“It’s late,” he said without preamble. “You should go home. Take a break for the night.”
She scrubbed a hand over her face. “I can’t stop now. I think I’m on to something.”
That got his attention.
“Álvarez has been chasing the same piece for close to a decade,” she went on. “It’s not the hobby of a man with money to burn. It’s an obsession.”
Rhys crossed the room and crouched beside her, balanced easily on the balls of his feet. He didn’t touch her but was close enough she felt his warmth.
“Show me.”
She turned the laptop toward him and pulled up a high-resolution image of an early Renaissance oil panel.
He studied it in silence. “Le Virtù e la Caduta,” he said finally.
“You know it?” she asked, unable to keep the awe from her voice.
“Yes. Lorenzo Bellandi. Florentine. A minor master, controversial in his time.” He paused, a shadow crossing his face before he went on. “When I was living in London a few years back, it sold at auction for several million pounds.”
“Purchased by Álvarez,” she concluded. “And ever since, he’s been chasing the fourth panel.”
He glanced at her, frowning. “That’s a triptych. They only have three.”
“Usually.” She pulled up another file, this one a sketch rather than a photo. “Private correspondence surfaced, letters between Bellandi and the baron who commissioned it. The fourth panel was never catalogued, deemed too indecent to survive the ecclesiastical scrutiny of the time.”
She arranged the images side by side. “Faith. Purity. Obedience.”
“And the fourth?” Rhys asked, eyes flashing with interest.
“It’s calledTentazione.”
“Temptation,” Rhys translated. “An incomplete set would drive a man like Álvarez mad. Like missing the final piece of a five-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.”
Her voice dropped. “I’m not a professional profiler, but from what I’ve read about Álvarez, he enjoys collecting—the hunt, the negotiation, the acquisition—almost as much as the possession. If we could find the fourth panel, we could draw him out.”
Rhys’s mouth lifted at the corner. “Then let’s make it happen.”
“How? We don’t know where it is, if it even exists.”
“No, but we know someone who might.”
Realization sparked. “Cari.”
“She lived abroad and moved in European art circles for years. She can make discreet inquiries.”
Their eyes held—too long, too charged.
For a fraction of a second, his hand lifted, as if he might reach for her. Then the shadow returned, and he stopped himself. He rose smoothly, the space he put between them deliberate.
“I’ll make the call,” he said, tone back to business. “Get some rest.”
Gaby watched him go. Hope stirred. At last, a potential crack in the wall of secrecy Álvarez had spent a lifetime constructing. But confusion followed close behind. The look in Rhys’s eyes, that almost-touch. None of it fit with the careful distance he fought to maintain.
She didn’t have the energy to unravel what that meant. Not tonight. Besides, if he was still dead set against forgiving her, still hiding behind those shadows, what could she do but let him?
***
Cari walked into her gallery at 9 a.m. Her phone rang at 9:01. Her heels clicked across the marble floor, echoing through the lofty space as she rushed to answer it.
