Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Gabriel stood in the dark, staring at the empty wall where Caged used to hang as the focal point of this room in their gallery.
The painting was in his apartment now, locked with him beneath the ground where he could look at it whenever he wanted, torturing himself in private as he longed for a past he could never reclaim.
That’s where he should be now, too. In that utilitarian room, his laptop open as he planned and strategized, and waged his private war. After all, he had an empire to dismantle. A woman to destroy. He should be sharpening the knife he’d spent five years forging.
Instead, he was standing in the dark, trying to call up the scent of her perfume, and losing his goddamn mind.
She’d touched his face.
Soft and gentle, her eyes both sad and hopeful.
He’d meant to punish her with that kiss. Meant to prove she was weak, that her body would always betray her. But then her fingers had brushed his jaw, and something in her expression had flickered. Grief, maybe. Or loss.
Like she was looking for someone who wasn’t there anymore.
With a sigh, he crossed the gallery space and pressed his palm against the empty wall. The plaster was cold. Caged.
He’d painted it in three days, almost seven years ago, barely sleeping, barely eating. Just him and the canvas and the desperate need to get her out of his head and on to something he could touch.
That was what painting had always been for him—an outlet. A way to bleed without making anyone else bleed.
His father had seen the darkness in him early.
Had cultivated it, even. Gabe was the oldest son, the heir, the one who would carry the Grimm name into the next generation.
Elias had taught him to be hard. To be feared.
To walk into a room and know that every person in it would bend to his will or break against it.
And Gabriel had liked it. God help him, he’d actually liked it. The power. The control. The knowledge that he would always come out on top.
But the darkness had a cost. It built up inside him, and if he didn’t find a way to release it carefully, it found its own release. He’d learned that lesson early on—learned it in bloody knuckles and broken furniture and the fear of everyone around him.
Then he’d found art, and it was an epiphany. A way to pour all that rage and hunger and desperate wanting into something that couldn’t bleed back.
He’d never told his family, but Izzy had understood. How could she not, when it was only Izzy and his art that kept the beast at bay?
Now, though, she was gone, and art was his only way of caging the beast.
He drew in a breath, shoving the thoughts aside as he recalled the hours spent painting Caged. The way he’d rendered the woman he loved in pigment and longing.
In the painting, she was reaching. Always reaching. Fingers stretched toward light that was just out of grasp, her face caught between hope and despair.
He’d painted her eyes last. Had spent six hours on them alone, mixing colors until he got the exact shade of her mismatched irises. That celestial blue. That verdant green. The colors that still haunted his dreams.
The eyes he’d seen behind the muzzle of a gun.
With a shudder, he forced the vile memory away. This was about the magic times. The fake times.
The times when she had fooled him. Like the way she’d cried when she first saw the painting.
“Is that how you see me?” she’d whispered. “Trapped?”
“Reaching,” he’d said. “I see you reaching.”
She’d kissed him then. Soft and slow and full of something that felt like promise. That was it, he’d thought. That was the life I was supposed to have.
He’d taken it from her, and now he didn’t know why he’d come here except that he’d lost the battle to stay away. Now the wall was empty, and his heart was emptier.
He walked through the rest of the gallery slowly. The lighting was dim, but he didn’t need light. He knew every piece by heart. Knew the nights he’d painted them, the music he’d been listening to as he focused only on canvas and color, the coffee growing cold on his worktable.
He knew the story behind each canvas. Which came from joy, which from pain, which from fury.
Most of all, he knew which came from the desperate, aching need to be seen by someone who understood.
Izzy had understood.
That was the worst part. The part he couldn’t forgive—not her, not himself.
She’d seen him. Really seen him. Not just the artist, but the monster underneath.
The darkness he’d learned to leash but had never managed to kill.
She’d looked at all of it—the rage, the hunger, the thing inside him that wanted to own and possess and destroy—and she hadn’t run.
She’d loved him anyway.
Or so he’d thought.
He stopped in front of Fractured Light.
Three in the morning. Paint on his fingers. His throat clogged with emotion. Izzy asleep in his bed, her body curled against his pillow.
He’d felt something crack open that night. Something he’d kept locked down his whole life. And instead of terrifying him, it had felt like relief. Like maybe he didn’t have to be the hard, cold thing his father had made him. Like maybe there was another way.
What a fucking fool he’d been.
He wanted to rip the canvas off the wall. Wanted to put his fist through it, just like the brutal creature his brothers had always seen.
He wanted to destroy the evidence that he’d ever let himself be that vulnerable, that naive, that soft.
He didn’t touch it.
Instead, he stood there like a man visiting his own grave, and he let himself feel.
The longing. The loss. The terrible, treacherous wanting that years of hatred couldn’t burn out of him.
He still loved her.
That reality landed hard and cut deep. He just couldn’t fucking shake her off. He’d tried everything. Fought in underground rings until his knuckles were raw and his ribs were cracked—channeling the darkness the old way, the way he’d learned before the canvas.
He’d fucked women who meant nothing, hoping to burn her out of his system. Built an empire of underground clubs that spread across the whole damn country just to prove he didn’t need her.
None of it worked.
How could it when every time he closed his eyes, she was there? Laughing at something he’d said. Tracing the lines of his paintings with reverent fingers. Looking up at him with those eyes that made him believe he could be more than his father’s son.
And now she was here again. Real and breathing and close enough to touch.
And she swore she didn’t do it.
He both wanted and didn’t want to believe her. Hell, he couldn’t believe her. Belief was weakness. Trust, too. And both could get you killed. He’d learned that lesson from Elias Grimm, and it had been proved right in blood and fire. Never would he forget it.
And yet…
I loved you, you son-of-a-bitch. I still do.
The words echoed in his skull, burrowing under his skin like shrapnel he couldn’t dig out.
I mourned you. For five years, I mourned you.
He pressed his forehead against the wall, the cold, hard surface reminding him of what he’d become.
That was the joke, wasn’t it? He hadn’t become anything. He’d just gone back to what he’d always been. The hard, dangerous man his father had raised him to be. The one who took what he wanted and crushed anything that stood in his way.
Once upon a time, Izzy had made him believe he could be something else.
And yet there was Aspen. Where Isabella had reminded him, in the most brutal way, why softness was a luxury he couldn’t afford.
With a sigh, he let his gaze skim across the walls of the gallery.
This place remembered the lie. Remembered the artist who’d painted a piece like Caged. Who’d actually picked out flooring. Who’d argued about lighting angles. Who’d spent hours debating which pieces should go where.
He wanted to hate her for showing him that other self. For making him believe he could be gentle. Different.
Kind.
So, yes. He wanted to hate her.
But goddamn him all to hell—he couldn’t.
Because when he’d kissed her today—when he’d fisted his hand in her hair and crushed his mouth against hers—she’d kissed him back. Had pulled him closer instead of pushing away. Had made that sound in her throat, that soft, desperate moan that used to undo him.
And for one moment, one single, devastating moment, he’d forgotten why she was vile. Why she was the enemy.
Why he’d sought her out with vengeance on his mind.
That’s the reason he’d come to the gallery tonight. Not to remind himself of the vengeance he’d meant to wield. Not to stoke the flames of revenge.
No, he’d made this pilgrimage because he was losing the certainty that had kept him alive. Because now, when he looked at her, he no longer saw the monster. Now—again—he saw the woman.
And damn him all to hell—he still fucking loved her.
But he’d spent years becoming something cold and hard and merciless. The kind of man his father admired.
The man she’d once loved didn’t exist anymore, and maybe that was a good thing because that man had let down his guard and almost died from that mistake.
But this man—the Beast, the weapon, the thing his father had always meant him to be— this man had survived.
He needed to remember that.
At the door, Gabriel paused, then looked around. He should burn this place down. Should destroy every piece of evidence that he’d ever tried to be something other than what he was.
He wouldn’t, though.
Because even now, even after everything, some small and stubborn part of him couldn’t let go.
So instead, he locked the door behind him and walked away. Tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow, the hatred would come back. Tomorrow, he’d remember why she deserved to suffer.
But tonight…
Tonight, he let himself miss her.
Just for a moment.
Just until the sun came up and he had to be the beast again.