After signing the last document resting on my table among the ridiculous piles of files Logan had asked Lucien to dump into my office, I finally leaned back into my chair with a long breath. I'm done for today at least. The office suddenly felt quieter without the constant flipping of papers and keyboard sounds. Outside the glass walls of my office, Manhattan glowed beneath the fading evening sky, painted in soft amber from the autumn sunset. Its weekend, meaning I could breathe for one day before getting buried alive again next week. I grabbed my coat from the chair and slipped it over my shoulders before leaving the office. The moment I stepped outside, staffs immediately straightened. “Good evening, sir.” “Have a nice evening, Mr. Jones.” Bows followed me through the hallway. Honestly?, I still wasn’t fully used to it. Just weeks ago I was fighting prison food and broken sleep. Now people bowed every time I walked past them. Life was strange as hell. As I entered the elevat

Since the last time I left the nursing home, the words on that painting had refused to leave my mind. Even now, standing in the middle of the exhibition hall, my eyes remained fixed on the portrait hanging before me. Life's Unexpected Moments. A simple title. A simple painting. Yet there was nothing simple about the way it made me feel. Warmth. Joy. Pain. Sorrow. All woven together inside a single canvas. Every brushstroke felt like a fragment of a story. A story that had been haunting me ever since I realized the image from that painting existed in reality. What disturbed me most wasn't the painting itself. It was the fact that I had painted it unconsciously—somewhere between sleep and awareness, somewhere deep inside my mind. A place I couldn't explain. A place that kept revealing things I wasn't supposed to know. The portrait hanging before me was only one of many. The rest remained hidden inside my private studio, locked away from the world. That was the real reason I n