Before the silence took over, before the penthouse felt lifeless and untouched, there was a girl who painted.
Charlotte, before she became Mrs. Sterling, was an artist. She spoke through color. Her emotions moved from her hands, through the brush, and onto the canvas. In the early days of her marriage, she tried to share this part of herself with Lucas.
She turned one of the penthouse's spare rooms into a studio, choosing the north-facing windows for their steady, cool light.
The smell of turpentine and linseed oil lingered there, a quiet contrast to the clean, empty air that filled the rest of the home.
Her art was vivid and emotional, full of movement and life and everything Lucas had learned to control and push aside.
He viewed her painting as a "hobby," something he observed with distant interest, like a problem he didn't need to solve. He didn't understand it.
Art had no measurable outcome, no clear value. It didn't grow a company or secure influence. In his father's language, it was unproductive.
And yet, at times, he would stop at the doorway of her studio. He never went inside. He never spoke.
He simply watched her as she worked , she tend to be lost in focus, moving with a confidence and ease that didn't exist in his world of schedules and contracts.
Something about it held his attention. A part of him, buried and unnamed, noticed what he refused to acknowledge.
After the failed therapy session, Charlotte withdrew completely. She stopped trying to reach him. She no longer cooked for him, no longer suggested plans, no longer looked at him across the dinner table. The light in her eyes, which had dimmed slowly over time, was nearly gone.
Her studio became her only refuge.
But her art changed.
The bright colors disappeared. In their place came gray, deep blue, and heavy shadows. She painted figures behind glass, mouths open but silent.
Empty rooms. A single chair sitting alone in the dark. Each canvas reflected what she is present, but unseen.
Her paintings were no longer expressions of joy. They were records of her disappearance.
One evening, Lucas came home to an unfamiliar stillness. The faint smell of paint was gone. As he passed her studio, he noticed the door was closed. It usually wasn't.
Something about it unsettled him.
He opened the door and turned on the light.
The room was spotless. Too clean.
The easels were folded and stacked. The brushes washed and put away. Every canvas had been turned toward the wall, their images hidden.
In the center of the room, on the floor, was a single small canvas covered with a white cloth.
He stepped closer and lifted it.
The painting showed a woman fading into a flat gray background.
Her features were unclear, as if she were disappearing. In the center of her chest was a dark, empty space where her heart should have been.
She was invisible.
It was a self-portrait.
It was raw, direct, and devastating. A farewell written in paint.
Lucas stood there for a long time. For once, her pain was not something distant or theoretical. It was real. It existed in front of him, undeniable.
Something tight stirred in his chest it is unfamiliar, uncomfortable.
He pushed it down immediately.
He covered the painting, turned off the light, and closed the door. He told himself it was another dramatic gesture, another emotional display he didn't have time to deal with.
But the image stayed with him.
He had ignored her words. He had dismissed her presence. Yet her art, her final, silent message had slipped past his defenses.
He didn't realize it yet, but the silence he had built so carefully had begun to crack.