Chapter 5
Auralia
T he Raven occupied a narrow slot between a dry cleaner and a Korean grocery, the kind of place you walked past a hundred times without noticing.
That was the point. Dim lighting soft enough to feel like twilight even at noon.
Acoustic panels eating the worst of the noise.
A corner booth where I could press my back against the wall and see both exits without craning my neck.
I'd been nursing the same glass of red for forty-five minutes. The wine was good—Delphine had ordered for both of us, because she knew I'd spend ten minutes paralyzed by the menu otherwise—but I'd barely tasted it. My throat felt too tight to swallow.
Across from me, Delphine Okafor waited with the patience of someone who had learned, over seven years of friendship, not to rush me.
She was the only person in my life who understood that sometimes I needed to circle a topic seventeen times before I could land on it.
Former conservator at the Met, now independent, which meant she spent her days doing delicate restoration work on pieces worth more than my entire building.
We'd met at a conference when I was twenty-three and terrified, and she'd noticed me hyperventilating in a bathroom stall and talked me down without making me feel pathetic about it.
That was Delphine's gift. She made the hard things feel manageable.
I'd just finished explaining everything.
The email from Maksim Besharov. The meeting at the Vasiliev Gallery with its terrible lighting and its too-white walls.
The Kandinsky test I'd apparently passed.
The display platform in the walkway, my heel catching, the fall that should have been humiliating.
The catching.
His arm around my waist. His voice in my ear. The warmth of him through my blazer.
I'd told her all of it—or almost all of it.
The one thing I couldn't explain was the guilt that sat beneath everything else, constant as a heartbeat.
The feeling that I was betraying someone by wanting Maksim to hold me longer.
By replaying the moment over and over in my head, memorizing details I shouldn't be memorizing.
I hadn't mentioned Lis. Couldn't. That would require explaining things Delphine didn't know about me—things I'd never told anyone who existed in my physical life. The Discord server. The check-ins. The word I'd typed two nights ago that had cracked something open between us.
Daddy.
The guilt was there anyway. A constant undercurrent I couldn't name or resolve.
"So let me understand," Delphine said. She swirled her wine, a gesture that always preceded her cutting through my bullshit.
"A beautiful, wealthy man offered you an interesting job at three times your usual rate.
He caught you when you fell. He told you the gallery lighting was the problem instead of making you feel broken.
He gave you his card without pressure." She paused, eyebrow raised.
"And you're trying to find reasons to say no. "
When she put it like that, I felt ridiculous.
"It's not that simple," I said. But even as the words came out, I could hear how weak they sounded.
"Isn't it?" Delphine leaned forward, her dark eyes warm but direct.
The candlelight caught the gold hoops in her ears, the geometric print of her headwrap.
She always looked put-together in a way I envied—confident in her own skin, comfortable taking up space.
"Tell me the actual objection. Not the anxiety spiral. The real thing."
I twisted my grandmother's ring. The thin gold band turned easily now, worn smooth by thirteen years of nervous fidgeting.
"I don't know anything about him," I said. "His online presence is practically nonexistent. His company website says nothing. He's tracking money launderers through the art world, which means organized crime, which means danger. And he looked at me like—"
I stopped. Couldn't finish the sentence.
"Like what?" Delphine's voice had softened.
"Like I was a puzzle he wanted to solve." I stared at the wine I wasn't drinking. "Like I mattered. I don't trust that. People don't look at me like that without wanting something."
The words hung between us. The truth I'd been circling for an hour, finally landed.
Delphine set down her glass. "Lia."
That was her name for me. No one else used it.
"You're allowed to want things," she said. "You're allowed to take interesting jobs and be attracted to handsome men and have a life that isn't just you and Ghost in that studio forever."
"I like my studio."
"I know you do. And your studio is a beautiful sanctuary you built to protect yourself from a world that's been shitty to you.
It's a fortress. But fortresses can become prisons if you're not careful.
" She reached across the table and touched my hand—brief, careful, aware of my limits.
"Stop looking for the trap. Sometimes good things are just good things. "
My throat tightened. "You don't know that."
"Neither do you. That's the point." She sat back, picked up her wine again. "You've already decided to take the job. I can see it in your face. You're just looking for permission."
I opened my mouth to deny it. Closed it again.
She was right. She was always right about me, which was infuriating and comforting in equal measure.
"What if he disappoints me?" The question came out smaller than I'd intended. "What if I let myself want this and it turns out to be nothing? Or worse—what if it's something, and I ruin it anyway because I'm too much?"
Delphine's expression softened. "Then you survive it. Like you've survived everything else. But at least you'll know."
The wine bar hummed around us—soft music, muted conversations, the clink of glasses. I could handle it here. Delphine had found this place years ago, had tested it, had declared it Auralia-safe. She'd done that without being asked. Without making a big deal of it.
That was love, I thought. The quiet accommodations. The patience with someone whose brain worked differently.
Lis did that too. Every night, asking his careful questions. Adjusting without being asked.
The guilt stirred again, but quieter now. More confused than sharp.
"You're thinking about something else," Delphine observed. "Something you're not telling me."
I met her eyes. "I'm not ready to talk about it yet."
She nodded, accepting this the way she accepted everything about me—without judgment, without pushing. "When you are, I'm here."
Something in my chest loosened. Not all the way. The knot was still there, tangled with guilt and wanting and the fear that I was about to make a terrible mistake.
But Delphine was right about one thing. I'd already decided.
The only question was whether I was brave enough to admit it.
I sent the email at 10:47pm.
Three hours. That's how long I'd spent drafting and deleting and drafting again. Three hours of staring at my laptop in the green velvet armchair, Ghost curled at my feet, while I tried to compose four sentences that didn't make me sound desperate or terrified or both.
The final version was almost aggressive in its neutrality:
Mr. Besharov—
I've considered your proposal and would like to discuss it further. I can meet tomorrow evening at my studio if that works for your schedule.
Auralia Hart
Professional. Distant. Giving nothing away.
I'd deleted the exclamation point after "further" seventeen times before admitting to myself that I'd never used an exclamation point in professional correspondence and wasn't about to start now.
I'd removed "please" from the second sentence because it sounded too eager.
I'd considered signing off with "Best regards" and decided it was too warm, then considered "Regards" and decided it was too cold, then gave up and used nothing at all.
My name looked naked sitting there at the bottom. Unprotected.
I pressed send before I could start the cycle again.
The waiting was physical. A tightness in my chest, a low hum of electricity along my arms. Ghost lifted his head and gave me a long look—that particular whippet expression that said he knew exactly what I was doing and didn't approve.
"I'm fine," I told him.
He sighed and put his head back down. Neither of us believed me.
I refreshed my inbox. Nothing. Refreshed again. Still nothing.
This was ridiculous. It was nearly eleven at night. Maksim Besharov was probably asleep, or out somewhere doing whatever beautiful, wealthy men did on weekday evenings. He'd respond tomorrow, maybe the next day. Maybe he'd changed his mind entirely and I'd never hear from him again.
That thought should have been relieving. Instead it made my stomach drop.
I closed the laptop. Opened it again. Refreshed my inbox.
The response was waiting.
Four minutes. He'd responded in under four minutes, which either meant he'd been waiting at his computer like I had, or he never slept. I clicked on the message with fingers that weren't quite steady.
Miss Hart—
Tomorrow works perfectly. Send me the address and a time. I'll bring coffee.
—M
I read it twice. Three times. The words were simple enough—confirmation, logistics, a sign-off that managed to feel warm despite its brevity. But it was the last sentence that undid me.
I'll bring coffee.
Such a small thing. An offer of caffeine, not a demand that I provide hospitality. Not an assumption that I'd have the right kind or remember to make it or manage the social choreography of being a good host. Just: I'll bring it. I'll take care of that part. One less thing for you to worry about.
Lis would do that.