The Masterpiece
A month later, the gallery opened inside a repurposed church. Crowds lined up around the block.
The centerpiece: a canvas titled Exile.
It showed a woman in the rain, clutching a baby outside a palace, its doors just closing behind her. Her face wasn’t desperate—it was determined. A golden thread wrapped around her wrist, trailing into the clouds above.
Critics called it “a triumph of survival and defiance.”
