I thought quickly and typed out a response, trying to keep things as anonymous as possible.
Lis: I can't advise you on this one, malyshka. I don't know enough about the situation, and more importantly, this has to be your choice. What I can tell you is that your instincts are usually good. What are they actually saying, underneath the fear?
I sent it before I could talk myself into something worse.
The typing indicator appeared again. She was thinking. Processing. Doing that thing her brain did where it ran seventeen analyses simultaneously and tangled itself into anxiety spirals.
I waited.
The seconds stretched. Became a minute. Two.
Finally, a message arrived.
Ptichka: That's the problem. I don't know what my instincts are saying because the whole day was a disaster. I had to meet him at this gallery in Chelsea—I hate gallery spaces, all that white and silence and people looking at you—and I managed to hold it together for maybe twenty minutes and then I literally FELL INTO HIS ARMS, Daddy. Like some kind of Victorian heroine with the vapours. I caught my heel on a displayplatform and he caught me and I was pressed against his chest and I could smell his cologne and I just . . . I ran away. I said I was sorry and I ran away. He probably thinks I'm completely insane. The receptionist definitely thinks I'm completely insane. I can't even think about the job offer because every time I try, I just remember how mortifying the whole thing was.
I read the message.
Read it again.
A third time, slower, as if the words might rearrange themselves into something that made sense.
Gallery in Chelsea. Display platform. Fell into his arms. Could smell his cologne.
The details were too specific. Too precise. Too exactly what had happened this afternoon in the viewing room at the Vasiliev Gallery, when Auralia Hart had stumbled backward and I'd caught her elbow and pulled her against my chest and felt her heart hammering through the silk of her blouse.
My hands had gone cold.
It's not possible, I thought. It can't be possible.
But even as the denial formed, my brain was already running the calculations. Already seeing the pattern I'd somehow missed for five months. The details I'd catalogued about Ptichka without ever connecting them to the woman I'd met today.
She worked in authentication. Auralia was an authenticator.
She had sensory sensitivities. Auralia had fled the gallery like the lights were physically hurting her.
She had a greyhound. A grey greyhound with white markings, she'd told me once. Built like a living sculpture. Anxious around everyone except me.
Auralia Hart had a rescue greyhound. The interview had mentioned it specifically.
My hands were shaking as I minimized Discord and opened a new window. The intelligence files I'd been building for weeks.The authentication trail I'd assembled on Anton Belyaev's art network. I'd been looking at galleries, at auction houses, at the particular experts whose names kept appearing on provenance documents for suspicious pieces.
I pulled up the list.
Cross-referenced.
Searched.
There.
A. Hart. Independent authenticator. Brooklyn-based.
Consulted on three pieces that had passed through galleries now flagged as potential laundering fronts. Not the primary authenticator on any of them—she'd been brought in for secondary verification, which meant her name appeared in smaller print, easier to miss. I'd seen it before. I'd seen it three times in the past month of research, and I hadn't connected it to anything because Hart was a common name and I hadn't been looking for her.
I hadn't known I needed to.
My chest felt hollow. Like someone had reached in and scooped out everything vital, leaving only the cold machinery of cognition.
Ptichka was Auralia.
