Chapter 10: The Exposure

The gallery office was a glass cage, its walls catching dawn’s slant through city haze, catalogs strewn across the desk like fallen leaves—glossy prints of nudes, abstracts, none hers, none raw as the dread pooling in Elise’s gut. Her computer hummed, screen aglow, a silent scream she hadn’t heard till now. Yesterday’s triumph—Rowan’s lips on her palm, their bodies a tide in candlelight, their bond of chains and flowers reborn—felt distant, a glow smothered by the morning’s chill. She adjusted her blazer, silk cool against skin still alive from his touch, their cobalt fire a vow no chaos should break.

But the air shifted as her colleague, Mara, stood frozen by the desk, face pale, hands clutching a tablet, eyes averted, pity sharp as a blade.

“Elise, you need to see this,” Mara whispered, voice thin, the tablet trembling as she turned it.

The email was already open. Subject line: Your Star Curator. A dozen recipients, all high-profile—critics, donors, gallery heads. Below it, the photos began to load: Elise in a harness, the lighting low but unmistakable. Her body, her power, her submission—captured mid-scene, eyes fierce and unaware, her image exposed to the world.

Her breath caught. Her pulse slammed through her chest.

Not just images. An ambush.

Text hovered beside them, bold, cruel: Is this who represents your institution?

The comments came next—screenshot threads, snide captions. Slut. Fraud. Fire her. Every part of her—the work, the passion, the fire—reduced to this: scandal bait. Her knees nearly gave. The cold of the gallery floor bit through her heels.

She took the tablet from Mara, hands trembling, scrolling fast. More images—her silhouette, her face, the harness biting into her thighs, but no Rowan, no context. Just her. Alone. Vulnerable. Her privacy gutted.

They hadn’t just captured her body. They’d ripped the ritual from it—stripped the art, kept the flesh, and called it scandal.

The tether she’d felt to her strength snapped like thread, shame rushing in to choke it.

Mara said something—”I’m so sorry”—but it landed like pity, not solidarity. Elise’s spine straightened against it.

“Who sent this?” she rasped. Her voice was hoarse, flayed.

Mara hesitated, then shook her head. “Anonymous. But it was cc’d widely. I think ... I think someone’s trying to ruin you.”

Elise set the tablet down. Hard. The sound cracked like a slap in the quiet. She turned and walked to the office door, locking it with a click. The noise felt sharp, final.

Behind her, the screen kept glowing. Her reflection ghosted in it.

And for a moment, in the glass wall opposite the desk, she caught her reflection again—not clear, but fractured. A prism of overlapping light and distortion, like someone had taken a hammer to the image and stopped just short of breaking it. It held. Split, but whole.

They had tried to steal her image. But what stared back was more than one frame, more than one truth. And none of it was theirs to take.

Her pulse steadied. Slightly. Enough.

She crossed back to the desk and gathered the scattered catalogs, stacking them with slow precision. Her hand lingered on the top one.

Then she opened her drawer, pulled out her phone, and called Rowan.

Rowan’s loft was a cathedral of quiet rage, dusk gilding the brick walls, city lights smeared across the wide window like bruises. Paint tubes lay scattered on the table, canvases leaning like ghosts against the walls, the scent of turpentine sharp as breath. Elise’s text still burned on his phone: I’m coming. It’s bad.

He stood by the window, sleeves rolled, heart still warm with memory—her nails on his chest, their breath braided in candlelight. But the warmth had cooled. Something had snapped.

The door burst open.

Elise rushed in, her blazer askew, tablet clutched like a blade, her hair wild, breath fractured. Her silhouette backlit by hallway light—half woman, half storm.

“They got me,” she said, and shoved the tablet into his hands.

The images bled onto the screen. Elise in harness. Grainy, stripped of context. No art, no Rowan—just her, fierce and alone, now reduced to spectacle.

The subject line glared: Your Star Curator.

And beneath: Is this who represents your institution?

Slut. Fraud. Fire her.

Something primal flared behind his ribs.

Rowan crossed the room and hurled the tablet onto the couch. It bounced once, silent. He turned back, but Elise had already folded in on herself, shoulders shaking.

He dropped to his knees. Not in submission. In reverence. In fury.

His hands reached for hers. “Elise,” he murmured, voice raw. “I see you.”

She didn’t speak. Just stared at the floor, chest heaving, shame clinging like smoke. Then her knees buckled, and she slid down with him. Their foreheads touched. Her tears were silent, hot against his skin.

“They stole it,” she whispered. “What we made. What I gave.”

He held her face, thumb brushing under her eye. “Then we steal it back.”