“Please mister, buy this painting so we can buy bread,” three dirty triplets begged. The billionaire mafia boss stared at the canvas, his heart stopping. The woman painted on it was the wife he mourned for years. With shaking hands, he pulled out a black card and whispered, “Take me to her.”

Nico’s silence was absolute, a deafening confirmation. A memory violently pierced my skull: standing in her sunlit gallery while rain lashed the windows, teasing her about that exact stance, telling her she looked like a soldier bracing for an ambush. She had laughed and flicked cobalt paint at my chest. The memory cut so deep I had to grip the heavy continue reading …