2. Nolan
TWO
NOLAN
There were things I'd never told anyone — not Declan, not Julian, not the god I stopped believing in at twenty-two.
But I'm going to tell you.
The painting was 6 ft. wide and 4 ft. tall.
Oil on canvas. A kitchen — wooden table dusted with flour, a clay pot holding three limes, a knife with a handle worn smooth at the grip.
Light poured through the window from the left, warm and golden, catching flour dust suspended in the air.
The chair at the table was pushed back. A cloth draped over it.
Someone had just been sitting there, and the absence was the loudest thing on the wall.
I'd been standing in front of it for ten minutes. I didn't know why. I came here tonight for a reason that had nothing to do with art, and now my feet wouldn't move.
Behind me, the low hum of voices thinned. Heels clicked past. A glass clinked against a table. Then a different sound — soft, bare, the pad of skin on concrete, getting closer.
"That's Rafael's grandmother's kitchen."
I didn't turn. The voice was warm and close. She'd crossed half the gallery to reach me.
"He painted it from memory," she continued, stopping beside me.
"The kitchen doesn't exist anymore. The building was torn down three years ago to make room for a parking structure.
But Rafael said he could still feel the heat from the stove if he closed his eyes, so that's what he painted. The feeling, not the room."
"The grandmother's not in the frame," I said.
Silence. I turned.
Barefoot and shorter than the scattered heels made her out to be, she studied me with wide brown eyes. Golden-brown skin, loose dark curls past her shoulders, a simple dark dress fitted at the waist — with a dusty hem from recent climbing and a faint crease between her brows from a vanished frown.
"No," she said. "She's not."
"But you know where she was standing."
The crease returned. Her head tilted. Her lips pressed together, then parted. "Most people tonight said it's pretty. You're the first person who told me why it works."
"Pretty is a waste of a painting like this."
Her teeth showed first. Then the crinkle at the corners of her eyes, then the sound — bright, unheld, a laugh that pulled her whole body forward half a step and made her press her hand against her sternum.
"Okay," she said, catching her breath. "You get the full tour."
She turned and walked toward the far wall. I followed.
She stopped at a streetscape. Favela rooftops, laundry lines strung between buildings, colors so saturated they vibrated against the white wall.
"This is Pinheiros," she said, touching the edge of the frame.
"The riverbank. Rafael painted it from memory because the actual site was demolished before he could photograph it.
" She pulled her hand back. "He was furious.
He said he went to paint it, and there was just rubble and a chain-link fence.
So he sat on the curb across the street and painted what used to be there. "
"From the curb?"
"From the curb.” She nodded. “He had a sketchbook and a set of pastels he'd stolen from his university's supply room." She glanced at me. "Don't tell anyone that part."
"Noted."
We moved to the next painting. A boy in a doorway, one hand on the frame, half his face in shadow. His expression was open, unguarded, caught between entering and leaving.
"His younger brother," she said. "Lucas.
He died at sixteen. Car accident." She was looking at the painting, not at me.
"Rafael doesn't talk about it much, but he paints Lucas into everything.
If you look closely at the streetscapes, there's always a figure in a doorway or a window.
Always watching. Always half in, half out. "
I looked. She was right. In the Pinheiros streetscape, a small figure stood at the edge of a rooftop, barely visible against the sky.
"Rafael layers his paint," she said, stepping closer to the canvas.
Her shoulder was near mine. "He lets earlier colors bleed through later ones.
See here — " Her hand found my forearm, fingers pressing lightly against my sleeve, pulling my attention toward the upper right corner.
"That orange underneath the blue? That's the first layer.
He painted the sunset first, then painted the daytime over it.
So the painting remembers what came before, even when you can't see it anymore. "
Her hand stayed on my arm. I looked at the corner she was pointing to. The orange bled through the blue, like heat through glass.
"So nothing gets buried," I said.
"Nothing gets lost." She turned her head. We were close. "That's what I love about his work. The past is always showing through." Her eyes dropped to her hand on my arm. She didn't remove it. "Most painters cover their mistakes. Rafael lets them become part of the finished thing."
A waiter passed with a tray of champagne. We both reached. My fingers closed over hers on the stem of the glass. Her skin was warm. Half a second. She pulled back with a quick breath.
"You first," she said.
I picked up the glass. I didn't drink from it. I held it out to her. "You need it more. You haven't stopped talking in twelve minutes."
Her mouth dropped open. "Twelve? You were counting?"
"I count everything."
She shook her head, the curls shifting across her shoulders.
She bit down on her lower lip to hold back what was clearly another laugh, then gave up and took the glass.
Her fingers brushed mine during the handoff.
The touch was light. Brief. Neither of us acknowledged it. Neither of us stepped back.
She took a sip and tilted the glass toward me. "I'm Soleil. Like the sun. My mother was French."
"Nolan."
"Just Nolan?"
"Just Nolan."
She studied me over the rim. "You don't look like a Nolan."
"What does a Nolan look like?"
"Friendlier."
The corner of my mouth moved before I could catch it. A twitch. A fraction.
"There," she said quietly. Her eyes locked on the place where my mouth had betrayed me. "There you are."
She held my gaze. I held hers. The gallery noise pressed in from every side — laughter, heels, the murmur of conversations I didn't care about — and none of it reached us.
"Come on." She took my elbow and steered me toward the back of the gallery. "There's more."
The back room was narrow and quieter. Four smaller pieces hung on the wall. A window streaked with rain. A wooden chair with a folded shirt draped over its back. A pair of hands holding nothing, palms open, fingers slightly curled.
I moved past them. A canvas leaned against the far wall, face turned away. I reached for it, turned it around, and stopped.
It wasn't like the others. The brushwork was different — looser, more hesitant.
A garden. Not a grand one. A balcony, tight and overgrown, with herbs in terra-cotta pots and light falling through leaves in scattered coins of gold.
Each leaf was distinct, each shadow deliberate, but the composition had a privacy to it that made me feel like I was looking through someone's window.
"I want this one," I said.
Silence. I turned. She was standing in the doorway, one hand gripping the frame, her lips pressed tight.
"That's not Rafael's," she said.
"I know."
She opened her mouth and closed it. Her fingers tightened on the doorframe, her knuckles pressing white. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
The grin that broke across her face rearranged everything. Wide, unguarded, her lower lip caught between her teeth for half a second before she gave up trying to contain it.
"Good choice," she said.
I pulled my phone from my inside pocket. I'd been turning it in my fingers throughout the conversation — a habit. The screen was facing down. I flipped it to check the time, and the notification caught me mid-breath.
I stared at it. My jaw tightened.
"Everything okay?" She'd seen the shift.
"Fine." I locked the screen and slid the phone into my jacket. "Family thing."
She didn't push. She stepped forward, and her fingers found my knuckles — a touch so light it was almost not there. A brush. A landing. Gone.
"I'm glad you came tonight," she said.
"I'd like to see you again."
Her eyes held mine. Then she reached for the phone I'd just put away, slipped it from my pocket, typed with both thumbs — her nail polish was dark plum — and pressed it back into my palm. Her fingers lingered on mine for one second past necessary.
"Don't wait three days," she said. "I don't like games."
She rose on her toes and kissed my cheek. Her lips were warm. The rosemary scent was stronger here, at the curve of her jaw, where her hair brushed my face.
She pulled back, smiled, turned, and walked back into her gallery. Bare feet on concrete, curls swinging between her shoulder blades.
I watched her go. I tucked the phone again into my inner pocket. Then I walked out.
The air hit my face. Cold enough to sting. I got into the car, pulled the door shut, and sat in the dark with my hands on the steering wheel.
I pulled out my personal phone. Not the one with her number. Both phones were signed into the same account. When one buzzed, the other followed a second later. Then I called a number from memory. It rang four times.
"You've reached Adira. Leave a message."
Her voice was deliberate; it once bombarded me three times a day with stories of classes, friends, and that coffee shop boy whose smile made her forget her name. She was nineteen then — radiant, trusting, and brimming with a hope I’d never known, not even as a kid.
I didn't leave a message. I pressed end and set the phone on the passenger seat.
The notification was still on the screen. Transfer returned — Adira Reeves. $8,000. Sent on the first of the month. Returned on the third. Two years of this rhythm. I sent the money. She sent it back. Neither of us called. Neither of us stopped.
I dialed her number again. Four rings. Voicemail. I pressed end.
I sat there. The streetlight threw a bar of orange across my dashboard. A taxi passed, then another. The city moved around the car like water moving around a stone.
My personal phone buzzed on the passenger seat. I picked it up.
"Tell me something good." It was Declan.
"Define good."
"Graham. Anything new?" he asked.
"Nothing concrete. Still pulling threads."
"Pull faster. Julian's getting twitchy."
"Julian's always twitchy."
"Fair point. Get some rest, Nolan. You sound like hell."
The line went dead.
I opened the other phone. Her contact glowed on the screen — Soleil . She'd added the emoji herself. I sent a message.
Nolan
Tomorrow. 7pm. I'll send the details.
Three dots. Then I received her reply.
Soleil
I thought I said don't wait three days. This is technically the same day. Overachiever.
I set the phone on the passenger seat beside the other one. Two phones. Two lives. The sun emoji pulsing on one screen, the returned transfer sitting on the other.
I reached beneath the seat and pulled out a leather folio. Slim, unmarked, locked with a code. Twelve digits, entered without looking. The tablet inside powered on.
Lattimore Holdings.
Corporate structure, mapped and annotated in a system so precise it looked like architecture.
Subsidiaries. Board members. Property portfolios.
Political donations. Regulatory vulnerabilities.
Shell companies layered inside shell companies, each one traced, documented, and filed.
Fifteen years of research. Fifteen years of patience.
Fifteen years of building myself into a man who could dismantle an empire with phone calls and filings and pressure applied to the exact right joints.
At the center, one name: Hugh Lattimore.
I scrolled. Below the corporate map was a secondary file of personal information about his family, profiles, photographs, and connection points.
There it was, added three weeks back as strategy evolved — a gallery-site photo, loose curls, wide dark eyes, barefoot, in front of a painting.
Soleil Lattimore.
Beneath the photograph, two words, typed into the notes with the ruthless clarity of a man who long ago severed sentiment from strategy:
Access point.
I looked at the photograph and looked at the other phone, where the sun emoji still glowed.
This was the secret that I'd never told anyone:
I'm going to destroy her father, dismantle his company, ruin his name, and burn the empire the Lattimores built on the silence of people they crushed — including my sister.
I'd spent fifteen years becoming a man who could do it. Every acquisition, every connection, every move I'd made since I was twenty-two had been building toward this.
And the girl with the bare feet and the sun emoji?
She's how I get inside.