Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Gabrielle
The front door clicked shut after we stepped in, the sound unusually loud in the quiet that greeted us. After the buzz of the restaurant, the apartment felt like it had exhaled—dim, still, familiar in that way only home could be.
Juliette groaned as she kicked off her sandals and dropped her bag onto the armchair. “If I don’t get horizontal in the next five minutes, I’m going to start sleepwalking,” she muttered.
“That would be a first,” I said with a smile.
She gave me a lazy wave on her way toward the hallway, pausing just long enough to raise a brow at Anthony like she was silently saying, don’t mess this up . “I’m out. Don’t let the view of palm trees keep you up.”
Anthony chuckled, the sound low and warm, as she disappeared behind her bedroom door. Then he leaned down to tug off his shoes, moving with that easy, unhurried grace he had when he wasn’t trying to be anyone but himself. Watching him now—barefoot in my apartment, the corners of his mouth still curved from something Juliette said—it struck me how easily he seemed to belong here.
I crossed the room and slid open the lanai door. The night breeze slipped in, carrying the soft scent of gardenia and the distant rustle of palm fronds.
“You want to sit outside for a bit?” I asked, already stepping into the warm air.
“Yeah,” he said, brushing past me, close enough for my arm to catch the heat of his. “Night’s too nice to waste.”
We settled into the cushioned chairs Juliette and I had bought together from a clearance rack—faded fabric, a squeaky leg, and years of memories embedded in the threads. The ceiling fan above spun in lazy, half-hearted circles. Somewhere beyond the screen, a car turned onto the street, its headlights briefly lighting up the curve of the sidewalk.
I tucked my legs beneath me, curling into the seat, and Anthony stretched beside me. His socked foot brushed against mine beneath the table and didn’t move away. I didn’t either. We just sat there, surrounded by the soft sounds of the city at night, the unspoken something stretching between us like a question I wasn’t quite ready to answer.
Anthony leaned his head back, eyes half-lidded. “That place was good,” he said. “Remind me to take you there again.”
“Mm-hmm,” I murmured.
But I wasn’t there. Not really.
He turned toward me slightly, his voice quieter. “You’ve gone somewhere.”
“Not far,” I said.
That was a lie.
My heart had already slipped backward into stories I’d never lived but somehow always carried. I didn’t look at him when I spoke again.
“There’s something I need to tell you. About the painting. A Lady and Gentleman in Black. ”
That easy, restful stillness shifted. The night air didn’t move, but I felt it differently—like the moment itself had paused to listen.
Anthony didn’t speak right away, which I appreciated more than I could say. He just let the silence stretch for a beat, and then said gently, “Okay. I’m listening.”
I nodded once and tried to find a place to start.
“My great-grandfather’s name was Bram Van Den Berg,” I said slowly. “He owned a small gallery in Antwerp before the war. He dealt in private collections—mostly Dutch painters and some smaller impressionists. His gallery wasn’t big, but he loved it. He had this knack for finding paintings that made people stop and stare. Not the flashiest pieces, but the ones that… held you.”
Anthony’s gaze didn’t waver. I could feel him listening, not just out of interest but with quiet respect.
“He was Jewish,” I went on. “Which, of course, made everything more dangerous. When the Nazis invaded, they started shutting down Jewish-owned galleries almost immediately. Bram tried to protect what he could, but by ’43, it was over. He was arrested and deported to Auschwitz.”
The words tasted like ash in my mouth.
“He didn’t come back.”
I wrapped my arms around my knees.
“My great-grandmother, Esther, was pregnant at the time. My grandfather was born not long after she escaped. She hid with a friend for a while and then—somehow—got on a boat to New York. She had almost nothing. A forged passport. A suitcase with three baby outfits. And a list of family names she never saw again.”
When she arrived at Ellis Island, her paperwork was altered—whether by accident or design, no one knows. That’s when she became Esther Vanderburg. The name stuck, and my father’s changed too—to Dirk Vanderburg.
Anthony didn’t move, but I saw his jaw flex. His eyes didn’t pity me, though. They were soft. Steady.
“My family lost nearly everything,” I said. “Not just people, but identity. Place. Language. It’s like we’ve lived our whole lives in translation.”
He leaned in slightly. “But the painting was always part of the story?”
I nodded. “It was the only piece my grandfather remembered by name. A Lady and Gentleman in Black. He used to describe it like he had actually seen it. As a kid, I thought he was making it up. Now I think… he just needed to hold onto something.” I shifted in my seat, “We didn’t just grow up hearing about a painting we never actually laid eyes on,” I said. “We were shaped by it. Juliette and I both pursued art history because of it—not that we admitted that out loud for a long time. But it was always there. Every paper we wrote, every internship, every unpaid archival project we took just for a chance to sift through forgotten files—it was all part of the hunt.”
Anthony gave me a half-smile, small but sincere. “You turned your inheritance into a mission.”
“That’s one way to put it,” I said. “Or maybe we just didn’t want the past to vanish without a trace.”
He nodded like he understood that instinct all too well.
“There were times we really thought we’d found it,” I continued. “We followed leads into basements of provincial museums in Belgium. We pored over poorly photographed auction catalogs from the sixties. There was even a moment I was sure I saw it—hanging crooked in the background of a blurry photo someone took at a dinner party in Vienna. We emailed the host. He never responded.”
Anthony chuckled softly. “Remind me never to stand between you and a lead.”
“Wise choice.”
We fell into a brief pause, but this time it was laced with something gentler. Then I said, more quietly, “I was starting to think it wasn’t out there at all. That maybe it had been destroyed or stolen so many times it was untraceable.”
“And then it turned up in the Devereux vault,” Anthony said.
I nodded, still remembering the jolt of it. “When I saw the name on the inventory list… I honestly thought it was a mistake. I kept blinking like the words might rearrange themselves. But it was there. And suddenly, all those years of chasing smoke had substance.”
He didn’t interrupt. Just let me feel the enormity of my words.
“But as you know, we couldn’t claim it,” I went on. “Not without documentation. We knew that. And we didn’t have it—until today.”
I reached for my phone, still resting on the small table between us. Swiping it open, I pulled up the email that had come in during dinner.
“Lina, our friend in Switzerland—she’s an art researcher and one of the best. She dug into private archives and found this.”
I turned the screen toward him. “It’s a receipt. From a private sale in Antwerp. Dated just a few months before the occupation. My grandfather bought the painting for his gallery. It’s signed. Notarized. The title is listed in his own handwriting.”
Anthony took the phone gently, studying the screen. His brow furrowed in concentration, but there was no skepticism—only reverence.
“She’s mailing the certified copy,” I said. “It’ll take a few days. But this… this is what we needed. What we’ve been waiting for.”
He handed the phone back like it was made of glass.
“This is extraordinary, Gabrielle,” he said softly. “You really found it. After everything.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
My fingers closed around the phone again. “We want to sell it.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly, but he didn’t recoil.
“If we could prove it was ours, the plan was to file a restitution claim and then sell it. Pay off our student loans. Buy a house with a little guest cottage where Juliette could paint. Something ours. Something permanent. Something that didn’t feel like we were still living in borrowed time.”
I glanced at him. “But then I met you.”
That landed with more weight than I expected.
“And suddenly,” I said, my voice dropping, “it wasn’t just about the painting anymore.”
He looked at me for a long moment. Not blinking. Not pulling back.
“I wish you’d told me sooner,” he said, but there was no accusation in it. Just quiet disappointment. “Maybe I could’ve helped.”
I swallowed, guilt rising fast. “I was afraid. I didn’t want to risk losing what we were just beginning to feel for each other. I thought if I brought this up too soon, it would seem like… like I had an agenda. Like I was using you. You were my boss, and that made you off-limits.”
His expression softened immediately. “Gabrielle, you could never come off that way to me. But I’ll admit I did feel like I was overstepping professionally, and that made me frustrated and well…sad.”
I exhaled slowly. “How do you feel now?”
Anthony leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his gaze fixed on me like I was the only thing in the room that mattered.
“It makes me love you even more,” he said.
The words hit me like sunlight through storm clouds—unexpected and warm and real. My breath caught.
“Careful,” I whispered, a half-smile wafting over my lips. “You keep saying things like that, and I might start believing them.”
“You should,” he said. “Because I mean them.”
My heart felt like it was beating too loudly in my chest, but it wasn’t fear anymore. It was something closer to wonder.
He leaned back, but his eyes never left mine. Then his expression shifted again—this time into something more calculated.
“There’s something else,” he said.
I gave him a wary look. “Please don’t tell me you’re secretly a prince.”
He grinned. “Sadly no. Just a guy with an annoying habit of noticing things.”
I narrowed my eyes playfully. “Go on.”
“Judge Valencia,” he said, growing serious again. “He’s mentioned A Lady and Gentleman in Black to me. Casually. But enough times that I think he’s interested in acquiring it. He’s subtle, but not subtle enough.”
I sat up straighter, that wave of warmth evaporating too quickly. “You think he wants it for himself?”
Anthony nodded. “He collects. Quietly. Discreetly. And he doesn’t like being told no.”
My stomach turned. “Do you think he’d try to block the restitution?”
“He might try,” Anthony said, and then looked at me again with a new kind of fire in his eyes. “But I won’t let him.”
The certainty in his voice settled me more than any plan could. He meant it.
I let out a breath, and we fell into silence again—but this one felt earned. Peaceful. The breeze moved through the screens, lifting strands of my hair and cooling the heat in my chest.
Anthony reached over and found my hand. He didn’t squeeze it, just held it like he had all the time in the world.
After a while, he murmured, “I could get used to this.”
I turned to him. “To what?”
“This,” he said, his thumb brushing against mine. “You. The quiet. The way I don’t feel like I have to be anyone else when I’m here.”
I smiled. “You don’t.”
He stood, stretching like a cat, then watched me as I got up, walked to the screen door, and slid it open.
“Then stay,” I said.
His smile tilted, that same familiar charm behind it as he reached for my hand.
“I was hoping you’d say that.”