Chapter 1 - The Blood On The Canvas
The smell of turpentine and linseed oil usually brought Gabriel peace.
Tonight, stepping into Meline’s Brooklyn conservation studio, the scent was completely drowned out by the metallic tang of fresh blood and wet rain.
The glass front door had been shattered inward, heavy shards littering the worn floorboards like dirty ice.
Gabriel stepped over the debris, his black wool coat sweeping against the doorframe.
Leo followed close behind, his weapon unholstered, flanked by four men whose eyes scanned every dark corner of the wrecked workshop.
An antique gilt frame lay splintered near the radiator.
Torn canvases were trampled into muddy footprints, and bottles of dammar varnish had shattered against the brick wall, weeping sticky amber tears down the masonry.
Gabriel stopped in the center of the room.
On the central wooden easel, the portrait of his late mother sat untouched, protected by a canvas drop cloth that had been hastily thrown over it.
Meline had tried to shield his mother's face before they dragged her away.
Even while men with guns kicked down her door, her first instinct had been to protect the thing he cherished.
Gabriel touched the edge of the drop cloth, his large hand trembling with a sudden, suffocating tremor.
"Boss," Leo called out from the back supply closet.
Gabriel moved with silent, lethal grace toward the back.
On the floor beside the chemical sink lay an overturned stool and a streak of crimson smeared against the galvanized metal basin.
Beside it lay a small silver paintbrush—Meline’s favorite badger-hair blending brush.
Its tip was soaked in red.
"They hit her," Leo said quietly, shining his flashlight onto the stain. "She fought back with whatever was in her hand."
"She is five-foot-two," Gabriel said, his voice dropping into a register so dark it made his own enforcers shift uncomfortably.
"She weighs barely one hundred and ten pounds, and she lives on chamomile tea and library books."
He picked up the tiny silver brush, his fingers closing around the metal ferrule until the edge bit deep into his calloused palm.
"Where did Sullivan take her, Leo?"
"Our trackers caught a black Suburban running tolls on the Gowanus Expressway ten minutes after the hit," Leo replied, checking his tablet.
"It pulled into an abandoned meatpacking warehouse near the Red Hook terminals."
"Are the perimeter teams in position?"
"Three squads," Leo confirmed. "Snipers on the grain silos. Sullivan has maybe ten men inside. He thinks he's holding a bargaining chip against her brother."
Gabriel turned toward the shattered front entrance.
The cold November wind whipped through the doorway, lifting the edges of his dark hair.
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"Sullivan thinks he took an art restorer to collect on a gambling debt," Gabriel murmured, slipping Meline's broken brush into his breast pocket, right next to his heart.
"He doesn't realize he took the only light left in my world. Burn the building down around him if you have to. But bring her to me."
