It’s for the best to leave the past right here — I’ve never been able to protect the people I love, and now would be a hell of a time to start trying.
1
NATALIA
Are you trying to trick me, beautiful?
The very first glance tells me this is not a forgery, but I pore over every last detail to be sure.
The dappled light and shade on the duck’s feathers, the silver gleam of the candle-stick holder, the unnatural angling of the duck’s corpse.
The painting is a still life of something dead. Breathtaking in its awkward way.
And “missing” for decades.
I’ve never set foot in an art gallery, but I’ve seen some of the world’s greatest lost works of art. Some art forgers are good, but I’m better.
I don’t know what it is.
Maybe I have particularly strong eyesight, or pattern recognition. Maybe it’s because I’ve been around paintings and sculptures my whole life.
Our household is a revolving door of priceless artwork — the Bratva’s insurance policy.
Art goes missing, art gets stolen, but art rarely gets destroyed. There’s something about it that compels us to treasure it. The final resting place for every missing or stolen piece of art is the black market.
The same paintings are traded, again and again, as collateral for deals. The Bratva doesn’t trust the Mafia, the Mafia doesn’t trust the Bratva, but neither of them wants to burn a Rembrandt. So someone like my father looks after a Rembrandt for as long as the deal with the Mafia lasts.
And in between, the paintings are all mine to look at.
I wasn’t allowed to go to college, no matter how much I begged, but I’ve been around these priceless artworks my whole life. They come in and out of the household every week.
Each time we let one go — and they always do go, eventually — it breaks off another piece of my heart. The artworks are my friends.
People, I’ve always struggled to read. But paintings? Sculptures? I could spend a lifetime teasing out their secrets.
My cat, Dasha, is lounging in a patch of sunlight on a chair next to me. I stroke the soft fur of her belly absentmindedly, still not dragging my eyes away from the painting.
Tell me your secrets.
I scan every inch for a flaw that might clue me in to something wrong.
There’s nothing.
I smile and note my verdict in the notebook.
I’m good at this. I would be happy to stare at paintings for the rest of my life.
Unfortunately, my parents are constantly scheming to drag me away from this and marry me off to some man who will want me to stay away from Bratva business, including the artworks.Art is not women’s business, apparently.
I’m so absorbed in the crisp beauty of the Cholmondeley painting that it takes me a while to notice that Mama and Papa have lowered their voices, like they don’t want me to hear.
I tune into the rapid rhythm of their Russian. They often speak in Russian when they’re talking without me, forgetting that they’ve paid for years of private tutors to come to the house and make sure I know the language inside and out.
“…they were supposed to be on alert for him as soon as we heard what had happened to the Ivanov Center. It’s sickening that they let him in.”
“I know, I know. We thought we had it under control in Siberia. But thepsikhushka…”
This word slips me by. Something to do with physical therapy?
