The Painter's Revenge

My name is Wendy Scott; I was once merely a painter who knew only palettes and canvases. My art studio faces south, and the windowsill is always adorned with several pots of succulents. Harry Lincoln said that when the sunlight fell upon my canvas, my profile was more beautiful than the painting itself. My fiancé was named Harry Lincoln, a gentle and refined piano teacher. His fingers were slender, and when he played Chopin's Nocturnes, even the sparrows outside would pause upon the windowsill to listen silently. We had agreed that once he had saved enough money, we would buy a small house with a yard in the suburbs; I would paint, he would play piano, and we would raise an orange cat. But the rain seven years ago extinguished all my happiness. That day was Harry Lincoln's birthday. I carried a homemade cake to the Jones family villa to see him, only to be met with flashing police lights and the shrill siren of an ambulance piercing the rain. He should not have died, had it not been for teaching Miranda Quiller. Miranda Quiller is the fiancée of Andy Jones, the young master of the illustrious Jones family, and her temperament is as capricious as a poisoned rose. Her interest in learning piano was but a passing fancy, yet she could not tolerate Harry Lincoln's resignation, calling him 'shameless.' Andy Jones, the man who stands at the pinnacle of the powerful family, has eyes both profound and inscrutable. I once saw him at the entrance of the Jones family villa; dressed in a black suit, he looked coldly at the medical staff carrying Harry Lincoln's body, not even furrowing his brow. Then there is Peter Jones, Andy's elder brother, who always gazes at Miranda Quiller with a complex look—a look that concealed emotions I could not then understand. Only later did I learn that Peter had harbored a secret love for Miranda for many years, yet, due to the Jones family's arrangements, he was forced to watch her become his younger brother's fiancée. Harry Lincoln's death is like a rusty knife, carving into my heart for seven years, never healing. The police concluded it was an "accidental fall," yet in Harry Lincoln's pocket, I found a distorted piano string—a token he used to remind himself to take his medicine on time—which could never have been found at the balcony's edge. For seven years, I was no longer the Wendy Scott who only knew how to smile. I sold the art studio, and fled alone to a strange city, learning to smoke, to drink, and to navigate the social intricacies of taverns. I have softened my edges, hidden my paintbrush, and learned to disguise myself in the quagmire of the powerful family. I even studied psychology, solely to fathom the malice lurking behind those hypocritical smiles.