“You sure about that? These are people you worked with. People you trusted. They’ll notice if something’s off.”
He’s right, though I don’t want to admit it. Petra was my closest friend at Christie’s. We’d spent countless late nights in the authentication lab, arguing over brushstroke patterns and pigment analysis until the security guards kicked us out. James ran the Old Masters department and had taken me under his wing when I first arrived, teaching me the politics of the auction world that no university course could cover. Eleanor in provenance research had invited me to her daughter’s christening.
They knew me as Sasha the art expert, not Sasha the Bratva princess.
I wonder what they’ll see when they look at me tomorrow.
“We should eat something,” I announce, turning away from the window. “There’s a restaurant downstairs that used to have decent food.”
“You’ve stayed here before?”
“No, but I walked past it a hundred times on my way to the museum, and my coworkers raved about it. I always told myself I’d try it someday.” I grab my jacket from where I tossed it on the chair. “Someday is today, I guess.”
The restaurant is quiet for a Tuesday evening, and we secure a corner table with good sightlines to both exits. The hostess hands us menus and recites the evening’s specials, but I barely hear her. My attention keeps drifting to the window, to the street outside where I used to walk every day without a care in the world.
We order wine and food I barely taste, making small talk that serves more as cover than conversation. Tony asks about the neighborhood, and I point out landmarks through the window.The café where I used to grab breakfast. The bookshop that specialized in art history texts. The Underground station I’d emerge from every morning, coffee in hand, ready for another day of examining masterpieces and hunting forgeries.
“Tell me about your life here,” Tony requests over the main course. “Before everything happened with Adrian.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Everything.” He sets down his fork. “I’ve read your file, but files don’t tell you what someone’s life actually felt like.”
I consider the question while taking a sip of wine. “It felt… free. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t someone’s sister or someone’s daughter or someone’s obligation. I was just Sasha. An art authenticator who happened to be good at her job.”
“That sounds nice.”
“It was.” I trace the rim of my glass with one finger. “I had a flat in Notting Hill. Tiny, but it was mine. I’d walk to work through Hyde Park when the weather was good, grab coffee from the same cart every morning, and argue with my colleagues about attribution disputes that seemed so important at the time.”
“What kind of disputes?”
“Oh, the usual.” I smile despite myself. “Whether a particular Caravaggio was actually painted by his workshop. If a supposed Vermeer was a twentieth-century forgery.” The memory makes something twist in my chest. “I loved that work. The detective aspect of it. Hunting for truth in brushstrokes and pigments.”
“You were good at it.”
“I was.” No false modesty. I know my skills. “That’s what made Adrian’s betrayal sting so much. He was using the same institution I loved to funnel dirty money across Europe.”
Tony leans forward slightly. “Tell me more about that. How did you figure it out?”
“Small things at first. Documentation that didn’t quite add up. Pieces that moved through suspicious channels before landing at auction. A provenance chain that looked perfect on paper but fell apart when you traced the sources.” I take another sip of wine. “I did some digging on my own, pulled records I probably shouldn’t have accessed, and I might have given him the impression that I was romantically interested in him in order to get close enough to go through his records at home. He was moving millions through art sales for criminal networks across Europe. The pieces themselves were often legitimate, which made it harder to catch. But the buyers and sellers were shell companies, and the money was anything but clean.”
“And you reported him.”
“I had to. What he was doing wasn’t just illegal. It was corrupting everything the institution stood for. “The irony isn’t lost on me, by the way. I reported him for criminal activity while my own family runs one of the largest Bratva operations in Moscow.”
“You didn’t choose your family, Sasha. You chose to expose Adrian.” Tony reaches across the table and covers my hand with his. “That took courage. Even if it made your life more difficult afterward.”
I don’t pull away from his touch. “It destroyed his career. His reputation. Everything he’d built over twenty years. Andapparently, it made him obsessed enough to spend the next two years planning revenge against my family.”
“That’s on him, not you.”
“Maybe.” I turn my hand over so our fingers intertwine. “But sometimes I wonder if I could have handled it differently. Gone to him privately first, given him a chance to stop before I reported it. Maybe none of this would be happening.”
“Or maybe he would have killed you to keep his secret. Men like Adrian don’t respond to private warnings. They eliminate threats. You did the right thing. Don’t let his obsession make you doubt that.”
We finish dinner and return to the suite. The Thames glitters below our window, and London spreads out before us in a tapestry of lights and movement. I kick off my shoes and settle onto the window seat, drawing my knees up to my chest.
Tony disappears into the bathroom, and I hear water running. I should be reviewing the briefing materials for tomorrow’s meeting, memorizing the questions Boris wants us to ask, preparing myself to face people I haven’t seen in two years.
