Poppy
London in November is a special kind of cruelty. It is a city of fifty shades of grey where the dampness doesn't just fall from the sky; it seeps into your bones and stays there.
I wiped a smudge of Electric Flamingo pink from my cheek, my fingers stiff and numb. I was perched on a scaffolding three stories up, overlooking the pristine, limestone-clothed streets of Mayfair. Specifically, New Bond Street. This was the territory of people who didn't look at price tags. The air here smelled like expensive sandalwood, diesel fumes from idling Bentleys, and the kind of old money that made my Queens accent feel like a sandpaper rasp.
"Focus, Poppy," I whispered to myself, my breath blooming in a white cloud. "Just finish the swirl, get the check, and you can finally buy a heater that actually works."
I had moved to London three months ago for an artist residency that turned out to be a fancy word for free labor. This mural for the Aurelia Gallery was my Hail Mary. If I pulled this off, my days of painting bedroom nurseries in Shoreditch were over. I was a New Yorker; I was built for the hustle, but even I was starting to crack under the weight of the British pound.
Below me, the Saturday morning traffic was a slow moving river of black cabs and six figure supercars.
I reached for my five gallon bucket of paint, the plastic handle slippery in my gloved hand. Just as I went to dip my brush, a sudden, violent gust of wind whipped down the narrow street. It caught the heavy tarp I'd hung to protect the wall, snapping it back like a sail.
The tarp hit my arm. The world tilted.
"No!" I lunged, my fingers grazing the rim, but gravity was faster.
I watched in agonizing slow motion as the bucket tipped. It did a lazy, neon somersault. For one beautiful, terrifying second, that pink was the only honest thing in the entire neighborhood.
Then it landed.
It didn't hit the pavement. It didn't hit a delivery van.
It landed squarely on the hood of a matte black Rolls Royce Phantom that was idling in the gridlock. The lid popped off on impact, and a literal tidal wave of neon pink surged upward, coating the windshield and pouring directly through the open sunroof.
The sound was heavy. It was the sound of a debt I would never be able to pay.
I scrambled down the scaffolding, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I hit the sidewalk and pushed through a crowd of tourists who were already holding up their phones.
The door of the Rolls Royce opened with a mechanical hiss.
A man stepped out.
He didn't just step out; he dominated the space. He was tall, wearing a midnight blue suit that looked like it had been molded to his frame by a master sculptor. His skin was the color of roasted coffee beans, and his features were sharp, regal, and currently decorated with a singular, vibrant splatter of pink across his left cheek.
He looked like a masterpiece that had been vandalized.
I rushed forward, reaching into my back pocket for a rag that was already covered in dried blue paint. "I am so, so sorry! I am a New Yorker, I swear I am usually more coordinated than this! The wind just caught the tarp!"
I reached out to wipe a blob of pink off his lapel, but my shaking hands only succeeded in smearing a fresh, neon streak across his chest.
The man froze. He didn't yell. He didn't even blink. He just looked down at my hand, then slowly up at my face. His eyes were dark, piercing, and so cold they made the London drizzle feel like a tropical heatwave.
"Do. Not. Touch. Me," he said.
The voice was a low, vibrating velvet. It wasn't a request.
"Is that Zane Solarin?" someone in the crowd whispered loudly. "The man who just bought the Bank of Westminster? He is pink!"
Solarin. I'd heard that name. He was the man the papers called the Shadow of the City. The billionaire who bought companies just to take them apart.
I looked at him, at the fury radiating off his perfectly sculpted frame, and I realized I hadn't just ruined a car. I had just assaulted the most dangerous man in London with a bucket of pink paint.