Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Two years later... Porter’s Corner, Montana
Crone
“There you go, mister. The hazelnut latte from Porter’s Perk is the best in a hundred-mile radius.
” The pretty blonde fluttered her eyelids as she flashed him a “come-and-get-me” smile.
Crone resisted the urge to shake his head at the young woman.
The little chit looked young enough to be his daughter.
Instead, he smiled politely, took the hot cardboard mug, and left before the urge to swat her ass for her forwardness turned into reality.
“Hmm, at least she’s spot on with the latte,” he murmured as he took a sip. Why he deviated from getting directly back in his truck to stroll down the street, he had no idea. Walking into the art gallery, even less. “Well, fuck me silly.”
Right there, in the lobby facing the entrance, hung the last painting he had ever expected to see again.
It was massive. Eight by six feet of raw emotion splashed across the canvas.
The painting dominating the wall was a window into hell itself—his personal hell.
At first glance, it appeared to be chaotic with violent strokes of crimson bleeding into pitch black and writhing forms emerging from smoke-like swirls of metallic bronze.
But there was calculated precision in the madness.
Deep in the darkness, barely visible unless you knew where to look, were the hooded figures, their faces obscured but their intent clear in the positioning of their bodies.
The bright acidic green, the color seen when peering through night-vision goggles, cut through the composition like searchlights, creating an otherworldly glow that made the shadows even more menacing.
His painting—the very last one he had painted—and when he had stood back and seen what his mind had created, the decision had been made… it would be the last one he would ever paint.
If the artist in him could only conjure up the darkest, most frightening, and violent visions any human being should be forced to endure, he was doing art lovers a disservice.
That had been almost five years ago—a year after his return from a two-year incarceration and torture by ISIS when he’d been captured during a hostage recovery mission.
He’d painted it during the last four months of a year-and-a-half long road of hell back to health.
Eighteen months. It had taken eighteen months of reconstructive surgeries, physical therapy, and sheer determination to piece himself back together.
When they had found him, he’d been more corpse than man.
His tibia was shattered in three places, one hip was crushed, he suffered from internal bleeding due to a ruptured spleen, and more lacerations than the doctors could count.
The medical team had given him less than a twenty percent chance of survival that first week.
He remembered nothing of those initial days since he was lost in a morphine haze while the surgeons worked to stop the bleeding, pin his bones back together, and keep infection at bay.
The doctors had told him later that it was his stubborn will to live that had pulled him through.
That, and perhaps the whisper of his friend, Jagger, telling him that he had a son he’d never known about.
It was the only thing that he had held on to during the darkest moments.
To find and meet his own flesh and blood.
The first three months had been the worst. He had to learn to breathe through pain that even morphine couldn’t touch, fight the fever that came with infection, and dogmatically will his damaged body to heal.
Then came the grueling physical therapy.
Hours of excruciating work just to bend his knee, to put weight on his leg, and finally, to take that first stumbling step.
Each small victory had been paid for in sweat and pain.
Going from bed to wheelchair, wheelchair to walker, and walker to crutches.
No one had expected him to walk unassisted again, but he had proven them wrong.
No wheelchair and, thank fuck, no crutches.
He’d pushed himself beyond what his therapists thought possible, driven by the same force that had kept him alive in that cell. Pure, unrelenting determination.
His fingers shook as they touched the scar, a habit he had never quite broken.
The raised tissue started at his hairline, a pale dark silvery line that carved its way down his forehead like an upside letter Y.
It split his eyebrow since the hair never grew back and left a permanent divide.
The scar tissue pulled slightly at the corner of his eye, not enough to distort his vision, but enough to serve as a constant reminder.
The doctors had done their best, but some wounds were too deep to fully heal.
He’d been lucky. A centimeter closer and he would have lost the eye completely.
The scar ended just above his ear, hidden usually by his hair, but he knew every millimeter of its path.
Others across his body would never fade since the bastards had coated the raw wounds with black ink or molten silver—a reminder to carry with him the rest of his life.
“How the hell did this monstrosity end up here?” he muttered under his breath.
The painting seemed to pulse with its own dark energy.
Looking at it now, everything came flooding back.
The hated damp cell walls, the metallic taste of blood, and the daily waiting for the sound of boots on concrete.
Living with the constant acrid smell of fear had unmanned him, destroying the belief he had in his own survival.
His hand clenched around the coffee cup. The flash of heat was instantaneous, but he barely registered it.
The irony wasn’t lost on him. Before being captured, his landscapes had graced galleries from New York to San Francisco, to Europe, Australia…
all over the world. Critics praised his ability to capture light and the way he brought the raw beauty of nature to life on canvas.
His waiting list for commissions had been two years long.
But after his rescue, those serene vistas had escaped him.
Every time he had tried to paint the sunset over the Pacific or the lush Santa Monica mountains he used to love, darkness had bled into the colors, turning them violent and distorted.
This painting, this raw, visceral outpouring of darkness had been his breakthrough.
He had fought it for months, trying to force his hand back to the familiar comfort of landscapes.
Then one night, he gave in and let the horror flow.
For two straight weeks, he had painted without sleep, without food, barely stopping to drink water.
Every trauma, every scream, and every moment of terror had poured onto the canvas in a frenzy of creation.
He’d painted until his hands shook, until the brushes fell from his cramping fingers, until finally, there was nothing left inside him but hollowness.
When he’d stepped back, exhausted, and empty, the nightmares that had haunted him for years had lost their power.
The painting had become a vessel containing all the darkness that had threatened to consume him.
He had slept that night, really slept, for the first time in eighteen months.
No cold sweats, no waking up fighting invisible enemies, and no more seeing those hooded faces in the dark.
Best of all, no voice mocking him that it had been his own negligence that had gotten him captured.
He never went back to the SEALs. It was a hard lesson he had learned.
Some doors once closed needed to stay that way.
He never picked up a paint brush again. He left his winery in Santa Monica and found a different kind of peace in Costa Rica, preferring to live off the grid in a small house overlooking the Pacific.
His nearest neighbor had been two miles away, just how he liked it.
He’d grown most of his own food, he surfed, and only ventured into town when absolutely necessary.
Some called it isolation; he called it freedom.
The ocean had become his sanctuary, and the solitude his therapy.
“Mesmerizing piece, isn’t it?”
The soft voice barely registered as Crone stood transfixed.
The painting seemed to breathe, to pulse with its own heartbeat, and seductively drew him deeper into its darkness.
His jaw clenched as he fought the magnetic pull of those violent brushstrokes where each one represented a memory carved in paint and pain.
Years of SEAL training and his natural dominance kept his voice steady and controlled. “Dark and fucked up is what comes to my mind.”
“Oh, my god!” The woman’s shriek broke through his trance.
She stepped into his peripheral vision. Her dark hair was expertly styled, and her outfit was a definition of refined taste.
But right now, she was staring at him with undisguised awe, her manicured hand moving between him and the painting in quick, excited gestures.
“It… it is you! You’re him. I can’t believe it.
Crone Lange,” she whispered his name almost reverently. “You’re here. In. My. Gallery.”
“If not for this monstrosity, I’d say you have good taste in art,” Crone growled in a voice rough with suppressed emotion. He turned toward the door, fighting the painting’s pull with every step.
“Wait! You can’t just leave. I have questions. Sooo many questions!”
Crone stopped dead in his tracks. Not because of her breathless plea, but because the painting seemed to call to him in a siren song impossible to resist. He turned slowly.
His eyes immediately moved back to the canvas.
The longer he looked, the more he could feel the phantom press of cold concrete against his back and hear the echo of boots in dark corridors.
His fingers twitched, remembering the fevered grip on the brushes as he’d poured his nightmares onto the canvas.
“How much?” The words came out with the grating sound of gravel sliding down a mountainside.
“H-how much what?” She looked truly confused.
“How much do you want for the painting?” His voice dropped an octave, taking on a dangerous edge.
“You want to buy your own painting?”
“Isn’t that why it’s hanging here? You do sell the art you show, right?”
“Y-yes,” she said hesitantly. “But never to the artist who painted it.”
“That’s irrelevant. You paid for it or it’s commissioned to you to sell at a specific price. How much?”
“It’s very expensive.” She shifted nervously, her earlier excitement replaced with unease. “That’s why it’s been here for almost a year. The owner was adamant not to sell it for a penny less than… than thirty million dollars.”
Crone wasn’t surprised. His landscapes had once commanded astronomical sums…
and were the reason he could go off grid and live off the land.
But this... this wasn’t art. This was his soul laid bare and his darkness given form.
His hands curled into fists at his sides.
Who the fuck would pay that much money without feeling what he did while painting it? “The owner being?”
“I’m afraid that information is confidential.”
“I bet, especially since it’s stolen.” Ice crept into his voice as his eyes narrowed.
The painting had never left the workshop loft of his winery in Santa Monica, or at least, it shouldn’t have.
Since the farm was still his and a working winery, it was supposed to be there.
He could remember the day he’d covered it and turned his back on it, unable to face the demons he had trapped within its frame.
“I… what do you mean?”
“I never sold that painting. It’s supposed to be in my workshop where I left it years ago.
” His smile was arctic and completely devoid of warmth.
“Have it wrapped up. I’ll cover your holding fee but I’m not paying for a stolen piece of art.
” He held her gaze stoically. “You’re welcome to direct the ‘owner’ to contact me for compensation… whoever it is.”
“But I… how do I know you didn’t…” Her voice trailed off as his expression darkened.
“You know who I am?”
“Yes, but I also know you disappeared seven years ago. How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
With deliberate slowness, Crone retrieved his wallet and extracted a business card.
The irony of still carrying them wasn’t lost on him.
“This has my contact details. I have a suspicion who the person claiming to be the ‘owner’ of my painting is. They can get hold of me on that number.” He walked to the door.
“This painting has never been for sale. It never will be.” He pushed open the door.
“I’m bringing my truck to the back. Have it wrapped and ready. ”
The finality in his tone left no room for argument. As he stepped outside, he could still feel the painting calling to him… a piece of his soul trying to find its way home.