Beneath the Frame

Florence moved like clockwork beneath Leonhart's feet.

Narrow alleys breathed in mist. Windows blinked with candlelight. The city was soft at the edges tonight, veiled in humidity and old stone silence.

But his world was sharper.

Colder.

He stood inside the upper corridor of the restoration studio, where visitors rarely went. Below, voices murmured and brushes clicked against palettes. The interns moved like polite ghosts. Curators paced. Emilia laughed once, brightly.

And then—

There she was.

Aanya Roy.

Hair tied up, sleeves rolled. Eyes fixed on a canvas that wasn't hers. One gloved hand hovered above a chipped corner of sky, tweezers resting against her wrist like a scalpel.

She didn't look up.

But she felt him.

He saw it in the way her shoulders locked. The pause in her hand. A flicker of breath, too shallow.

She knew.

She always knew.

Leonhart remained in the shadows.

He didn't speak.

Didn't descend the stairs.

He only watched.

Watched her work like someone painting over a wound—cautious, precise, afraid of pressure.

He didn't need to be close to study her. Her movements told him more than any confession could.

She had seen the pigment.

That much he knew.

Two days ago, after reviewing her painting again, he'd contacted a supplier in Bologna—one that handled custom pigment sets for high-end collectors and classical artists.

He didn't send a full range.

Just six vials.

Custom-milled.

One of them: a bruised red, deep and raw.

The exact color she'd used in the shadows of that painting—the silk. The mouth.

Her private red.

It arrived at the studio yesterday, delivered in a black box. Matte. Unlabeled.

Only her name was written on the inner card.

A. ROY

No sender.

No instructions.

Just presence.

He had expected confusion.

Maybe silence.

But he hadn't expected what followed: she used it.

He spotted it immediately—streaked across a test canvas left to dry on a rack near her station.

She didn't use it in her restoration.

She used it to feel something.

To remember the blood of what she'd painted.

Rafael appeared beside him in the corridor, silent until he spoke. "That was a choice."

Leonhart didn't look away. "It was a door."

Rafael's arms folded. "You do remember that doors work both ways?"

Leonhart tilted his head slightly. "Not if you control the lock."

Rafael exhaled. "This isn't like the others."

"I know."

"She hasn't signed anything."

"She will."

Rafael leaned against the frame, gaze lowered to Aanya's table. "She paints differently now."

"She bleeds differently now," Leonhart corrected.

Down below, Aanya stepped back from her canvas.

She removed her gloves, tucked her brushes into their cloth roll, and bent to unzip her bag. Her motions were quick. Her body tight.

Leonhart took the stairs slowly.

Measured.

Not toward her—but across the far wall, as if inspecting the fresco fragments mounted for future display.

Still, she felt him.

She didn't speak.

But her head turned slightly—only slightly.

Enough to acknowledge his orbit.

He approached.

Not directly. Not in her line of sight.

Just close enough to stain the air around her with tension.

He glanced at the rack beside her workstation, eyes pausing on the red pigment smear.

He said nothing.

But when she looked up at him, her expression was already armed.

"You were watching me," she said quietly.

"Yes."

"No pretense?"

"No need."

"Then say what you came to say."

Leonhart paused.

Then: "I'm not here to say anything."

"Then leave."

He almost smiled. "Do you want me to?"

A beat.

A longer beat.

"No," she whispered.

Behind them, another intern stepped into the room.

The moment broke like glass.

Leonhart turned, nodded once, and left.

He didn't look back.

He didn't need to.

That night, the city glistened under wet streetlamps. Leonhart walked behind her at a distance of five buildings—far enough not to alarm her, close enough to watch.

Aanya walked slower than usual. Her bag was slung across one shoulder, her head tucked slightly downward. Her boots tapped against the cobblestone rhythmically.

She stopped once at a bookstore window.

Not to look.

Just to breathe.

He stopped, too.

Blended in.

To anyone else, he was just another man in a dark coat with too much money and too little expression.

But he wasn't watching the city.

He was watching her spine.

The curve of her ribs beneath her coat.

The way she kept glancing at glass—shopfronts, puddles, reflections—trying to catch a shape that wouldn't stay.

She knew.

Some part of her always knew.

She turned sharply at the next corner.

Took a faster route.

He didn't follow.

Not this time.

Back at his penthouse, he removed his coat and stepped into the dim warmth of the private gallery.

The red silk painting hung at the center wall, the lighting soft against its edges.

He poured himself a single inch of whisky and stood before it, letting the silence fill him.

She was moving toward it again.

Not the painting.

The state it came from.

The surrender.

The ache.

The kind of art that demanded her to break.

He didn't want her obedience.

He wanted her unraveling.

Not dramatic. Not loud.

Just honest.

Honesty was the only thing that made control real.

And she was the first to offer it without knowing what she was giving.

His phone buzzed once.

A message from the supplier:"Pigment #5 reordered. Do you require additional sets?"

He replied: Not yet. She'll tell me when she needs more.

At the same time, Aanya lay in bed beneath her leaky skylight.

The box of pigments sat on her desk, unopened since that first smear of red.

She hadn't touched the others.

She didn't know why she kept them.

Didn't know why the box felt like a second pulse in the room.

She couldn't prove it was from him.

But she knew.

She had seen it in his eyes when he stood near her table.

That wasn't admiration.

That was possession—disguised as permission.

Emilia had said nothing.

Maybe she hadn't connected it.

Maybe she had.

Aanya didn't ask.

She only stared at the ceiling until the rain returned, and she thought:

This is how it begins.

Final Lines:

He didn't need to touch her to move her.He only needed to place something in her world—and wait for her to reach for it.