The painting was screaming.

Not literally—I'm not that far gone, despite what my therapist might suspect—but the canvas beneath my fingertips was practically vibrating with secrets. I'd been running the UV light across its surface for twenty minutes, and what I was seeing didn't match what Adrian's acquisition records claimed.

"You're doing that thing again," Adrian said from somewhere behind me, his voice carrying that dangerous edge that meant he was watching too closely.

"What thing?" I didn't look up. Couldn't. The signature was there, faint but unmistakable, hidden beneath layers of deliberately applied paint. Someone had wanted to erase it. Someone had wanted this painting to be someone else's work.

"The thing where you look like you're about to solve a murder."

I set down the light and turned to face him, my heartbeat doing that annoying stutter it always did when he was this close. Adrian stood in the doorway of his private restoration room—because of course he had a private restoration room—with his suit jacket discarded and his sleeves rolled up. The vulnerability of it was almost worse than the suit. Almost.

"There's a hidden signature," I said, keeping my voice level. Clinical. Safe. "Beneath the overpainting. The artist who created this work isn't who your records claim."

The shift in his face was subtle. A tightening around the eyes. A barely perceptible tension in his jaw. But I'd spent thirty-two years reading people like they were paintings, and Adrian Ashford had just given me a masterclass in barely contained panic.

"Show me."

I gestured him over, and he moved with that predatory grace that made my nervous system question all my life choices. When he leaned in to look at the light I was shining on the canvas, his cologne wrapped around me—bergamot and leather and something darker, something that smelled like expensive secrets—and I had to remind myself to breathe like a normal human being.

"There," I pointed to the faint lines emerging under the ultraviolet. "See how the brushwork changes? There's a signature here. Old technique, probably early twentieth century based on the pigment composition. Someone painted over it deliberately, and they were good. Professional. But not better than me."

Adrian didn't respond immediately. He was still, too still, his gray eyes fixed on the canvas with an intensity that made my skin prickle with warning. This wasn't about art authentication anymore. This was about something that mattered in a way that had nothing to do with provenance or market value.

"What's the signature?" His voice had gone very quiet.

"I can't make out all of it yet. I'll need to—"

"What's the signature, Isabelle?"

The use of my full name was a warning bell I should have paid attention to. Should have, but didn't, because I was too busy noticing the way his hands had clenched into fists at his sides, the way his breathing had shifted into something shallow and controlled.

"Matthias Ashford," I said carefully. "The signature reads Matthias Ashford."

The silence that followed was the kind that made you understand why people were afraid of the dark. Adrian turned away from the painting, away from me, and walked to the far end of the restoration room. His shoulders rose and fell with the kind of breathing exercise people did when they were trying very hard not to commit violence.

I should have left. Every survival instinct honed by a childhood spent invisible in rooms full of volatile people screamed at me to make myself small, to slip out quietly, to pretend I hadn't seen anything. But I'd spent the last week drowning in Adrian Ashford's presence, and apparently I'd developed a concerning interest in self-destruction.

"Who's Matthias Ashford?" I asked.

He didn't answer for a long time. Long enough that I started to think he wouldn't. Long enough that I began cataloging all the ways this could go wrong, all the ways I could have just painted a target on my own back by being too good at my job.

When Adrian finally turned back to face me, something had shifted in his expression. The carefully maintained control was still there, but underneath it was something raw. Something that looked almost like grief.

"My father," he said flatly.

The words hung in the air between us like a confession, and my brain scrambled to make sense of them. Adrian's father. A man I'd never heard mentioned. A man whose work was apparently hidden beneath layers of paint in Adrian's private collection.

"The painting—"

"Was stolen," Adrian finished. He moved back toward me, and every cell in my body went on high alert. "Thirty-seven years ago. From the Ashford estate. From my father's studio."

I waited, knowing there was more. There was always more, with people like Adrian. People with secrets that required multiple locked doors and careful words.

"My mother stole it," he continued, and the words came out like broken glass. "After my father died. She wanted to erase him from the family legacy. Wanted to erase the fact that he'd painted it, that he'd created something beautiful before he..." He stopped, jaw working. "She sold it to a dealer who painted over the signature and sold it again. It's been floating through the market for decades, and I've been trying to find it."

"Why?" The question was out before I could stop it. "If your mother wanted to erase it—"

"Because it's mine," Adrian said, and there was something possessive and dangerous in the way he said it. "Because it matters. Because my father mattered, and she decided to erase him, and I've spent twenty years trying to undo that."

He was close now, close enough that I could see the silver threading through his dark hair, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him. Close enough to be dangerous.

"There's more," he said quietly. "About the painting. About my family."

"Adrian—"

"My mother has been using knowledge of the theft to control me and Julian for years. She knows what happened to it. She knows I've been searching for it. She uses that knowledge like a weapon, like leverage." His hand came up, and for a moment I thought he was going to touch me, but instead he ran it through his hair in a gesture of raw frustration. "And now you know. Now you've found it. Now she's going to know that you found it."

The implications of that statement were just beginning to unfold in my mind like a very complicated and very dangerous origami.

"What does that mean?" I asked, though I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.

"It means you're involved in something that extends far beyond art authentication," Adrian said. "It means my mother is going to see you as a threat. It means Julian—" He stopped, and something darker crossed his face. "Julian is going to use this. He's going to use you."

"Use me for what?"

Adrian's laugh was bitter. "Leverage. Against me. He's always trying to prove he's better than me, that he's the one who should be running the business, the one who should have our father's legacy instead of our mother's poison." He turned away again, pacing like something caged. "And you, Isabelle, are now the most valuable piece on the board."

The way he said my name made my stomach drop. Not because it was threatening—though there was certainly a threat in it—but because underneath the threat was something that sounded almost like fear. Adrian Ashford, who looked like he'd never been afraid of anything in his life, was afraid. For me, maybe. Or of losing control of me.

"So what do I do?" I asked. "Do I pretend I didn't find the signature? Do I—"

"You tell me," Adrian said, turning back to face me with an intensity that made my breath catch. "You tell me what you found, what you know, before you tell anyone else. Before Julian gets to you. Before my mother decides you're a liability."

There was a desperation in his voice that I'd never heard before, and it did something complicated to my chest. This was vulnerability. This was Adrian Ashford without his armor, and it was terrifying and seductive in equal measure.

"Why should I?" I asked, though I already knew the answer. I was already going to do it. I was already in too deep.

"Because I can protect you," he said simply. "Because I have the resources and the power to keep you safe from what's coming. Because—"

He didn't finish the sentence. Instead, he closed the distance between us in two strides, and suddenly I was backed against the restoration table with Adrian's hands on either side of my head, caging me in without touching me. His cologne surrounded me completely now—bergamot and leather and something that smelled like smoke and expensive whiskey, something that smelled like him.

"Because I need you to trust me," he finished, his voice low and dangerous. "Even though you know you shouldn't."

My heart was doing something that was probably medically concerning. My hands were trembling, which was unacceptable, so I shoved them into my pockets. My mouth was dry, which meant I couldn't trust myself to speak without saying something stupid.

"You're asking me to choose a side," I said instead.

"I'm asking you to choose the side that doesn't end with you getting hurt," Adrian corrected. His eyes were dark now, almost black, and I could see my own reflection in them. I looked terrified. I looked like I wanted him to kiss me anyway.

"That's not fair."

"No," he agreed. "It's not. Nothing about this is fair. But fairness is a luxury for people who don't have my kind of damage, and we both know you're not one of those people either."

The accuracy of that statement was almost as disturbing as the proximity of his body. Almost as disturbing as the way my traitorous nervous system was responding to him—pulse racing, skin hypersensitive, every nerve ending screaming for him to close the final inches between us.

"I need time," I said, and my voice came out rougher than I intended. "To think about what I found. To understand what it means."

"You don't have time." Adrian's hand came up, and this time he did touch me—his fingers brushing against my cheek with a gentleness that was somehow worse than if he'd been rough. "Julian's in the city. He's been trying to get access to my collection for weeks. He knows something's happening. He just doesn't know what yet."

"How do you know—"

"Because I know my brother," Adrian interrupted. "Because I know how his mind works. Because he's been calling me constantly, asking about my recent acquisitions, trying to engineer reasons to visit the penthouse." His hand dropped away, and I felt the loss of it like a physical ache. "He's hunting. And now that you've found what he's been looking for, he's going to be hunting you."

The implication of that was just starting to crystallize when my phone buzzed.

A text from an unknown number: Isabelle? It's Julian Ashford. Adrian mentioned you were working on some pieces for him. I'd love to meet you. I'm free for drinks tonight. —J

I looked at Adrian, and his expression was grim.

"Too late," he said quietly.

---

I didn't respond to Julian's text immediately. Instead, I spent the next hour helping Adrian carefully document the hidden signature, taking photographs, running additional tests, building a record of what I'd found. It felt like we were building a case, or building a bomb. Possibly both.

Adrian moved around the restoration room with a different energy now—less predatory, more focused. This was a man in his element, a collector protecting his prize. The painting had become something sacred, something worth protecting.

"The overpainting is professional," I said, examining the layers of pigment. "Whoever did this knew what they were doing. They didn't just slap paint on top and hope for the best. They recreated the entire composition, changed the color palette, aged it properly. This took time and skill."

"My mother hired someone," Adrian said from across the room. "She would have. She wouldn't have risked doing it herself."

"When?"

"Sometime in the eighties, I'd guess. After my father died, after the theft was discovered, when the scandal was still fresh enough that she needed to bury it."

I looked at him. "Why did she steal it in the first place?"

Adrian's jaw tightened. "Because my father had another family. A woman he loved more than her. A daughter he wanted to acknowledge. The painting was going to be part of his will—he was going to leave it to her. My mother found out and decided to erase the whole thing. The affair, the other family, the evidence that he'd loved someone else more than he loved her."

The bitterness in his voice was corrosive. This wasn't just about a stolen painting or a family secret. This was about a man who'd been erased, about a love that had been deemed unworthy of existing.

"Does Julian know?" I asked.

"He suspects. He's been digging for years, trying to find leverage against me. The painting, the affair, the fact that our mother is a thief—it's all leverage to him." Adrian looked at me with an intensity that made my skin prickle. "But he doesn't know that you found it. Not yet. And that's the only advantage we have."

"We?" I echoed. "Adrian, I'm not—"

"You are," he said flatly. "The moment you found that signature, you became part of this. The moment you touched that painting, you became mine to protect."

The possessiveness in that statement should have triggered every alarm bell in my system. It should have sent me running. Instead, I felt something dangerous and seductive uncurl in my chest—the terrible, intoxicating feeling of being wanted. Of being chosen. Of mattering enough to someone that they were willing to fight for you.

"What happens when Julian finds out?" I asked.

Adrian's expression went very dark. "Then we'll have a problem. Because my brother doesn't lose, Isabelle. He's charming and warm and he makes people trust him, and then he uses that trust like a weapon. And if he decides he wants you, he's going to use every tool at his disposal to get you. Including making me watch while he does it."

"That's very dramatic," I said, but my voice was shaking slightly. "Very soap opera."

"You haven't met my family yet," Adrian said. "You don't understand what we're capable of when something we want is at stake."

He was right. I didn't understand. But I was beginning to suspect that understanding was going to come at a cost I wasn't sure I was prepared to pay.

My phone buzzed again. Another text from Julian: Adrian's being cagey about you. That's interesting. Drinks tonight? I promise I'm the fun Ashford brother.

I looked at Adrian. "He wants to meet me."

"I know."

"What do you want me to do?"

Adrian was quiet for a long moment, and I watched the internal struggle play out across his face. He wanted to forbid me. He wanted to lock me in this penthouse and keep me safe and keep me his. I could see it in the way his hands clenched, in the way his jaw worked.

"Go," he finally said, and the word sounded like it cost him something. "But wear the earpiece I'm going to give you. And you tell me everything he says. Everything he implies. Everything he wants from you."

"That's insane," I said. "That's—"

"That's survival," Adrian interrupted. "That's the price of being involved with me. That's the price of knowing what you know."

He was right. And I was going to do it anyway, because I'd already made the choice when I found that signature. I'd already chosen a side.

I'd chosen Adrian.

The realization hit me like a physical blow, and I had to grip the edge of the restoration table to keep myself steady. I'd chosen. Not rationally, not carefully, but with the same instinct that made me see forgeries that no one else could see. Some part of me recognized something in Adrian—some fracture that matched my own, some hunger that was as consuming as my own.

"Okay," I said quietly. "I'll go. I'll wear your earpiece. I'll be your spy."

Adrian moved toward me, and this time when he reached out, he didn't stop himself from touching. His hand came up to cup my face, his thumb brushing across my cheekbone with a tenderness that was almost unbearable.

"You're going to regret this," he said softly.

"Probably," I agreed. "But I'm going to do it anyway."

"I know," he said, and then he was kissing me.

It wasn't gentle. It wasn't a seduction or a promise or any of the things kisses were supposed to be. It was a claim. It was a warning. It was Adrian Ashford marking me as his before his brother got the chance to try.

And God help me, I kissed him back like I meant it.