This was dangerous. This man was dangerous, no matter how softly he spoke to my dog or how carefully he held his coffee cup.
But strangely, I found myself nodding.
"Show me what you have so far."
We worked for the next hour. I pulled files from past projects—not the confidential ones, but enough to demonstrate my methodology. I showed him how I traced provenance, how I analyzed brushwork, how I used UV light and spectrophotometry and good old-fashioned pattern recognition to separate genuine from fake.
And he listened.
Not the way clients usually listened—impatiently waiting for the conclusion, checking their phones, making it clear that the technical details were beneath them. Maksim listened like everything I said mattered. He asked follow-up questions that revealed genuine understanding. When I got lost in a tangent about varnish oxidation patterns and Renaissance-era binders, he didn't interrupt.
He just waited.
I stumbled over my explanation, words tangling in my enthusiasm, hands gesturing at samples I'd pulled from storage. This happened when I got excited about my work—the socialfilters fell away and the awkwardness faded and I became, briefly, the person I was supposed to be. The expert. The authority. Someone whose brain was an asset instead of a liability.
"—and that's how you can tell the difference between natural aging and artificial distressing," I finished, suddenly aware that I'd been talking for twenty minutes without pause. "You can fake the appearance, but you can't fake the physics."
I braced for the patronizing smile. The polite indication that I'd said too much, revealed too much, been too intense about something no one else cared about.
Maksim was looking at me with an expression I couldn't name.
"You love this," he said quietly. "Not just the technical part. The puzzle of it."
My cheeks warmed. "It's the only thing I've ever been good at."
"I doubt that very much." His voice was soft. "But I understand the feeling. Finding the thing your brain was made for. The thing that makes everything else tolerable."
The words landed somewhere in my chest. Too accurate. Too knowing.
I looked away, suddenly aware of how late it had gotten. The light through my industrial windows had shifted from afternoon gold to evening grey. My coffee cup was empty. The canvases along the wall watched us from their positions, faces turned inward, hiding their secrets.
"It's past nine," Maksim said, glancing at the clock. "Have you had dinner?"
I blinked. Tried to remember. Breakfast had been—what? Toast, maybe? A handful of almonds while I organized files?
"I—no. I forgot."
He shook his head. Something flickered across his face—fondness, exasperation, tenderness. A combination I recognizedfrom somewhere I couldn't name. A combination that made my chest ache with sudden, confusing longing.
"You need to take better care of yourself," he said. His voice dropped into something low and warm. "Little bird."
The words hung in the air between us.
Little bird.
I went completely still.
My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. The room had narrowed to just his face, just his eyes, just the impossible thing he'd just said.
Ptichka. That's what Lis called me. Little bird. The Russian diminutive he'd started using three months ago, after I'd told him about the meltdown that had nearly put me in the hospital.
No one else used that name. No one else even knew it existed.
"What did you call me?"
My voice came out strange. Thin. Like it belonged to someone else.
Maksim's expression shifted. Realization first, then something that looked almost like pain. His jaw tightened. His hands, which had been relaxed on the worktable, curled into fists.
