I made a noise. I'm not sure what kind—surprise, relief, something dangerously close to a sob. Ghost pressed closer to Maksim's hand, his eyes half-closing with pleasure as strong fingers found the spot behind his ears that I'd discovered three years ago.
Maksim looked up at me with that small smile. "He's beautiful. How long have you had him?"
My voice came out rough. "Three years. He was a rescue—former racer, badly neglected. It took six months before he'd let me touch him."
"He's a good judge of character." Maksim continued scratching behind Ghost's ears, and my ridiculous dog leaned into it like he'd known this man his whole life. "What's his name?"
"Ghost."
"Because of the color?"
"Because of the way he moves." I stepped back from the doorway, a silent invitation. "He's completely silent. You never hear him coming until he's right beside you."
Maksim rose smoothly, and Ghost moved with him—not retreating to my side the way he usually did with strangers, but staying close to Maksim's legs, his long tail giving a single tentative wag.
Impossible. Three years, and I could count on one hand the people Ghost had accepted this quickly.
"He knows," Maksim said, stepping into my studio with the coffee bag and my dog trailing behind him like a shadow. "Animals always know."
"Know what?"
His eyes met mine. That warm brown, that unsettling intensity, that quality of attention that made me feel seen in ways I wasn't sure I wanted.
"Whether someone's safe," he said simply.
I didn't know what to say to that.
“My brother has cats,” Maksim added. “Not the same, but they’re rescues, too.”
“You have just one brother?” I asked, just for something to say.
“Two,” he said with a wry grin. “But let’s not get into that now. Come—we have things to discuss.”
Wesatatmyworktable with the coffee between us—oat milk latte for me, black americano for him—and I tried to remember how to act like a normal person.
It wasn’t easy, though. I almost never had people in my studio, and I was struggling to understand why I’d brought him here. We could have met anywhere.
Yet here we were.
Ghost had settled himself beneath the worktable, his long body curled around Maksim's feet like they were old friends. The betrayal should have bothered me more than it did. Instead, I found myself relaxing in increments, my shoulders dropping from my ears, my hands unclenching around my coffee cup.
"So," I said. "Tell me what you're actually looking for."
Maksim set down his cup and met my eyes. The humor that had been there with Ghost faded into something more serious.
"I'm tracking art connected to money laundering," he said. "Pieces that have been authenticated and sold through legitimate channels, but that I believe are part of something larger. A pipeline."
"Pipeline to where?"
"To clean money that started dirty." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "The man I'm investigating uses the art world because it's perfect for his purposes. High-value objects with subjective pricing. Private sales. A culture of discretion that doesn't ask uncomfortable questions."
I nodded slowly. "Fraud?"
Something flickered across his face—approval, maybe, or respect. "Exactly. What I need is someone who can identifyinconsistencies. Someone who can spot the tells that distinguish genuine authentication from convenient fiction."
He didn't name the man he was tracking. Didn't explain who was funding this investigation or what would happen to the information I provided. But I'd spent ten years in the art world, authenticating works that passed through the hands of collectors who didn't want to explain where their money came from. I could read between the lines well enough.
Organized crime. The kind of shadowy territory where questions weren't welcome and people who asked too many sometimes disappeared.
