Page 3 of Canvas of Lies (Spruce Hill #3)

Chapter Two

Nico

G umby shot me an accusatory look as I buckled in, but he said nothing.

His only role in this mess had been to drive—maybe I was paranoid, but I didn’t want to risk my car being spotted anywhere near Kat’s place of work.

I especially didn’t want anyone reporting to her father that they saw us chatting.

While I might not be big news in Spruce Hill myself, anything pertaining to Aidan Willoughby, including his beautiful, slightly eccentric daughter, would definitely make waves.

Now that she was safely ensconced in the back seat of the van, my tension should’ve lessened, but it raged inside me still.

I’d tried to sit back there with her, but she insisted she wanted room to put her feet up and that my “stupidly long legs” were in her way.

Sometime during the forty minutes it took to reach the cabin, she dozed off.

Anxiety churned in my gut at seeing her so still, especially after the tumble she’d taken, but she’d developed a vehement distaste for doctors when she was seven years old and bit through her bottom lip after falling off some monkey bars.

I couldn’t even count the number of times she’d hidden childhood injuries from both her father and mine.

Eventually, when I was old enough to recognize the severity and insist on telling an adult, she started hiding them from me, too.

Convincing her to do anything she didn’t want to do was virtually impossible. Hauling her ass to a doctor when she insisted she was fine? Not the hill I wanted to die on, not now.

Literally, maybe. I would put nothing past her when she was truly pissed.

“Your girlfriend doesn’t seem too happy to be here,” Gumby muttered.

“Not my girlfriend,” I reminded him, “and I think your van made a bad first impression.”

“Chicks dig the Gumby-mobile, my friend. The bad impression was all you. Are you sure this is the right move?”

“This is my only move.”

He snorted. “My plan was better and you know it. Besides, then you could’ve swept the lady off her feet in style, instead of creeping her out with my van.”

Gumby’s view of the law was a bit more flexible than most. When I told him about the painting Kat’s father had stolen from my family, Gumby offered to simply steal it back. Given that he had a criminal record and I couldn’t let my only friend go to prison because of me, I’d turned him down.

He still didn’t agree with my methods, but he’d let it slide—until now.

The artwork had hung in our little cottage on the Willoughby property for as long as I could remember. I grew up hearing stories about the woman depicted in it, Céleste Bicardeau, my father’s grandmother several generations over.

Céleste had been barely eighteen when Hugo Clément, a famous Impressionist who traveled in the same circles as Renoir and Monet, arrived in Avignon in the 1870s and asked her to pose for his work.

The man had given Céleste the finished product, Woman in Lavender, as a gift, a tribute to her beauty.

She was barely identifiable in the Impressionist oil painting—just the back of a lovely, lonely figure against the fields of lavender—but the family breathed the tale like oxygen, soaked up every textured brush stroke like part of our very bloodline.

All my life, my father told me the painting would be mine one day.

Only those close to our family knew of its emotional significance, but my father warned me time and again that the piece would be worth a great deal of money if anyone discovered the artist’s identity.

That kind of monetary value would glow like a beacon to those who wanted to profit from the art instead of appreciating it for its history .

It didn’t have Clément’s usual signature on it, but he’d scrawled a note of appreciation across the back of the canvas, invisible to anyone looking at the painting from the front.

That wasn’t the only thing hidden, though.

When I was in my final year of college, I’d come home after midnight once to find my father carefully smoothing his finger over the back of the frame.

“What are you doing?”

His expression shifted, though I couldn’t quite read it back then. “Listen to me, Nicolas. If anything ever happens to me, anything strange, you take this painting and disappear.”

“Disappear?”

“Leave Spruce Hill. Go back to France, if you like. Anywhere. Just take it and get far away from this place, from the Willoughby family.”

At first, all I could process was the painful thought of leaving Kat behind, but I’d already been doing that, ever since the day her father threatened to throw us out on the street if he caught me sniffing around her.

“What did you put in there?” I moved closer to the table and watched his finger moving over the wood grain.

“Right here,” he said, landing his fingertip on a spot near the bottom right corner. “There’s a micro SD card in here. Remove the painting and break the frame if you must, but all the information you need is there.”

“What information? What’s going on?”

He stayed silent for a moment, then stood, hung the painting back on the wall, and clapped his hands on my shoulders. “Leverage. Proof that things are not as they seem. You can use it to protect yourself.”

That had been the end of the discussion.

After my father’s death two years ago, I rushed home for the funeral, and in the painting’s place hung a different piece of artwork entirely.

With nothing more to lose once the risk to my father’s career was gone, I confronted Aidan Willoughby.

The man, as coldly calculating as ever, denied ever noticing the artwork.

I remember lunging at him, shouting a number of heated expletives, and then I was promptly dragged from the premises by Willoughby’s burly security guards.

The old, familiar fury burned in my gut. There was no certificate of authenticity, no insurance, not even a will describing the artwork and leaving it to me. There was some money set aside for me and for that I’d been immensely grateful, but it couldn’t make up for the loss of the painting.

The one tangible reminder that even with my father dead, I wasn’t alone, that I had roots, history—it was long gone, and so was whatever proof my father had hidden within.

I was no David, ready to take on a Goliath like Aidan Willoughby with all the resources the man had at his disposal.

Walking away empty-handed had been, without a doubt, the hardest thing I’d ever done.

Only the raw determination that I would someday best Willoughby at his own game had given me the strength to proceed.

With every passing day, the chances of him finding what was hidden inside the frame increased. My father was gone, but I had a feeling it would point a neon sign straight to me.

Whatever that leverage was, I needed it. Before he uncovered it.

“I wouldn’t get caught. Hell, your girlfriend would probably help us.”

With a sharp glare, I ignored the way calling Kat my girlfriend made me feel and said, “Neither one of you is setting foot on the property, Gumby. This is my problem and I’ll solve it without risking either of you.”

“I’m feeling a little slighted, Nico, that you think I’d get caught by some sleazy attorney.”

“He has security,” I reminded him. “And a reputation, which you know damn well.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Frightened witnesses, greased palms? That’s child’s play, my friend.”

“Two of his mistresses had husbands turn up dead, Gumby. Beat to shit, bodies left in the woods. He has ties to at least one major crime family in the city. Rivals gone missing, slam dunk cases falling apart in his favor. You’re not getting anywhere near him, and neither is Kat.”

After my dad died, I was certain Willoughby had me followed for weeks, waiting for me to make a move.

Even months later, there were times when I caught sight of someone tailing me out of the corner of my eye.

At first, I thought for sure he’d found the hidden evidence, but as time went on, I realized he must have just been covering his bases.

Still, it wasn’t child’s play, not even close—Aidan Willoughby was dangerous.

“Whatever you say, boss.”

Gumby had staunchly supported only the most direct route at retrieving the painting, fancying himself some kind of elite cat burglar.

When I told him it was out of the question, he’d devoted himself to becoming my sidekick.

There had been a dozen other plans, possibilities I’d investigated, researched, and ultimately discarded.

Then, as if by a stroke of pure luck, I was sitting in a cafe one morning six months ago and happened upon a headline describing the lost Hugo Clément painting discovered in the collection of none other than Aidan Willoughby.

The piece was worth somewhere in the realm of twelve million dollars, though the man in question had modestly protested, insisting he had no intention of selling a piece he’d so long admired for its beauty.

My first impulse was to throw my laptop across the cafe, my second to run to the bathroom and vomit up my breakfast, but those urges were followed swiftly by the tiniest seeds of a plan.

If Willoughby knew I was behind any of this, it would all be over before it started. I knew I’d have to tread very carefully, make sure I covered all the bases, so Willoughby had no reason to suspect I was involved in any part of it .

I’d spent these last several months working out the details, acquiring the necessary skills, and waiting for the right opportunity.

A museum in Rochester, barely an hour away from Spruce Hill, was hosting a traveling exhibit featuring Hugo Clément’s work.

The buzz surrounding the exhibit inevitably led to a handful of news stories on Willoughby and his undiscovered painting.

This new publicity served as the perfect cover. Anyone with half a brain could put two and two together, recognize the monetary value of the artwork, and take advantage of what should be Willoughby’s weakness—his only daughter.