Chapter 2

The decision to fight back settled in my bones, solid and heavy. The first step was to detach, to cut the emotional cords that still tied me to the family I thought I knew. I went back to my apartment and started to clean. It was a methodical, cleansing act. I took down the old family photos from my bookshelf, the ones with a smiling Olivia and a stiff, awkward me standing beside our beaming parents. I packed them away in a box and shoved it into the back of my closet.

Then I turned to my art. I pulled out the canvases stacked against the wall, one by one. These were my more recent pieces, angrier and more chaotic than my earlier work. I saw years of pain and confusion in the violent slashes of color and jagged lines. But now, looking at them through the lens of Mr. Sterling's revelation, I saw something else. I saw the truth I had been trying to express all along, a truth even I didn't fully understand until now. These weren't just paintings, they were my history. They were the one thing that had always been truly mine, and I would not let Olivia steal that from me.

I was carefully wrapping a small, dark canvas when my phone buzzed. A text from Olivia.

`Heard you're still playing the starving artist. So sad. Let me know if you need a little cash to tide you over. The estate is doing very well.`

I stared at the message, the words dripping with false pity and smug superiority. It was a power play, a way to remind me of her position and mine. Before, a message like this would have sent me into a spiral of shame and anger. Now, it just fueled the cold fire in my gut. She was underestimating me. Good.

I didn't reply. I just put the phone down and continued my work. Let her think I was weak. Let her think I was broken. Her arrogance would be her downfall.

Two days later, a courier delivered a thick envelope to my apartment. Inside was a check for five thousand dollars and a short, typed note from David.

`Sarah, Olivia is worried about you. We thought this might help with your expenses. Please don't feel you need to pay it back. Consider it a gift from the family.`

A gift. It was an insult wrapped in a thin veneer of generosity. It was hush money. They wanted to buy my silence, to soothe their own tiny, buried consciences with a financial transaction. They thought my pain could be quantified and paid off, that my artistic legacy had a price tag of five thousand dollars. It was so laughably, pathetically wrong. They had no idea what this was about. It was never about the money. It was about the name signed at the bottom of the canvas.

I took the check and pinned it to the wall above my desk. It would be a reminder. A reminder of what they thought of me, and a reminder of everything I was fighting for.

That evening, I met Mr. Sterling at a quiet coffee shop. I told him about my mother's call, the text from Olivia, the check from David. He listened patiently, his brow furrowed in concentration.

"They're trying to manage you," he said when I finished. "They see you as a loose end, a potential problem to be neutralized with a small amount of cash."

"It's not going to work," I said.

"I know," he replied, a small smile touching his lips. "So, what's our next move?"

"We need proof," I said, leaning forward. "We need to find the 'A. North' collection. If they have those paintings, if they're planning on including them in that auction, we need to know."

"Finding them could be difficult," Mr. Sterling mused. "After your father passed, Olivia and David took control of everything. His properties, his storage units..."

"He had a private storage facility he used for his most valuable pieces, didn't he? A place downtown."

Mr. Sterling's eyes lit up. "Yes. Climate-controlled, high-security. He kept his Monets there. If he was serious about your collection, that's where he would have kept it."

A new sense of hope, fragile but real, began to dawn. It was a long shot, but it was a start. A path was beginning to form through the fog of betrayal. For the first time in months, I felt a sense of purpose that had nothing to do with grief or anger, but with action.

As I was getting ready to leave, my phone buzzed again. This time it was an alert from a news app. An art blog had just posted an exclusive interview with Olivia. The headline read: `Olivia Pearce to Honor Father's Legacy with Landmark Auction of Newly Discovered Masterpieces.`

The article was full of fawning praise for Olivia, the brilliant artist and devoted daughter, now taking up her father's mantle as a major force in the art world. It mentioned the upcoming auction at a prestigious house, an event that was already being called the highlight of the season.

Then I saw the photo accompanying the article. It was Olivia, standing in a brightly lit, climate-controlled storage unit. She was smiling, one hand resting possessively on a large, bubble-wrapped canvas. And behind her, stacked against the wall, I saw it. A flash of familiar deep blue and violent orange. It was a corner of a painting I had done in college, one of the five sold to 'A. North.'

She was in his private storage. She had my paintings.

I showed the phone to Mr. Sterling. He looked at the photo, his face grim.

"She's not just honoring his legacy," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. "She's stealing mine."

He looked up from the phone and met my gaze. The wise, empathetic mentor was gone, replaced by a determined ally.

"Then we have to steal it back," he said.