CHAPTER FOUR
When Ethan Parker set his duffel bag down on the hardwood floor of his apartment, his gaze traveled immediately to a corner that was illuminated by morning light slanting through tall windows.
The half-finished painting of April waited there on the easel, just as he'd left it two days ago—her unfinished face watching him with eyes he hadn't yet given their proper depth.
He rolled his shoulders, working out the stiffness from the bus ride.
The early-morning journey back from Philadelphia had been uneventful but draining—six hours of watching the landscape blur past, his mind alternating between reviewing the past two days and anticipating what lay ahead.
The rideshare driver who'd brought him from the station had tried to engage him in conversation, but Ethan had responded with only the bare minimum of politeness, his thoughts already here, in this room, with this painting.
He crossed to the small kitchenette and poured himself a glass of water and drank it standing, staring at the painting over the rim of the glass.
April's features were taking shape on the canvas—the curve of her cheek, the fall of her dark hair.
He'd captured something in the set of her mouth—a hint of determination that reminded him of the stories he'd heard about Riley Paige. He’d been told that April strongly resembled her mother.
Setting the glass down, he approached the painting, drawn to it as though April herself was in the room, calling to him.
The sketches he'd made at the Brick House Beanery were pinned to the wall beside the easel—April behind the counter, April laughing with a customer, April lost in thought as she stared out the window during a lull.
He hadn't told her that each one was reconnaissance, a study not just of her features but of who she was, what moved her, what might make her useful to Aunt Cora's plans.
Plans Ethan still didn't fully understand.
He picked up a brush. Painting was the one thing in his life that felt truly his own.
Not something Aunt Cora had taught him or instructed him to do.
Something that had come from somewhere deep inside him, a talent that had emerged when he was thirteen, a year into his time with her.
She'd been pleased, of course. “Art is the perfect cover,” she'd told him.
“No one suspects an artist.” As if that was all it could ever be—a convenient disguise.
But when he painted, Ethan felt real. More real than when he was hacking into corporate networks or setting up phishing schemes or grooming marks for Aunt Cora's intricate cons. Even more real than when he was with April, playing the role of the struggling artist with a sick grandmother.
That was the problem.
The last two days in Philadelphia flooded his mind as he studied April's half-finished portrait. He’d visited a Victorian townhouse that had the hushed atmosphere of a place where secrets were currency.
Aunt Cora—June Gilson, as she called herself these days—lived there with Darren Alcox, another protégé whom she had fostered, and whom Ethan thought of as an older brother.
He’d found Aunt Cora in her office—a small room at the back of the house with three computer monitors and a window that looked out onto a walled garden.
She'd turned from her screen when he entered, and for a moment, Ethan saw her as a stranger might: a woman in her early sixties with steel-gray hair cut in a short, practical style, wearing a cardigan despite the June heat, her reading glasses hanging from a chain around her neck.
The picture of middle-class respectability.
“My dear boy,” she'd said, standing to embrace him. Her voice had that same gentle lilt that had once soothed him after nightmares, the same voice that had patiently taught him how to crack passwords when he was eleven. “Tell me everything.”
And he had.
He'd described his meetings with April at the coffee shop, the sketches, their conversations, the way she'd been impressed by his art.
He'd explained how he'd carefully revealed just enough of a tragic backstory to make her interested but not suspicious.
He'd reported on what little he'd gleaned about Riley Paige—that she was teaching at Quantico, that April was considering following in her mother's footsteps.
Aunt Cora had listened, her eyes sharp behind the grandmotherly facade.
“And you think she trusts you?” she'd asked when he was done.
“Yes,” he'd said, without hesitation. “She does.”
“Good.” Aunt Cora had smiled, patting his hand. “Now, I need you to listen carefully. While you're here, you are not to contact her. Not a text, not a call. Nothing until I say so. Understand?”
The instruction had bothered him more than he'd expected. “I told her I'd text when I arrived. She'll be worried.”
“Let her worry.” Aunt Cora's voice had been mild, but her eyes were cold. “Trust me, Ethan. I know what I'm doing.”
And that had been it. She'd dismissed him with a wave, turning back to her monitors, and he'd spent the next two days working with Darren on updating the scamming operation.
Boring, mechanical work—setting up fake websites that mimicked legitimate businesses, creating email templates for phishing campaigns, improving the VPN infrastructure that kept their activities untraceable.
The kind of work he could do in his sleep.
The kind of work that made Aunt Cora thousands of dollars a day.
He'd barely seen her during those two days.
She'd emerged from her office only for meals, during which she'd asked polite questions about his art and his apartment in Fredericksburg, never once mentioning April or Riley Paige or the reason she'd summoned him back to Philadelphia in the first place.
This morning, he'd left before dawn, Darren driving him to the bus station in silence. Aunt Cora hadn't even said goodbye.
Now, standing before April's portrait, Ethan felt a strange unease.
The painting captured something true about April—a warmth in her expression that went beyond mere physical accuracy.
He'd intended to use his art as a tool, a way to get close to her.
But somewhere along the way, the boundaries had blurred.
He found himself painting not just what he saw, but what he felt when he looked at her.
His phone rang, the sound harsh in the quiet apartment. The screen showed a number he didn't recognize—Aunt Cora's new burner phone, no doubt. He answered, putting it on speaker so he could continue to study the painting.
“How was your trip, dear?” Aunt Cora's voice flowed from the speaker, sweet as honey and just as sticky.
“Fine,” he said, adding more paint to his palette. “Got back about twenty minutes ago.”
“Good, good. And are you rested enough to see our lovely April today?”
Ethan's hand stilled over the paints. “Today? I thought you might want me to wait a bit longer.”
Aunt Cora laughed, a tinkling sound that reminded him of wind chimes. “No, no. Today is perfect. But you must approach her at work, and only when it's extremely busy. Perhaps during the lunch rush?”
Ethan frowned, setting down his palette knife. “The lunch rush? I'll barely have time to talk to her. And she's going to be upset that I didn't text her like I promised.”
“Precisely,” Aunt Cora said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. “That's exactly what we want.”
“I don't understand.”
“My dear boy, I'm engineering a great love story between you and our April. And every love story must have a tiff.” She paused, and he could imagine her leaning back in her chair, pleased with herself. “It's the romantic in me. I’m such a softie when it comes to love!”
Ethan stared at April's unfinished face on the canvas. “So, you want her to be angry with me.”
“Let her be angry. She'll come around on her own. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she comes to your apartment after her shift today, looking for answers.”
The prediction sent a chill through him.
Not because it was sinister, but because it was probably right.
Aunt Cora had an uncanny ability to predict human behavior, to manipulate emotions as easily as he manipulated code.
He'd seen it countless times over the years, watched her bend people to her will with a few carefully chosen words or actions.
Had felt it himself, that gentle but inexorable pressure to comply.
“I'll go during the lunch rush,” he heard himself say.
“Wonderful. Keep me updated, won't you? I do so love to hear how things are progressing.”
The call ended, leaving Ethan staring at his phone. He set it down on the table beside his paints, aware of a new feeling taking root inside him—a discomfort that went beyond his usual ambivalence about his work for Aunt Cora.
He had never questioned his role in her organization.
From the moment she'd taken him in at ten years old—a scared, grieving boy with no one else in the world—he had accepted her guidance as gospel.
She'd given him shelter, education, purpose.
She'd nurtured his talents—both the artistic ones and the less savory skills that made him valuable to her network. He owed her everything.
And yet.
And yet something about her instructions regarding April felt different.
Wrong, in a way he couldn't articulate even to himself.
Not because manipulating April was more wicked than the other cons, he'd run over the years—he'd done far worse—but because for the first time, the person he was deceiving mattered to him.
Ethan looked at his watch. It was only 10:30. The lunch rush at the Beanery wouldn't start for at least another hour and a half. He had time to work on the painting before he needed to leave.
He picked up his brush again and dipped it in the amber paint he'd mixed to match April's eyes. As he added depth to her gaze, he found himself wondering what those eyes would look like when they realized the truth about him. Would there be anger? Disgust? Betrayal?
The thought made his stomach twist. But there was no backing out now. Aunt Cora had given her instructions, and he would follow them, as he always did. Because he owed her everything. Because he didn't know how to be anything other than what she'd made him.
And because, deep down, he was afraid of what would happen if he tried.
The brush moved across the canvas, adding highlights to April's eyes, shadows beneath her cheekbones.
With each stroke, her face became more real, more present—a silent witness to his inner turmoil.
He worked methodically, losing himself in the familiar rhythm of painting, letting it calm the storm of thoughts in his head.
But even as his hands moved, his mind kept returning to the inevitable moment when he would have to face April. When he would have to pretend that his absence was innocent, that his interest in her was genuine—or at least, more genuine than it truly was.
Because that was the cruelest irony of all. His interest in April had become real. Somewhere between the sketches, the assignment had become something else. Something genuine. And that reality was the most dangerous con of all—one he was running not just on April, but on himself.
Ethan stepped back from the easel, assessing his progress.
The painting was coming along well. Another day and it would be finished.
But it would never be what he'd originally intended—a simple tool in Aunt Cora's elaborate game.
It had become something more, just as his relationship with April had become something more.
He wiped his hands on a rag, leaving streaks of amber and umber on the cloth.
He had a role to play, a script to follow.
And as much as a part of him wished otherwise, he would play that role to perfection.
Because that's what Aunt Cora had taught him to do.
Because that's what kept him alive and useful in her world.
But Ethan couldn't shake the feeling that something fundamental had shifted inside him. A crack in the foundation of certainty that had supported him for most of his life.
He had no idea what might happen if that foundation finally crumbled.