The moment the glass door swung open again, the gallery air shifted. It wasn't Leonel this time, but a small army of men in tailored suits, moving with the cold precision of people who didn't need to explain themselves. They spread out across the floor in silence, their shoes striking the marble with military rhythm.
Adrian froze where he stood. He had thought the encounter with Leonel himself had been surreal enough, but this—this was like watching locusts strip a field bare.
The first man carried a black case that looked almost like a surgeon's kit. He knelt before one of Adrian's canvases, snapped open the locks, and with gloved hands began unfastening the frame from its hook. Another followed, wrapping the painting in thick protective cloth before sliding it into a crate.
"W-wait," Adrian managed, his voice cracking in the hollow room. "Those are—those are my paintings—"
The tallest of the men turned, not unkindly but with the distant look of someone regarding an insect on the pavement. He didn't answer. None of them did. They just kept working, efficient, coordinated, and unstoppable.
Adrian's protests wilted before they left his lips. What good was it? He had already seen Leonel's gaze—hungry, decisive, merciless. These men weren't here to ask, they were here to claim.
Canvas after canvas vanished. His landscapes, his self-portraits, his abstract work with reds bleeding into black—years of him, swallowed up in padded crates and stacked like mere commodities.
It wasn't theft. That was the strangest part. Adrian's trembling hand still held the check Leonel had pressed into his palm, heavy with more zeroes than Adrian had ever seen. His chest burned as he looked down at it. Was it payment… or ransom?
He staggered back a step, nearly colliding with a crate sliding past him. The men ignored him, working around him like he was an obstacle, not an artist. He pressed against the wall, clutching the slip of paper so tightly it wrinkled.
The gallery had always been his sanctuary. Quiet, white-walled, the smell of oil and turpentine faint in the air. But with every painting stripped away, it grew emptier, colder, like his very soul was being extracted piece by piece.
By the time the last canvas disappeared into the van outside, the gallery was unrecognizable. Naked walls gaped at him, pale rectangles of untouched paint marking where his work had once hung.
A man in a suit—different from the others, slightly older, with graying hair at his temples—paused on his way out. He looked at Adrian as if measuring him. Then he tipped his chin, a gesture neither polite nor mocking, and walked away.
The door shut behind them.
Silence.
Adrian didn't realize he was shaking until the check nearly slipped from his damp fingers. He pressed it to his chest, eyes darting wildly across the barren walls. It felt like he had been hollowed out, just as ruthlessly as the gallery.
He sank onto the nearest bench, his knees giving out, and just sat there. The paper trembled in his hands. Enough money to pay rent for years. Enough to buy paints, canvases, maybe even a new studio. Enough to lift him out of survival.
But every digit burned him like acid.
What had he just sold?
Not his paintings. Those were gone, yes, but it wasn't the loss of them that gnawed at him. It was the knowledge that they no longer belonged to him at all—they belonged to Leonel.
The sound of his own breathing filled the cavernous emptiness. He felt like prey after the predator had left: alive, but trembling, marked.
Minutes passed, or maybe hours. Time folded strangely in silence. All Adrian could do was stare at the check and feel his pulse race like a trapped bird.
When the door creaked open again, he startled violently.
The creak of the door shattered the fragile silence.
Adrian's head snapped up, chest tightening, half-expecting the suited men to return. But it was only the gallery manager—Mr. Calloway—with his round glasses and always-creased navy blazer. He had stepped out earlier to fetch something from the office, humming as if this evening were like any other exhibition night.
The older man didn't notice immediately. He strode across the polished floor, muttering about paperwork, until his eyes lifted and his words cut off mid-breath.
He froze.
The gallery had become a tomb, and his shock filled the air like thunder. His gaze darted across the walls, the benches, the gaping spaces where paintings once lived. Slowly, his mouth fell open.
"What… what is this?" His voice rasped, trembling as if afraid to echo.
Adrian gripped the check so hard his knuckles whitened. "They… came. Leonel's men. They—" He swallowed. The word took felt wrong, but so did bought. "…they removed everything."
Mr. Calloway's face drained of color. "Everything?"
Adrian lifted the check with a hand that wasn't steady. "He… he paid. More than I've ever seen. He said he wanted them all."
The manager staggered forward as if drawn by the paper, snatched it from Adrian's fingers, and squinted at the string of zeroes. Then his shoulders sagged. "God in heaven…"
Adrian rose from the bench, throat tightening. "I didn't know what to do. He was—"
"You shouldn't have taken it!" Calloway hissed, thrusting the check back at him like it was poison. "You don't understand who you're dealing with."
Adrian's stomach turned. He had known, instinctively, from the moment Leonel's gaze pinned him in place, that this wasn't just any patron. But the terror in Calloway's voice made it real in a way he hadn't yet processed.
"What do you mean?" Adrian whispered.
The manager's hands shook as he pulled his glasses off, rubbed them furiously, then shoved them back on as if clearer vision might fix the scene. "Leonel De Luca. My God, boy, do you have any idea who that man is? People don't say no to him. They don't even breathe in his direction without his permission. He isn't—" Calloway broke off, his voice dropping to a ragged whisper. "He isn't just rich. He's dangerous."
Dangerous. The word thudded in Adrian's chest like a second heartbeat.
"I tried," Adrian muttered, staring at the floor. "I tried to say something, but he didn't listen. He just—he decided. And then his men—"
Calloway clutched the bridge of his nose. "You're lucky he didn't decide he wanted you along with the paintings."
The room seemed to tilt. Adrian's breath caught painfully. The implication settled over him like a shadow—because hadn't Leonel's eyes lingered on him as much as on the canvases? That hungry, unflinching stare?
His throat dried. "What am I supposed to do now?"
"Do?" The manager let out a humorless laugh. "There's nothing to do. You take his money, you keep your head down, and you pray he forgets you."
Adrian bristled, though fear prickled every nerve. "Forget me? He bought every piece of me off these walls. He doesn't seem like someone who forgets."
Calloway's gaze softened briefly—pity, tinged with regret. Then it hardened again. "Then you'd better hope his interest fades quickly, or you'll find out what it costs to be remembered."
The words landed like a verdict.
Adrian sank back onto the bench, clutching the check again even though it felt like it might burn through his skin. His paintings were gone. His world, scraped clean. And yet the man who now owned them—owned pieces of him—loomed larger than ever.
The manager hovered, restless, pacing like a caged animal. He pulled out his phone, typed something, stopped, deleted, typed again. Finally he shoved it back in his pocket with a curse.
"This is bad," he muttered. "This is so bloody bad. I should never have let him in here."
Adrian's head snapped up. "You couldn't have stopped him."
Calloway's shoulders slumped. "No. You're right. No one stops Leonel De Luca."
Silence stretched between them, heavy and suffocating. The empty walls loomed, pale scars in the gallery's once-vibrant skin.
Finally, the manager rubbed his temples, his voice low. "Go home, Adrian. Take your money. Be with your sister. Pretend this night never happened."
But Adrian knew, with a hollow certainty, that pretending would be impossible.
As Calloway stalked back into his office, the door clicking shut behind him, Adrian remained where he was, surrounded by absence.
The check lay in his lap like a brand.