The glowing screen of my phone mocked me. *Checkmate.*
I shoved the device into my pocket. My bleeding palm throbbed, but the physical sting was nothing compared to the noise echoing across the ballroom.
"Did you see the final bid at Sotheby's?" Marcus asked, his voice carrying over the string quartet.
Richard scoffed, adjusting his cuffs. "For Elowen's piece? I dropped out at twenty million."
"Thirty-five million," Eleanor Dupont added, stepping into our circle. "The Met scooped it up. And they were lucky to get it."
"Lucky?" I asked, my voice tight.
Eleanor looked at me like I was a slow child. "She won the Paris and Florence dual gold medals last month, Mr. Voss. She is the youngest artist in history to hold both simultaneously. I begged her agent for a private viewing of her upcoming collection."
"And?" I demanded.
"I was put on a waitlist," Eleanor laughed, a sharp, grating sound. "Behind the royal family of Monaco, two tech billionaires, and the Prime Minister of Italy. She is completely untouchable."
My jaw locked. Elowen? Untouchable? This was a woman who used to apologize for breathing too loudly in my office.
"I heard she's hosting a private exhibition in Milan next week," Richard muttered, staring toward the VIP gallery where Elowen had disappeared. "Only twenty invites globally. People are offering literal islands for a ticket."
The words battered against my skull. They were talking about my ex-wife. The quiet, timid girl I had kept locked away in a penthouse.
"It really is a tragedy, though," Eleanor sighed, swirling her champagne.
"What is?" Marcus asked.
"Her lost years," Eleanor said,
