books44 Chapter 188: The Painting
Chapter 188: The Painting
Liam POV
"Fucking no way!" I gasped.
The chair behind me hit the floor with a loud crash, the sound echoing through the sudden silence of the ballroom. Several people turned to look at me, but I didn’t care. The entire room could have caught fire right then, and I wouldn’t have blinked. My eyes were glued to the canvas under the bright spotlight.
My breath caught in my throat, cutting off my air.
The painting was beautiful, but it wasn’t a fantasy scene. It was a memory. A very specific, private memory from our childhood that nobody else in the world could possibly know.
The canvas showed a massive, ancient oak tree under a bright blue sky. High up on one of the top branches, a little girl with long, wild chocolate hair was trapped. Her tiny hands gripped the bark, her face painted with a mix of fear and excitement, terrified to jump down.
And directly below her were three identical young boys.
My eyes watered as I stared at the details. One boy was already halfway up the trunk, his hands and knees scraped up as he climbed frantically to reach her. I choked back a breath. I knew that boy was me. I was always the one who couldn’t wait, the one who had to climb up to get her myself.
Beside the tree trunk, the second boy was standing with one hand stretched out high in the air, his expression calm and steady, gesturing for her to just take his hand so he could guide her down safely. That was Leo. Always the grounded one, trying to be reasonable.
And the third boy—Leonard—was standing right at the base, his arms thrown completely wide open, a bright, confident grin on his face. You could almost hear him yelling through the paint, daring her to just let go and jump, promising he would catch her no matter what.
It was the summer we turned ten. Scarlett had climbed too high trying to rescue a bird, and the three of us had nearly lost our minds trying to get her down. We had never told a soul about that day.
To anyone else in this room, it was just a sweet, nostalgic painting of children playing by a talented artist named ’Faceless.’
But to me? It was a lightning bolt straight to my soul. It wasn’t an abstract guess. The artist knew our faces. She knew our personalities. She knew our souls.
"Alpha Liam? Is everything alright?" the lead organizer asked, stepping toward me with a worried expression.
I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t move. My wolf, who had been sleeping for five years, suddenly slammed against the walls of my mind, howling so loudly it made my head spin.
She’s alive, my wolf roared, his voice filled with a manic, desperate energy. She’s alive, Liam! She painted this! Only she knows!
"Who is the artist?" I demanded, my voice dropping into a dark, terrifying growl that made the organizer instantly take three steps back, his face turning pale.
"I-I don’t know, sir!" he stammered, his hands shaking. "As the auctioneer said, she goes by ’Faceless.’ Everything was handled through her manager via email and private couriers. We’ve never seen her face."
I slammed my hands onto the table, cracking the polished wood under my palms. "Find out. Now."
"Alpha, the auction hasn’t even started for that piece—"
"I don’t give a damn about the auction!" I snarled, turning my gaze back to the painting. The detail was too perfect. It was her. Scarlett was out there. She was alive, and she was hiding behind the name Faceless.
I quickly made a mind link to my brothers.
"Leonard, Leo," I snapped the moment they connected, not giving them a chance to speak. "Drop whatever the hell you are doing and come to the city gallery ballroom right now."
"Liam, I just got back from a treaty meeting, I’m not in the mood—" Leo tried talking.
"Shut up and listen to me!" I hissed, my eyes burning as I stared at the painted memory of our childhood. "Scarlett is alive. And she just sent us a message."
"What the hell are you talking about, Liam?" Leonard’s voice slammed into my head through the mind link, sharp and vibrating with a mix of exhaustion and sudden shock. "Scarlett is gone. Don’t play these kinds of games with us."
"I am not playing games!" I roared back through the link, the sheer force of my mental voice making both of my brothers wince on the other end. "I am looking right at a piece of our past."
"Liam, calm down," Leo intervened, his voice trying to play the mediator as always, though I could hear his breath hitching. "You’re not making sense. Scarlett died five years ago."
I looked back at the canvas, staring into the painted eyes of the little girl stuck in the tree. I stared at the young version of Leonard with his arms wide open, and the young version of Leo offering a steady hand. The reality of it was burning through my veins like liquid fire. They hadn’t seen it yet. If they did, they would understand.
"You know what? Just shut up and wait for me at the pack house," I snapped, cutting them both off. "I am bringing her message to you. I’m coming home right now."
With a sharp flick of my wrist, I severed the mind link, shutting out their confused demands.
I blinked, suddenly remembering the grand ballroom around me. The silence in the room was absolute, heavy and suffocating. Hundreds of high-society wolves, powerful politicians, and wealthy pack members were all staring at me. Some looked terrified, their instincts telling them to cower under the suffocating pressure of my Alpha aura. Others just looked deeply confused, whispering behind their hands as they tried to figure out why the supreme Alpha of the pack had just cracked a mahogany table and started snarling at an empty space.
The auctioneer stood frozen on the stage, his microphone halfway to his mouth, completely unsure of how to proceed with a volatile Alpha standing at the front table.
I kicked my overturned chair out of the way, the heavy wood scraping loudly against the marble floor. I didn’t care about their whispers. I didn’t care about the scandal or what the gossip columns would say tomorrow morning. My only focus was the canvas under the spotlight.
"Start the bidding," I commanded, my voice echoing off the high ceilings like thunder.
The auctioneer swallowed hard, clearing his throat nervously as he tried to regain his professional footing. "A-ah, yes. Moving onto our special item, Safe Haven by the artist Faceless. We will open the bidding at five hundred thousand dollars..."
My eyes slowly dropped to the bottom right corner of the canvas where the title had been painted in elegant silver strokes.
Safe Haven.
My chest tightened so violently it hurt to breathe.
Scarlett used to call us that.
"You three are my safe haven."
Before he could even finish his sentence, before anyone else in the room could even think about raising a paddle, I stepped forward.
"Fifty million dollars," I stated flatly.
A collective, sharp gasp rippled through the entire ballroom. People literally choked on their wine. Fifty million dollars wasn’t just a high bid; it was an astronomical, absurd amount of money for a single painting by an unknown artist. It was a declaration of war. It was my way of telling every billionaire and Alpha in this room that if they even dared to raise a finger to bid against me, I would ruin them.
The auctioneer’s eyes went completely round, his jaw dropping so low it looked like it might unhinge. "Fifty... fifty million dollars from Alpha Liam. Do I hear fifty-one—"
"Don’t waste my time," I growled, fixing him with an icy glare. "Drop the gavel."
No one breathed. No one dared to make a sound. The silence was absolute as the auctioneer frantically brought the wooden gavel down against the podium with a loud crack.
"Sold! To Alpha Liam for fifty million dollars!"