Her phone rang from the pocket of her hoodie, and she yanked it out. It wasn’t a number she recognized, but the area code was Chicago.

Without an explanation, she bolted from the room.

“Hello?” she breathed, hurrying into the kitchen.

“You want to explain to me why my top client isn’t returning any of my calls?” Rajesh Thakur, her annoyingly needy agent demanded.

Remi’s shoulders sagged, and the hope that had built inside her deflated like a punctured bounce house.

“Why are you calling me from some random number?”

“Bigger question. Why is Alessandra Ballard answering some random number instead of the last eleven calls from her agent?”

“Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want to talk to you?” she hissed, peering over her shoulder to make sure she was still alone.

“Bro, did it occur to you that I don’t care?” Raj, as he was known in the art crowd, was immune to digs and insults. He dressed like a mob boss, spoke like a recently graduated fraternity brother, and demanded VIP service everywhere he went. As long as he was negotiating his clients’ fat commissions, he didn’t care what anyone had to say about him.

Brick appeared in the doorway and strolled over to the refrigerator. He leaned against it, arms crossed, and watched her, openly eavesdropping. She would have stepped outside, but it was fucking dark out there.

“What do you want?” she asked Raj.

“To tell you to snap out of this little meltdown funk and get your ass back here. We should be plastering your face all over the blogs.”

“I’ve seen what they’re writing. There will be no face plastering,” Remi said, glaring at Brick.

He raised an inquisitive eyebrow. She returned it with a middle finger.

“Negative attention is still attention,” Raj insisted in her ear. “And in this case, it’s paying off big. Ask me how.”

She blew out a breath through gritted teeth. “You’re the worst. How?”

“First, tell me I’m the world’s greatest agent, and you want to up my commission to twenty percent.”

“No.” As a baby, untested artist, she’d surprised Raj by battling him down from his standard twenty percent to a more palatable fifteen. He secretly respected her for it.

“Your motherfucking genius agent just sold Once Upon a Dream.”

Remi spun away from Brick’s weighted stare. “Wait. What? That wasn’t even in a gallery yet.”

The piece was huge and complex. Her best yet. It was a wild fever dream of color. It came to being after she’d asked a DJ friend to mix two of her favorite songs together. She’d finished it just before the show at the gallery. Just before the night that had changed everything.

“No gallery, no gallery commission,” Raj crowed.

“Raj, that painting was in my apartment.” Her apartment was a minimalist, white loft with high ceilings, tall windows, exposed ducting, and wood floors. While it was exactly the kind of place Alessandra Ballard would have been expected to have, it hadn’t ever truly felt like home to Remi.