Playing the Billionaire's Game

Sebastian knew what she wanted, knew that they would work their way around to this question at some point. It almost felt like a relief to finally address it.

‘The first time I met Durrántez was in his studio. My mother had taken me. She’d just found out she was pregnant and, it’s trite but true, she had this glow about her. Everything felt—’ he shrugged ‘—bigger. Not physically, but her emotions. Her love. It was as if they had grown to encompass Maria before she was even there. And for those few months of her pregnancy I relished in it, rejoiced even.

‘Durrántez was in his seventies when he painted Woman in Love. He had this full head of thick white hair,’ he said, gesturing in the air with his hand as if frothing the man’s hair in his imagination. ‘Thick black-rimmed glasses and a blue paint-covered shirt. Half of his studio was a mess and the other half was almost military in its precision.’

‘My father was the same,’ Sia said, smiling as if she could imagine what he was remembering. ‘He said it was the order that made the creativity possible.’

Sebastian nodded, thinking that it seemed to fit with Etienne’s slightly erratic but always passionate persona.

‘Even Durrántez seemed to have fallen under her spell. They would talk for hours about artists, arguing over who was the greater in each decade, first by painter and then by painting.’ The memory of their voices, heated with passion and then deflated by laughter, rose up over the gentle cooing of Caribbean birds and he was back in Spain. ‘I could see it, you know? In the way that he looked at her. It was the way anyone who loved her looked at her. As if my mother were not only the centre of the room but of the universe. She had a laugh that would attract attention and a way about her that would make her as amiable to prince or pauper.’

‘It sounds quite a bit like you,’ Sia observed, her eyes shining in the darkness.

Sebastian shrugged it off, half wanting to share something, anything, with his mother and half wanting to remember that ability as uniquely hers.

‘I was ten at the time and it was during the summer holidays. I had brought a book, expecting it to be boring and dull, but I couldn’t help but watch every minute of it. And now I’m glad of it. My mother sat for Durrántez for a total of seventeen hours and for every minute of it, like Durrántez, I traced the line of my mother’s smile, the curve of her cheek, the warm blush of happiness and I assessed the colour of her eyes. I’ll never forget my mother’s face, even if my sister wasn’t the spitting image of her.’

Goosebumps rose over Sia’s skin as she realised what Sebastian was saying and she felt tears press at the corners of her eyes.

‘The painting was completed after her death. In the sittings she’d been wearing a white dress. But in the finished painting Durrántez changed it to black. A mark of respect, a mark of loss—his, ours, I’ll never know, but it was a mark nonetheless. It was the last painting that Durrántez ever painted.’

For nearly twenty years no one had identified the model for Woman in Love and, for some reason, Sia found herself wanting desperately to keep that secret. A sense of loss, greater than she’d ever personally experienced, rose up within her chest as she realised that his mother must have died giving birth to his sister, perhaps only weeks or less after she had sat for the painting. Loss of a mother, of a muse for a painter, of a powerful presence who’d debated great artists, the loss of a future that Sebastian had clearly wanted, because of his father’s own stupidity.

‘How did the Sheikh end up with the...?’ She didn’t need to finish the question. She began to see how the threads came together as if she had just unravelled a knot she’d been struggling with for days. ‘The Sheikh was the business partner who convinced your father to invest his money and the money of others. Oh,’ she said, the shock finally settling—the moment she realised that his father had used the portrait of his mother as financial collateral. The sense of betrayal Sebastian must have felt causing her to shake her head as if trying to deny such a thing.

‘And Abrani never let you buy it? Even though he must have known how important that was to you?’ Sia was no longer seeing the beauty of the sunset, the way the rich forest-green palms swayed in the breeze. She was forging pathways in her mind, making connections...

‘So you got the painting back. But it wouldn’t have been enough to steal the painting, would it? Because, although you wanted the painting, it wasn’t really about that. It was about publicly shaming the Sheikh. Or perhaps giving him the choice?

‘He could always have insisted that the painting was authentic, but he’d end up facing an investigation that could reveal his own duplicity in the oil deal ten years ago. Or he could accept the public shame for trying to sell a fake.

‘But, in order to achieve any of this, the painting had to be seen as a fake. Otherwise, it would never have come back on the Sheikh.’

And it would have the double impact of punishing Bonnaire’s for getting involved in backdoor auctions and dodgy dealings, Sia realised, her head spinning. Now that she could see the pieces, how they fitted together, emotions began to pour through the cracks. Her heart ached for the young boy who had first lost his mother and then later lost his home, his future. She could see the sacrifices Sebastian had made for his family and understood his penchant for indulgence now. She could taste a desire for revenge on her own tongue.

But what that meant for her, for what she was trying to do here... Her head began to spin.

‘It is an interesting hypothesis,’ he said, watching her very closely. And she knew why. She could feel it just as much as him. The turning point. The moment that would define their future. ‘It is a shame that you’ve used up your questions for today and therefore I can’t confirm or deny.’

His gaze locked on hers, as if both questioning and insisting. Sia nodded slowly.

She could walk away now. She might not have proof, she might not have even seen the painting, but she’d been wrong when she’d told him in Victoriana that she didn’t care why he’d stolen the painting. Because suddenly the why had become the most important thing about this whole mess. Neither Bonnaire’s nor Abrani deserved to have the real painting returned, so the only person to lose out would be her.

Or she could take Sebastian up on his offer. Remain in the game for at least another twenty-four hours, this strange bubble of hypotheticals that felt incredibly far removed from real life—real life with a horrible job she might no longer have, living in a miserable flat she’d never liked, hiding from a passion she had refused to acknowledge and a desire to do something...more than valuing paintings for other people.

She turned to Sebastian, away from the questions, away from the world outside. She wanted to feel his touch, feel the truth of it, because it was so much easier than working out the lies that had been told to her and that she had told to herself.

‘Take me to bed?’ she asked.

‘Your wish is my command,’ he said, taking her hand and kissing her palm. ‘For as long as you will it.’

CHAPTER NINE

INTERVIEWER ONE: Okay...so snorkelling—tick—sunbathing—tick—swimming—tick. Gorgeous food, stunning sunsets and walks on the beach—we get it. But we know you didn’t stay in the Caribbean for the whole time.

MS KEATING: Really?

INTERVIEWER TWO: We are investigators.