The next morning, Luc met me at a neighborhood café with a lawyer’s contact written on the back of a receipt.

He had asked the workshop owner for a recommendation.

The lawyer, Elise Laurent, agreed to see me that afternoon.

I arrived carrying a folder that felt absurdly light for the amount of damage it contained.

Elise read everything before asking questions.

When I described the confrontation, she made me repeat the sequence without excuses.

She then separated the two matters clearly.

“Your response will have consequences of its own. It does not make an unauthorized sale authorized. You need to understand both.”

I told her I did.

She asked for the original representation agreement, the inventory, the messages, and every version of the sale documents I possessed.

She instructed me to preserve them without editing.

She would contact Claire and the buyer through appropriate channels.

“Will I get the painting back?” I asked.

She said she could not promise an outcome before hearing the other side and examining the transaction.

I appreciated the honesty even while resenting how little comfort it offered.

Before I left, she asked whether Claire still had access to my studio and accounts.

“Yes.”

“Change that today.”

I returned to the studio with a locksmith appointment and a list of passwords to replace.

Removing access felt both necessary and strangely disloyal.

I kept remembering the food she had brought, the first landscape she sold, the way she once introduced me as someone worth watching.

Betrayal does not erase kindness from memory.

It makes memory harder to use.

Near the worktable, I found a small strip of packing tape stuck to the floor.

It had caught a pale thread from the cloth I used to protect the painting.

I crouched beside it and cried with a force that embarrassed me even though nobody was there.

For the first time, I understood that the portrait might already be hanging in someone else’s room.

Someone might be deciding whether the blue cup matched their curtains.

I called Luc and asked him to come over.

He arrived with bread and soup.

We ate beside the empty wall.

When I began apologizing for needing company, he shook his head.

“You are allowed to need people, Julien. You just have to choose people who understand the difference between helping you and owning you.”