“I thought so. He nodded when I saw him. But now I think he was watching me specifically.”
“Someone planted to track your movement,” Francesca said, looking resigned.
Lucia nodded slowly. “Maybe more than one. Radioing updates. So they knew exactly when to move in.”
“The ones inside must’ve signaled the team trailing us,” Jules said. “They were already in position before we even left the museum.”
“Yeah. We never had a chance,” Lucia said, her body still taut. The thought of how close they’d come twisted in her gut—if she’d noticed sooner, maybe things would’ve been different.
Francesca’s gaze cut between them. “Fine. Let’s move this to the study. We’ll go over everything, and you’ll tell me every step, every snag, every minor detail. Don’t decide for me what’s relevant.”
They trailed her into the room and sank around the heavy oak table. Francesca folded her hands, her presence making even the silence heavy.
Jules spoke first, breaking down the run step-by-step—check-ins, badge scans, routine exchanges with staff. Nothing alarming, nothing that explained the ambush. Francesca didn’t interrupt, didn’t even blink, just let the account spool out.
Then Jules added, almost offhand: “My laptop froze right after the timing update. Wouldn’t respond. Then it bricked, corrupt bootloader.”
Francesca’s mouth thinned. “And you didn’t check it before?”
“Of course I did. It was clean. I used it to tap into the museum’s systems. Everything worked. But when I went to pull a last-minute update—bam. Gone.”
“So what did you do?”
“Switched to Skye’s spare. No time to fix mine.”
“I doubt this was the start,” Francesca said. “They somehow knew we’d make a move at the ball. Varnelli wouldn’t have waited until the last second to intercept us.” Her expression turned to stone. “No, the spike wasn’t the problem. The trap must’ve been triggered earlier—when you ran the test.” Francesca’s tone hardened. “Varnelli had something buried in the Meridian’s network from the start, probably hidden in the Conservation system’s update logs. The moment you simulated that first humidity fluctuation, your laptop touched the compromised files. That’s when a code must have activated and started feeding her data.”
“So the payload didn’t trigger during the real spike,” Jules said slowly, realization dawning, “but during the test. That’s how she had time to organize the ambush.”
Francesca gave a sharp nod. “Exactly. She’d set the trap long before we ever made a move. You just woke it up. Then it activated and uploaded everything: Lucia’s timing, the route,the extraction window—straight to Varnelli’s servers. She didn’t have to react in real time. She’d already laid the trap.”
“But…how the hell would she know we’d ever even hit the Meridian?” Skye asked.
“She knows me. It wasn’t a question of ‘if’ but ‘when.’” Francesca sighed. “She prepared for the possibility, probably the moment she handed over theMadonna. An insider, a planted file, a fake update, it doesn’t matter.”
Skye winced. “So it wasn’t my laptop? Because a month ago, I clicked a video—looked like a fundraiser for a local rescue center. Puppies needing adoption. It looked real. I didn’t think anything of it.”
“Could’ve been a sleeper exploit,” Jules said. “Nothing malicious at the time. Just lying in wait. Or it was nothing. It definitely didn’t cause this.”
“Good, good,” Skye said. “Not that any of this is good.” Her gaze darted between Francesca and Jules.
“No,” Francesca said, voice clipped. “But next time, assume you’re a target, too.”
Skye shifted in her seat. “Yeah.”
For a moment, no one breathed, and they all lingered in stillness. Then Francesca said, cold and steady: “I know where Varnelli’s main warehouse is.”
“How will that help?” Jules asked.
“We’ll steal myMadonnaright back,” Francesca said, sounding almost bored.
Silence settled like dust.
Skye drew back slightly. Jules looked away. Lucia just stared at Francesca, struggling to breathe around the tight band in her chest.
Breaking into the Meridian was one thing—it was precision, not war. But Varnelli? That was an empire built on ruthlessness.If they’d been willing to draw guns just to get the painting, what would they do to protect it now?
And yet Francesca looked like she’d already made peace with the risk. Her jaw set, eyes dark with conviction.
