CHAPTER 144 - THE APPROACH

CHAPTER 144 - THE APPROACH
Bella's POV

The gallery smelled like turpentine and cheap perfume and white wine. People moved like soft boats between the paintings, whispering small praises. I held my glass like a shield and pretended the chatter was music. I could feel my phone in my bag, printed page folded inside, Elena's handwriting heavy in my chest.

"Isabella."

The voice was a cut of silk. I turned. Victoria stood by a tall sculpture, all bone and silk and a coat draped just so. She had that look she used—equal parts sorrow and control. Up close her perfume hit like lemon peel.

"Victoria." I kept my voice steady. I tried to look surprised, casual. "What a surprise."

She smiled in a way that had been practiced a long time. "You look thinner in person." She tilted her head. "And busier. The museum sent a lovely invitation."

"I came for the exhibit," I said. I could feel my mouth dry. "I didn't expect to see you."

"Neither did I," she said. "But life is full of little accidents, isn't it?"

A woman with a camera drifted past and Victoria turned to her with a bat of lashes and some line about supporting local artists. She was good at being seen. I watched her hand as she tucked her clutch under her arm. I watched the way people gave her space like she carried a flame they didn't want to burn themselves on.

"So," she said, returning to me. "You are doing well at the Gilded Rose, yes?"

"Yes," I said. I kept my answer short. "It's been busy."

She laughed the kind of laugh that sounded like a small bell. "Alex's type," she said, in the same soft voice she used when signing checks. "Young, talented, malleable. His favorites seem to be very good at charity galas."

The words landed. They were not a question. They were a line thrown out with a hook.

"That's not fair," I said.

"Fairness is not my job," she said. "Observation is. History repeats, Bella. People keep choosing the same stories because the endings are convenient."

I heard a man nearby praise the light on a canvas. The sound should have been small, but it pushed against the sentence like a reason. "What do you mean, history repeats?"

She leaned in, as if to share a secret and as if the secret would make me smaller. "You can choose to be brave," she said. "Or you can choose to be useful. So many people are useful until they are not."

"That's cruel." My voice was sharper than I wanted. Heat crawled up my neck.

"Maybe." She shrugged. "But I have made a life of being practical. I do not linger on what I cannot change."

"I am not what you think," I said. It came out raw. "I am not a prize."

"No," she said, slow. "You are a person. But some people prefer the version of people that is...easier to hold."

Her eyes flicked to the doorway and back. The corner of her mouth had that small curl that suggested a plan. "When I think of Alex I think of someone who wants to fix things. He always wanted someone he could fix, didn't he? Someone who would let him."

"Leave him out of this," I said. I felt my hands clench around the stem of my glass.

She smiled, and it was almost gentle. "Oh, I'm not trying to hurt him. I am only noting patterns. You should be careful, Bella. People remember the past in curious ways. They expect it to return."

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

"Because I enjoy honesty," she said. "And because when history repeats, it helps to know where the loop begins." She tapped her cheek with a fingernail. "Also because—" She paused and the pause felt like a loaded hinge. "—closure is sometimes messy. Men like tidy closures. Women like tidy endings. But life prefers mess."

A server drifted by with a tray of canapés and Victoria took one with perfect poise. She chewed and watched me, studying, as if cataloguing a specimen. "Alex won't like the headlines, you know," she said conversationally. "Not that he reads them. But people will spin things into stories."

"Is that a threat?" I asked. The question came out small, clutching for balance.

"Not a threat," she said. "A suggestion. You are young. You can handle whispers. Some cannot."

I wanted to say so many things. I wanted to tell her to leave my family alone, to leave Alex alone, to stop fashioning people's lives into theatre for her amusement. Instead I kept my voice even. "Don't speak about my family like they're your playthings."

She stood and smoothed her coat as if smoothing a wrinkle in a photograph. "I am not a villain, Bella. I am a woman who knows what she wants."

"Then leave," I said. It was blunt. I felt heat in my ears.

She laughed, not unkind. "I will be around," she said. Her eyes flicked down to my bag where the red folder sat like a sleeping thing. "You will see me."

She turned to go and I watched the back of her like a poem I could not finish. As she passed through the crowd she brushed against a man near the doorway—a rail-thin figure in a dark coat. He nodded at her once. She nodded back like two people sharing an address.

I should have looked away. Instead I saw the man clutch something in his hand. A small folded paper. He slid it into his pocket as he left. The motion was quick and casual. A secret practiced so many times it looked like nothing at all.

My phone buzzed. A text. Unknown number. It read: "She is here."

My breath stopped and the gallery music blurred out. I folded my hands in my lap so they would not shake. Victoria's heels clicked away across the marble as if the world had not tilted. People applauded a speech for an artist and no one knew the room had narrowed.

"Are you all right?" a voice said. It was Alex's assistant, Sandra. She had appeared at my shoulder without me noticing.

"I will be," I said. I lied.

I watched the doorway where Victoria had disappeared and felt something behind my ribs like a small, steady drum. The gallery lights made everything bright and fragile. I kept replaying the nod and the folded paper in the man's hand.

My phone buzzed again. This time it was Alex. His name lit the screen like a beacon.

I stared at it and then at the doorway and then down at my lap where Elena's words rested inside my bag. The room hummed with applause and I understood, in a slow, sinking way, that this was not accidental at all.