Beneath His Billion-Dollar Shadow

Eliana didn't tell Jasmine she'd signed the contract, not at first. It wasn't about secrecy, it was about… holding the moment, keeping it hers like a flame cupped between hands.

Instead, she spent the next morning rearranging the studio again—partially because she needed the space to breathe and partially because she couldn't sit still. She dusted the shelves, moved her tools, cleaned out her entire supply closet. Jasmine texted twice from the clinic waiting room to ask if she was nesting like a bird.

"Eli, are you okay or are you spiraling in neatness?" the last message read.

She sent back a picture of her mess of paint-stained jeans and added, "Define spiraling."

By noon, she still hadn't picked up a brush, that changed when the bell over the studio door jingled.

She wasn't expecting anyone—not today, not until Monday, when Dominic's message had said someone would retrieve any completed work.

She stepped out from behind the divider wall, wiping her hands on a cloth, prepared to tell off a delivery person or wave away someone who'd wandered in off the street.

But it wasn't a stranger. A man with a disarming smile, hair mussed like he'd run a hand through it a dozen times on the walk over, and a leather messenger bag slung over one shoulder. He looked like he belonged in a rom-com scene, sipping coffee while staring out a rainy window.

He waved casually. "Eliana Brooks?"

She hesitated. "Yes?"

"I'm Noah. Dominic's… well, that's complicated. Let's go with business partner-slash-debtor-of-favors."

Eliana blinked. "He sent you?"

"Yes, to check in and also to bring you this." He held up a slim portfolio and wiggled it like a magician's trick. "Guidelines not demands, don't worry."

He stepped inside, glancing around the studio like he was cataloging details. His gaze landed on the canvas in the corner—the unfinished portrait of the shadowed man and lingered just long enough to make her uncomfortable.

"You paint like someone watching the world through a window," he said.

She frowned. "Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

He grinned. "Only the good kind. May I?"

He gestured to a stool and she nodded stiffly, still trying to figure him out. Noah moved like he'd been in a hundred rooms like this but he didn't carry Dominic's quiet intensity. He was sunlight where Dominic was smoke.

He dropped the portfolio gently on her worktable and unzipped it. "You're not locked into themes but Dominic asked me to pass along some background—colors, textures, emotional tone. He wants this collection to feel… cohesive and personal."

"Whose personal?" she asked.

"Yours, he said, and I quote, 'Don't steer her, just give her wind.'"

Eliana tilted her head. "He said that?"

Noah smirked. "I know, I even mocked him for it for a solid hour."

She opened the folder, inside were a few reference photos—city streets at dusk, hands reaching out of subway doors, a woman dancing barefoot in a field—and a handwritten note in Dominic's minimalist script:

Let the world blur. 

But don't let it silence you.

She set the folder down and exhaled.

Noah watched her for a moment, then said quietly, "It's weird, right? When someone doesn't ask for anything in return."

"It feels like bait," she admitted.

He nodded. "You're not wrong to be cautious but he's not fishing for control. He's just… invested, he doesn't say it, but he believes in work that wrecks him a little."

Eliana looked at him sharply. "And you?"

"I believe in people who don't quit especially when they probably should've."

They lapsed into silence.

Then Noah added, almost as an afterthought, "He hasn't talked about anyone like this since Sofia."

Eliana bristled. "Sofia?"

Noah winced. "Sorry, not my place forget I said anything."But the name hung in the air like a fog.

He stood and slung the bag back over his shoulder. "I'll be back on Monday, unless you throw paint at me."

"I'll think about it," she said dryly.

He grinned again, more gently this time. "It's a good thing, you know, letting people in doesn't always work but sometimes it does."

Eliana didn't respond. She watched him leave, the door clicking softly behind him.

Back at the apartment, Jasmine was curled up on the couch with a heating pad and a pint of pistachio ice cream.

"You look like you just met a man who knows where all your secret buttons are," she said as Eliana walked in.

"More like a man who speaks in fortune cookies."

"Elowen Street again?"

"No, this one's new. His name is Noah, he works with Dominic."

Jasmine perked. "Is he hot?"

Eliana rolled her eyes. "He's chaos, verbal chaos."

"Which means he's hot."

They laughed, the sound was light, unburdened. Eliana hadn't realized how tight her shoulders had been until they loosened.

She dropped onto the armchair and closed her eyes.

"You okay?" Jasmine asked.

"I think I am."

"Good because I have something else to tell you."

Eliana opened one eye. "What now?"

"I applied."

"For what?"

"The online classes have submitted the application, I apply for financial aid and everything."

Eliana sat up. "Seriously?"

Jasmine nodded, a little shy now. "You said we'd figure it out, so I figured I should do my part too."

Eliana blinked quickly. "You're a menace."

"I learned from the best."

They grinned at each other and for the first time in a long time, the silence between them wasn't heavy. It was full of beginning.

That weekend passed in a blur.

Eliana painted, she sketched, she deleted half the work and repainted it. She tore one canvas completely in frustration, only to stitch it back together because something about the cracks in the threads felt too symbolic to waste.

She didn't talk to Dominic and didn't text Noah either, but she saw both of them in her work.

In a blue skyline behind a faceless woman, in a pair of boots left under a leaking streetlamp and in the quiet tension in a set of shoulders that looked a little too much like her own.

On Sunday, Jasmine's fever spiked, nothing alarming—but enough to anchor Eliana back to reality. She skipped painting, made tea, and watched old cooking shows with Jasmine all evening.

By Monday morning, the painting was done.

Her first official piece for the collection, it wasn't perfect but it was honest.

She stood staring at it as the studio door opened.

Noah entered again, this time in a worn leather jacket and holding two coffees.

"Eliana," he said, tipping an imaginary hat. "Deliveries and existential support, all in one."

He paused when he saw the painting.

"Damn," he muttered. "That's…"He didn't finish the sentence, he didn't need to.

Eliana stood beside him, arms crossed over her chest, watching his face instead of the painting. She'd stopped trying to predict people's reactions a long time ago but something about Noah's quiet… it wasn't empty, it was full like he was holding something in.

"What?" she asked, voice lower than she meant it to be.

He finally turned to her. "It's haunted in a good way though like it knows more than it's telling."

"That wasn't the plan," she said, blinking at the canvas.

"But it's what came out," Noah added.

She gave a slow nod. "I guess it was already in there just needed a way out."

He took a step closer to the painting, studied the brushwork, the texture, the broken-light glow in the subject's face.

"Is this… someone you know?" he asked.

"No, but maybe she's someone I used to be."

Noah glanced at her, and for a second, he looked like he understood too well. He handed her the coffee. "Then she's beautiful."

Eliana took it without answering, fingers brushing his by accident. The warmth of the cup didn't do much for the sudden chill up her spine not bad just unexpected.

"Dominic's going to lose his mind over this," he said, stepping back. "And I say that as someone who's watched him negotiate deals with oil tycoons and not blink."

"I didn't do it for that reaction," Eliana replied.

"I know. That's why he'll care even more."

She sat on the stool near the window and sipped her drink. The coffee was exactly the way she liked it—just enough sweetness, not too bitter. She didn't remember ever telling Dominic or Noah her preference.

Noah caught her glance at the cup. "Lucky guess." she didn't believe him but she didn't push it.

A few beats of silence passed before Noah leaned against the wall, arms crossed casually.

"So," he said. "You signed."

She nodded.

"And?"

"And nothing. It's still weird."

"That he wants to give you something without a catch?"

"That, and the fact that I don't know him at all."

"You don't have to know someone to feel something from them."

She looked over her cup. "That's the kind of thing people say right before they get their hearts broken."

"Or the kind of thing they say right before something actually begins."

Noah had a way of delivering lines like he didn't mean them to sound deep, but they always stuck and he hated that they stuck.

Later that day, after Noah left with the painting carefully packaged in his car and the scent of his cologne still faint in the doorway, Eliana sat in the quiet.

Jasmine was out. A volunteer driver had taken her to the youth writing workshop at the community center. She'd been nervous about going, afraid she wouldn't fit in, afraid she wouldn't be able to keep up, but Eliana had insisted.

"You're not a story waiting to happen," she'd said that morning, fixing Jasmine's frizzy ponytail. "You are the story so go write it."

Now, the silence of the apartment felt too wide.

Eliana paced the living room, arms folded tight, she didn't like this feeling—this not-quite-peace. The stillness before something shifted. It felt like the moment before a wave hit, and she wasn't sure if she was on the shore or already underwater.

She tried painting again but gave up halfway through a sketch. Her hands weren't cooperating. Her head was somewhere else.

Jasmine returned twenty minutes later, chattering about a boy at the workshop who wore mismatched socks and wrote poems about grief that made her cry. Eliana didn't mention the visit not yet. She needed time to unpack it first.

She woke before dawn, tangled in her sheets, the apartment silent except for the hum of the fridge and Jasmine's soft breathing in the next room.

She sat on the edge of her bed, heart still racing from a dream she couldn't fully remember. Then she stood, walked to her window.

Outside, the city blinked—sleepy, indifferent, infinite.

She pressed a hand against the glass, she was in it now.

Whatever "it" was.

And there was no going back.