Page 73 of Untamed Beast
NO.
A chill runs through my veins.
“My father told them to be there?”
Leks nods, clenching his jaw together, his eyes carefully searching my face for a reaction.
I don’t have one.
My father told my brothers to get on a ship that he knew he was about to blow up.
I don’t want to believe it.
There are some pieces of information that knock your world off its axis, far too huge for your mind to comprehend in the moment. This is one of them.
I feel like a zombie as I get up and walk to the room full of art supplies. I don’t even change out of my expensive jumpsuit. I just throw paint at the canvas until I’m exhausted. Itdoesn’t look like anything, and something about that is reassuring.
Even that can’t stop the thoughts from racing through my head.
My father was the reason my brothers died. He may have even killed them intentionally.
Leks was sent to Siberia for ten years because of it.
And like an idiot, I’ve been helping him get information about what Leks is doing. I’ve been spying on Leks. And all this time, he has been willing to tell me the truth.
He’s been holding back for me. Because he didn’t want to destroy my relationship with my family.
“The paintings. I need to see them for myself,” I tell Leks.
He’s leaning in the doorway, watching me with a strange light in his eyes. Something like relief.
“You sure you don’t want to sleep?”
I look at him like he’s crazy. He’s just turned my world upside down and he thinks I should sleep?
Sleep is the least important thing in the world right now.
I need to see the confirmation with my own eyes that there was a reason for my father to do this.
That his empire is built on fraud.
From the outside, the vault looks like just another shipping container.
Until you get to the first door of thick metal and notice the faint whir of the temperature and humidity control unit.
Leks keys in the code and my stomach drops as the light flicks to a blinking green.
The heavy door opens with a thunk. I step into the temperature-controlled space with a shiver.
Leks sticks close by my side the entire time as I walk through the rows, pulling out the sliding panels to look at the paintings that my father has stored here.
Even at a glance, I can tell that they’re wrong.
There’s something uncanny about it. These paintings are as familiar to me as the feel of Dasha’s fur or the pattern of my favorite nightdress.
I stare at each one for a few minutes, running over the details. Textures which catch the light wrong. Signatures that look too fresh. Brush-strokes that don’t match the rest. I get so lost in the details that I barely remember where I am.
Exactly half of the paintings in this vault are authentic. The others are replicas of the paintings Papa brings home.
