Chapter 34. Doubt

It was the day after the launch. The great atrium lay emptied now, its celebratory buzz drained from the air. Overhead lights were pitched low, shadows pooling where people had laughed and congratulated one another. The space felt strangely still—like applause that had vanished before its echo could even bloom.

Alyssa stood alone in the glass‐walled gallery, barefoot on the cool marble floor whose veins of gray and white she could feel beneath her toes. Around her, silent canvases leaned against the walls, but her attention remained fixed on the single frame that hadn’t sold yet—the one that had made two patrons weep. Her fingertips drifted along its gilded edge, pausing where the wood met the glass. A delicate brush of sensation in an otherwise emptied hall.

She preferred it this way—in the aftermath, when the art was hers and hers alone, unspoiled by flattery or the bustle of small talk. Here, she was free of every social obligation or carefully managed performance. H