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"Do you know the title?" I ask. My voice comes out flatter than I intended.

The woman brightens. "The Lonely Billionaire."

Three words.

They go through me like a blade.

Not cruelty.

Because they're true.

And because the woman who painted them—who saw through me clearly enough to render the shape of my isolation on canvas before she even understood what she was doing—is twenty feet away laughing with another man while I stand here realizing I kept her small.

Not on purpose.

Not with malice.

But kept her small all the same.

I step back from the window.

"Thank you," I say to the gallery assistant, though I'm not sure what I'm thanking her for. The information. The devastation. The confirmation that my wife is extraordinary and I am the last person who deserves to benefit from it.

She smiles like I've made her day.

I turn and leave before Aria can see me standing there, because if I stay another minute I'll either say something too revealing or not enough, and both would make me look worse than walking away.

By the time I get back to the villa, the inside of my skin feels too tight.

I try the study first.

Open laptop.

Read nothing.

Close it again.

I answer one email so badly Jeremy replies within two minutes asking if I meant to send the attachment without comments.

I ignore that too.

I pace the length of the villa once. Then twice. Then again because apparently I've become the kind of man who can't stand still after seeing his own loneliness framed and titled and hung in a gallery where strangers stop to admire the devastation of it.

Gabriel's hand on her arm.

Her laugh.

The look on her face when she realized she'd miss the museum.

The painting.

The title.

She's incredibly gifted. And she doesn't even seem to know it yet.

Buried rather than missing.

I go upstairs, pull on swim trunks, come back down, and head straight for the pool before thinking better of it.