Chapter 2 - THE NAILS WERE NEW
Cassian did not answer immediately.
For the first time since Mara had seen him enter the security room, something in his face stopped being controlled.
Not fear. Not exactly.
Recognition.
He turned toward the frozen image of Anton Mero on the monitor, then back to Mara.
“Mrs. Belov asked about the backing?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That the frame had been reinforced during restoration.”
“And what did Mrs. Belov say?”
“That the restoration report listed no reinforcement.”
The technician, a narrow-faced man named Lev, looked from Cassian to Mara as though he had just realized that the pregnant translator might be the most dangerous person in the room.
Mara ignored him.
“She wasn’t accusing him,” she continued. “She was curious. That made his reaction stranger. He smiled, but his left hand tightened around his glass hard enough for the stem to bend.”
Cassian’s gaze sharpened.
“You notice hands?”
“I notice people when their words and bodies disagree.”
“Useful habit.”
“Mostly exhausting.”
Cassian reached for the desk phone and pressed one button.
“Bring Mrs. Belov to the east conference room. Quietly. Tell her I want her opinion on a private acquisition.”
He hung up and looked at Lev.
“Pull the conservation report.”
Lev began typing. His hands shook badly enough that he hit the wrong key twice.
Mara watched him.
“You’re frightened,” she said.
“I work for him,” Lev muttered.
Cassian’s expression did not change.
Mara looked at the monitor instead.
“No. You were frightened before he came in.”
Lev stopped typing.
The room went still.
Cassian’s voice became very quiet.
“Continue.”
Lev swallowed. “I am continuing.”
“Not the report.” Cassian’s pale eyes fixed on him. “Your explanation.”
“There is no explanation.”
Mara almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
Then she saw his right thumb rubbing the side of his index finger in the same repetitive motion Pavl had made before the guards took him downstairs.
A signal? A shared nervous habit? Or something learned under pressure?
Cassian noticed where she was looking.
Lev did too.
He abruptly put both hands flat on the desk.
“I didn’t alter the footage.”
“No one asked you if you did,” Cassian said.
Lev’s face lost color.
Mara’s baby shifted again, a slow pressure beneath her ribs. She moved one hand to the curve of her stomach and tried to breathe normally.
She wanted out.
Every sensible part of her wanted the front door, a yellow cab, her apartment, the cheap blue kettle that screamed when water boiled, and the stack of baby clothes her sister kept buying in sizes Mara would not need for months.
Instead, she was standing six feet from a mafia boss while a security technician accidentally confessed to a crime no one had accused him of yet.
Her mother had once told her curiosity would get her into trouble.
Her mother had not been ambitious enough in describing the trouble.
Cassian moved behind Lev’s chair.
“Open the report.”
Lev obeyed.
A PDF filled the main monitor. Dates, photographs, signatures, technical notes.
Mara knew enough about art documents to be dangerous but not enough to pretend expertise. She scanned the pages while Cassian read faster than she expected.
“Page fourteen,” he said.
Lev opened it.
The photograph showed the rear of The River at Sola during inspection three months earlier. Dark wood. Old nails. Faded labels. A customs stamp from Prague. A strip of canvas reinforcement near the lower edge.
Mara leaned toward the screen.
“Those aren’t the same nails.”
“No,” Cassian said.
The current auction photograph showed twelve clean brass heads along the upper backing. The report showed blackened iron nails, uneven and old.
Someone had opened the frame after authentication.
Cassian called another number.
“Do not let anyone touch Lot Thirty-Seven. Not a guard. Not a curator. Not me unless I am standing there in person.”
He listened.
Then his eyes hardened.
“Who authorized movement?”
Mara watched the line of his jaw tighten.
“When?”
He hung up without saying goodbye.
“The painting is moving,” he said.
Lev stared. “The final lot hasn’t started.”
“I know.”
Cassian headed for the door.
Mara followed two steps before stopping herself.
He turned.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to ask where the nearest exit is.”
“Lie better.”
“I’m a translator, not an actress.”
“You’re staying here.”
“So I can be guarded by the man who just confessed before being accused?”
Lev made a strangled sound.
Cassian looked at him.
Then at Mara.
“You’re coming with me.”
“That was not the outcome I was aiming for.”
“It is the one you earned.”
Two guards joined them in the corridor. The auction house looked different once Mara knew the cameras could lie. Every velvet rope became a hiding place. Every service door became a possibility. Guests drifted through the gold-lit hall completely unaware that a twelve-million-dollar painting was apparently walking out of the building before it had even been sold.
Cassian moved quickly but never appeared to hurry. People saw him and stepped aside before he reached them.
Mara stayed close because there was no practical alternative.
At the end of the east corridor, they found a climate-controlled transport cart surrounded by four men in black event uniforms.
One of Cassian’s guards raised a hand.
“Stop.”
The men did.
Not because of the guard.
Because they had seen Cassian.
A woman in a headset stepped forward. “Mr. Vulov. We were told Lot Thirty-Seven required immediate transfer downstairs due to a humidity alarm.”
“By whom?”
“Conservation.”
Cassian looked at the sealed crate on the cart.
“Open it.”
The woman hesitated. “The handling protocol—”
“Open it.”
One of the men produced a key.
Mara watched his face.
He looked annoyed, not frightened.
That made her look harder.
His uniform fit too well. New shoes. No event badge clipped to the chest, only a printed logo. His fingernails were clean except for one dark line under the thumbnail.
Grease.
Not art-handler grime.
Machine grease.
Her eyes dropped to the cart wheels.
Fresh black lubricant shone on one hinge.
The man saw her looking.
For half a second, his expression changed.
Mara’s skin went cold.
“Cassian.”
He looked at her immediately.
“The man with the key isn’t staff.”
The man moved.
Fast.
He dropped the key, reached inside his jacket, and drove his shoulder into the nearest guard.
The corridor exploded.
Cassian’s second guard drew a weapon. The fake handler slammed the cart sideways, using the crate as cover. Another man in uniform grabbed Mara by the wrist.
Pain shot up her arm.
She reacted without thinking.
She drove the heel of her shoe down on his foot.
He cursed in Russian.
Not the clean Moscow Russian she translated for diplomats and collectors.
Odessa inflection.
Southern vowels.
He tightened his grip.
“Move,” he hissed.
Mara froze.
Not because of the gun she now felt pressed against her side.
Because of the word he used next.
“Rybka.”
Little fish.
It was not addressed to her.
He was speaking into a hidden microphone.
Someone on the other end answered through the tiny receiver in his collar, faint but close enough for Mara to hear.
“River first. Woman if necessary.”
Cassian’s head snapped toward them.
The gunman pulled Mara backward.
The corridor narrowed to breath, pressure, and the cold circle of metal against her ribs.
Her baby moved.
A terrible, furious kick.
The man felt it through her coat.
His grip loosened for one startled instant.
Mara twisted.
Cassian crossed the distance before she understood he had moved.
He seized the man’s gun wrist, drove it upward, and struck him once in the throat with a precision that looked less like anger than training. The weapon hit the carpet. A guard kicked it away.
The fake handler behind the cart fired.
The sound was deafening indoors.
Glass shattered.
Guests screamed in the auction hall.
Cassian pushed Mara behind the marble corner as his guards returned fire.
The entire illusion of elegance collapsed at once. Champagne glasses hit the floor. Security alarms began pulsing. Somewhere, a woman shouted that there was a gun. Somewhere else, someone shouted there were two.
Mara pressed both hands over her stomach.
“You all right?” Cassian asked.
She stared at him.
“You’re asking now?”
“Answer.”
“Yes.” Her breath shook. “I think.”
Cassian looked at her for exactly one second longer, then turned toward the corridor.
The shooting had stopped.
One fake handler lay facedown. Another had surrendered. The man who had held Mara was on his knees with blood at his lip and both arms restrained behind him.
The transport crate had cracked open when the cart hit the wall.
Cassian walked toward it.
Mara stayed where she was told for perhaps three seconds.
Then curiosity defeated survival again.
The crate door hung crooked.
Inside should have been The River at Sola.
Instead there was an empty frame wrapped in museum foam.
No canvas.
No painting.
Nothing.
Cassian stared into the crate.
The silence around him was worse than shouting.
One of the captured men laughed through a split lip.
“You’re late.”
Cassian turned.
The man smiled.
“The river left before the guests arrived.”
Mara’s pulse jumped.
Cassian crouched in front of him.
“Who has it?”
The man’s smile widened.
“You do.”
For the first time, Cassian looked confused.
The man began laughing again.
Then Mara saw something tucked behind the empty frame.
A small cream envelope.
Her name was written across the front.
Not Cassian’s.
Not Anton Mero’s.
Hers.
MARA ELLISON.
The corridor seemed to tilt beneath her.
Cassian looked from the envelope to Mara.
“You said you had never been here before.”
“I haven’t.”
“Then why is your name inside a crate prepared before tonight?”
Mara could not answer.
Because she knew the handwriting.
She had seen it on birthday cards, rent checks, grocery lists, and one note left on a kitchen counter six months ago.
I’m sorry. I can’t do this.
The envelope had been written by the father of her unborn child.
By the man who had disappeared before she ever told him whether the baby was a boy or a girl.
May you like
And beneath her name, in smaller letters, he had written three words.
DON’T TRUST VULOV.
