One Cool Voice Silenced the Room

Beneath the spotlight, Pearl’s face was perfect.

Not a flaw on her skin.

In her subconscious, I had seen what her face used to look like.

An enormous dark birthmark had covered almost all of it, stark and disfiguring.

No wonder Vivian had spent so much money on my skin.

She disliked me so intensely, yet from puberty onward she took me to beauty clinics and paid for expensive treatments.

She punished me. Whipped me. Pinched me.

But she never slapped my face.

Even then, she had been planning to give my skin to Pearl.

And if I thought further back, perhaps the plan had begun the moment they chose me at the orphanage.

My heart. My blood. My skin. My eyes.

Those were the things they had wanted.

My talent and my abilities were extras. Gifts they were happy to take along with the rest.

Animals in human skin.

They had consumed every part of me and left nothing.

I looked at the four radiant members of the Whitmore family. My anger rose until it became something else: despair and pain so deep it seemed to eat through me.

I was dead.

A useless ghost who knew the truth and could do nothing but watch them get away with it.

“Miss Whitmore, we understand you’ve been in poor health and receiving treatment overseas. Yet you’ve created all these extraordinary paintings while ill. Where did you study? Who taught you?”

Pearl smiled modestly.

“I taught myself. I suppose I have a little natural talent.”

She and Julian really were siblings.

Two shameless fucking liars.

“You’re too modest. This is far more than a little talent. An artist like you comes along once in a century.”

“You’re very kind.” Pearl smiled again. “All the works on display today will be auctioned. Everyone is welcome to bid. I’ll donate all the proceeds to charity.”

“Beautiful, rich, and kind. A real heiress.”

“They’re both Whitmores, but how could that money-obsessed Stella compare to her?”

“One’s the family’s real daughter. The other’s an unwanted bastard from an orphanage. There’s no comparison.”

She was wearing my skin.

Selling my paintings.

And she would walk away with the money and the admiration.

“I’m Pearl!” I shouted desperately. “She’s the fake. I painted these. They’re mine!”

Nobody could hear me.

I was dead. A helpless, wronged spirit, watching the work I had poured my heart into auctioned under someone else’s name.

The first painting offered was Moonlight.

My debut. The work that had won gold in my first international competition.

A night sky. A bright moon.

Beneath it, a boy, the breeze lifting his hair and the hem of his clothes. In one corner, a girl watched him with tenderness in her eyes.

Every brushstroke was gentle. Every feeling real.

The boy I had painted was Julian.

It was my silent confession of love.

Now, looking at it, I felt nothing but aching bitterness and the absurdity of it all.

“Two hundred and eighty thousand dollars!”

“Four hundred and twenty thousand!”

“Seven hundred thousand!”

Bids rang out around the room.

Until one cool, almost lazy voice rose above them all.

“Fourteen million.”

I turned.

Two lines of trained bodyguards in black filed inside, clearing a path through the crowd.

Lucian Blackwood strode toward Pearl.

His face was so striking that she could only stare at him, transfixed.

He narrowed his eyes and looked her over.

“So you’re Pearl. The celebrated oil painter.”

“Yes!” she answered immediately.

Then, realizing how eager she sounded, she bit her lip in a show of demure restraint.

Lucian lifted an eyebrow.

“Really? How do you prove it?”