Chapter 2 Traps
Traps
Her gaze drifted to the pieces Lucia Rossi had left. Potential loan inquiries always jumped the queue, and with the Alessi’s oddities flagged in her preliminary notes, she could justify pulling both ahead for a quick desk review.
As talented as Alessi had been, this was…not better. Penelope wasn’t sure there even was “better” between masters of a craft, just different perspectives, divergent visions originating in different souls.
And this particular vision? It hummed with something beyond imitation.
“Huh,” she murmured into the stillness. Maybe there was more to forgery after all. But considering her own complicated background, it was difficult to see it in a more neutral light.
She traced a finger lightly along the canvas. The Bellini painting truly was stunning, almost better than it should be. What an odd thought. But there was too much emotion in the folds, too much ache in the light.
Penelope returned to her desk and put her glasses back on to finish her notes and request a series of lab tests for both pieces.
She might be confident the Alessi painting was a fake, but her role—and her nature—demanded certainty. Assumptions were dangerous. Certainty kept you employed, and out of prison.
Surprises were never welcome. She made a point to avoid them.
A flagged email from records caught her eye: Urgent – Madonna in Red.
Her frown deepened as she read. She’d requested clarification from the Italian archives months ago, not expecting much.
It was a long shot born of her obsession: cross-checking the Madonna’s trail against obscure registries most curators would never bother with.
The reply surprised her, and a knot formed in her stomach.
Rising from her chair, Penelope crossed her office to a long side desk lined with working folders, neatly arranged by date and priority. The carpet muted her steps, the hush of the room broken only by the faint buzz of the overhead lights.
Yes, she had embraced the digital age. But there was something to be said for flipping through printed pages, pen in hand. The screen made her miss things and gave her headaches all too often.
Sometimes, she missed her days as a researcher. She didn’t regret becoming Chief Curator as it was the perfect next step in her career, but the paperwork that came with it…that she regretted.
She opened the folder on the Madonna and lost herself in her notes, especially over the flagged discrepancy in the provenance papers. The name listed as broker didn’t match the original registry. And the date? Weeks off from the known acquisition record.
She’d flagged a minor inconsistency in the transfer record—easy to miss, but odd for a piece of this caliber. Something about the ownership trail didn’t fully track.
Her cell phone rang, tearing her out of her thoughts.
Valentina Varnelli.
The owner of the Madonna painting.
“Yes?”
“Hello, darling. Have you thought any more about our little arrangement?”
Penelope closed her eyes and suppressed a sigh.
Officially, Valentina was an eccentric art collector. Unofficially, she headed Eris Group—one of the largest art crime networks. A strikingly beautiful woman, as benign as a saw-scaled viper.
Every interaction was a performance: beautiful, rehearsed, and always meant to corner you.
“I’ve looked into your newest acquisition,” Penelope said, crossing out a line on her notes. “But your so-called warning has made me a tad…paranoid.”
“Oh? Did a wolf already enter your exalted premises wearing sheep’s clothing?”
Penelope hummed, her gaze flicking back to the Alessi canvas. “That remains to be seen.”
“Do you need more information? I could send Chester over to walk you through the finer points.”
“No. I’ll figure things out myself.”
Valentina’s chuckle grated. “People think you’re just a curator. But I know better. You remind me a little of myself, you know?”
Penelope tightened her jaw. She hated how Valentina always slipped under her skin.
“About the Madonna… I’ve been following its paper trail for months.
The broker’s name and the acquisition date don’t line up.
You’re right to be concerned. If the wrong people put two and two together, you could lose the painting.
However, I didn’t need your warning to uncover that. ”
“And yet here you are, speaking it aloud to me. That makes you part of it, whether you like it or not. Don’t mistake your obsession for independence, Dr. Blackwell—closeness breeds suspicion.
If these wrong people uncover what you just did, you’ll look less like a diligent curator and more like my accomplice. ”
And here it was, the leash being tugged. She should just report it and be done with it. But then where would her answers be?
Penelope pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Your father—”
“Leave him out of this!”
Silence.
“As you wish.”
“I’ll keep you updated.” Penelope hung up, resisting the urge to hurl her phone against…something. She sometimes missed the phones of her youth; the kind you could slam onto the receiver with satisfying finality, with a dismissal she couldn’t afford.
~ ~ ~
By the time Penelope made it home, it was already past ten. The silence of her home welcomed her like a familiar bruise—dull, settled, always there. She fed and petted Fuller before showering and heading to bed, once more skipping dinner. A recurring habit she needed to cull.
Saturday found her buried in her work once more, this time in her home office, with Fuller snoozing atop a stack of books at the edge of her desk, her soft purring the only sound in the room.
Stacks of papers and journals flanked her keyboard, her tailored blouse half-untucked from hours of shifting in her chair.
“You need a life, Pen,” she muttered when her ornate grandfather clock struck noon.
She reheated a slice of leftover pizza, intending to curl up on the couch with Fuller afterward and maybe watch something mindless on the TV, when her phone rang.
“Hi, Mom,” Penelope answered.
“Hi, sweetheart. How are you?”
“Good, same old.”
“Working too much?”
Penelope rolled her eyes, resisting the dry “Look who’s talking,” from spilling from her lips. Her mother worked as a sought-after ethics and moral philosophy professor at Columbia University, and leisure had never taken up a significant space in her life.
“There’s a lot to do at work.”
“There’s more to life than work.”
“Maybe I need to get a bit older to embrace that notion.”
“I’d say forty-three is plenty old for a shift in perspective.”
Penelope sighed. “Did you call just to criticize me?”
“No, sweetheart. Of course not. I do apologize.” Her mother’s voice faltered.
“What is it? Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes. I just… I spoke to your father.”
Penelope straightened. “How is he?”
“Oh, you know him. Still too proud to allow a visit.”
A pause. Penelope’s gaze drifted to Fuller, who seemed to be stalking a spider.
“I told him about your plans.”
Penelope’s knuckles whitened as she gripped the phone. She probably shouldn’t have shared that, but there were files she needed, and she’d only get them through her father.
“It’s not worth it, sweetheart. Your dad agrees. He made his choice. You shouldn’t take such risks. Think of your life, your career.”
“I thought life was more than work?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Penelope rolled her lips. “I’ll be careful. I’ve got to go, Mom. Talk later.” She ended the call, unable to stomach the conversation any longer.
She hated the loop she and her mother seemed to be stuck in, and how they both circled around her father, a situation neither could stand nor escape.
Penelope stepped back into the kitchen, opened her air fryer, and grabbed the pizza slice. She sat at her kitchen table and listlessly picked at her food.
Fuller snuck around her legs before jumping on the chair next to Penelope; her yellow eyes locked on the plate.
“You don’t eat pizza. We’ve tried that already.”
She nibbled at her slice, her mother’s words ringing in her ears, joined by a memory of sitting in the gallery’s courtyard as a girl, her father explaining how every brushstroke carried intent, how good art breathed, lived, and could make a home in your soul.
He’d smiled that day, and she tried to use such memories to drown out the look of sorrow etched across his features at the end of the trial that stole him from her.
Yes, life was more than work, and it wasn’t that Penelope had no interest in other avenues, but for the last two years, she’d just been…stewing—in sadness, in despair, in rage—until she hit the books and went down one rabbit hole after another. All in the quest to prove her father innocent.
For the longest time, her digging turned up little more than mismatched dates, altered names, trails that started but led nowhere.
Still, she could feel a pattern just out of reach.
Along the way, she learned more about the city’s art underbelly than she ever wanted to know, including its most infamous player, Valentina Varnelli.
Her research didn’t go unnoticed. Before long, one of Valentina’s men had delivered a threat wrapped in an invitation, insisting she meet the woman herself.
Penelope still recalled the knock at her door late at night, an envelope heavy with implication, and the shiver of anticipation when she’d opened the letter.
She’d said yes. Because wasn’t that the next logical step? But these things always came with a price.
Now, positioned as a consultant of sorts for Eris Group, Penelope was tolerated more than trusted. The arrangement was never formal, never written down, but Valentina had made sure it felt like an obligation, requesting assessments and evaluations, off the books, naturally.
For Valentina, having the curator of the Meridian in her pocket—or believing she did—offered a veneer of legitimacy too useful to pass up. For Penelope, the arrangement meant proximity, and proximity would lead to answers.
If she could trace the forged papers that had landed her father in prison back to Valentina, maybe she could restore his name. Maybe she could finally prove he wasn’t the villain they’d made him out to be.
She also knew Valentina likely only kept her close because of her father. Whether it was suspicion, curiosity, or the sheer pleasure of bending another Blackwell to her will, Penelope couldn’t yet tell.
But she could handle herself.
Much like Penelope could read art, noticing incongruities others missed.
Like how the artist of the supposed Alessi painting had also created the Bellini piece.
Oh, she had no tangible proof—the story of her life, of her father’s life—but she felt it in her bones.
The same energy went into each brushstroke, the same meticulous eye for detail, and most of all, the same essence, the same longing for something just out of reach.
She shook her head.
People always called her insane when she told them that art spoke to her, unable to grasp what she meant. To be fair, she struggled to explain it.
She heard of people with synesthesia, and maybe that was the case for her, too, because colors had flavors and moods. Each artist left behind a unique bouquet of flavors. They were like fingerprints or snowflakes, unique, mesmerizing.
Penelope might not know who painted Lucia Rossi’s “discoveries,” but she knew it was the same person. What she didn’t know: Lucia’s role in it. Was she the person Valentina had warned her about? She might be an unwitting pawn in someone else’s scheme—or fully complicit.
Penelope needed to know.
For now, she would let it play out. She’d watch and take notes. People told on themselves one way or another. Humans were funny like that. Most of the time, you didn’t even need to set a trap—they’d walk right into one of their own making.
Time would tell, and in the meantime, Penelope would continue her work and watch. She’d keep her distance.
As such, she should be able to erase the image of Lucia’s soft smile from her mind, ignore the anticipation coiling inside at the notion of the woman contacting her again.
Some roads needed to be blocked off, lest she fall into a snare of her own making. Between Valentina’s schemes and Lucia’s smile, she wasn’t sure which was the more dangerous.