at someone he already owned.
He moved toward her with unhurried precision, each step deliberate, inevitable. The crowd melted aside. People greeted him, but he spared them only nods. His focus never wavered.
"Aria."
Her name on his lips was velvet and steel. Too soft to accuse, too sharp to ignore.
She swallowed, raising her chin. "Mr. Pierce."
The journalists were ravenous now, circling like sharks sensing blood. Their pens flew. Their cameras snapped. One dared to voice what everyone else whispered.
"Forgive me, Ms. Moretti, but you and Mr. Pierce,do you know each other?"
Nathaniel's lips curved, almost imperceptibly. "Intimately," he said.
The room gasped.
Aria's glass nearly slipped from her fingers. The word hung in the air, scandalous, undeniable, a spark thrown into dry tinder. The reporters surged forward, firing questions that tangled in the noise.
She forced a smile, brittle but radiant. "Mr. Pierce enjoys teasing the press," she said lightly. "I'm sure he means only that he is familiar with my work."
Nathaniel's gaze didn't waver. "That is not what I meant."
Her heart stopped.
The chaos of questions shielded them, yet she felt cornered as if they stood alone in the room. He leaned in, his voice a low murmur meant only for her.
"You should be more careful, Aria," he said. "Your paintings reveal too much."
Her breath caught. "You don't know what you're talking about."
His eyes glinted. "Don't I?"
Every defense she had built over the years began to crack. He was too close, too perceptive, too dangerous. And he hadn't even touched her yet.
"Stay away from me," she whispered.
He smiled faintly, as if she had told him the most amusing lie. Then, without another word, he straightened and let the crowd swallow him again.
Aria stood frozen, her glass trembling in her hand, the taste of smoke rising in her throat.
Nathaniel Pierce was back in her life.
And he knew.