Chapter 3 #3
"He buys a painting valued at two million," I said slowly, working through the logic. "Then later claims it's worth ten million, based on questionable authentication and conveniently discovered provenance. The difference between purchase price and claimed value becomes legitimate-looking profit."
"Exactly." His eyes held mine with that unsettling intensity. "You understand the mechanism."
"I've seen variations of it." Not often—I was careful about which clients I accepted—but often enough to recognize the fingerprints. "The art world is perfect for money laundering. Subjective pricing. Private sales. A culture of discretion that makes bankers look like gossips."
Something flickered across his expression. Surprise, maybe, at my matter-of-fact assessment. Or approval.
"What I need," he said, "is someone who can identify inconsistencies in provenance. Someone who can spot the tells that distinguish genuine authentication from convenient fiction. Someone who can look at a gallery's inventory and determine which pieces are legitimate and which are... pipeline."
Someone who could do what I did for Victor Harmon, but in reverse. Instead of authenticating real works, I'd be hunting for the fake documentation that made dirty money look clean.
"I won't ask you to do anything illegal," he added, and his voice was so careful, so measured, checking in with me to make sure I was following, giving me space to process—
My chest ached with sudden, confusing guilt.
I was attracted to this man. I was achingly attracted to this man—could feel it in the way my skin prickled when he shifted closer, in the way my breath caught when our eyes met, in the visceral awareness of his physical presence. Every nerve in my body seemed tuned to his frequency.
And two nights ago I'd called someone else Daddy.
What kind of person did that make me?
The guilt tangled with the overstimulation, tangled with the fluorescent buzz I'd been fighting since I walked through the front doors.
The whiteness of the room seemed to press in from all sides.
The lights felt like needles in my eyes.
My thoughts fragmented, scattered, refused to organize themselves into coherent patterns.
Too much. It was all too much.
"—documentation from Geneva," Maksim was saying, his voice reaching me as if from underwater. "The gallery there has been particularly cooperative with the sort of authentication that doesn't bear close scrutiny—"
I needed air. I needed out. I needed Ghost against my legs and my weighted blanket and the familiar smell of my studio.
I stood abruptly, chair scraping against the concrete floor. The sound was too loud, too sharp, and I flinched away from it.
"Miss Hart?"
I stepped backward, trying to find space, trying to breathe. My heel caught on the edge of a display platform I hadn't noticed—some pedestal for showcasing smaller works that had no business being in a walkway.
The fall happened in slow motion.
Arms windmilling. Stomach dropping. The certainty of public humiliation—falling on my ass in front of this beautiful, dangerous man, confirming every suspicion he must already have about my inability to function like a normal person.
Then his hand caught my elbow.
His arm slid around my waist.
He pulled me upright and against him in one smooth motion, like it was nothing, like catching falling women was something he did every day.
For a suspended instant I was pressed to his chest. Close enough to smell his cologne—warm, woodsy, expensive in a way that wasn't overwhelming but grounding.
Close enough to feel the heat of him through my silk blouse, the solid reality of his body against mine.
Close enough to see his eyes widen with something that looked almost like recognition.
"I've got you," he murmured.
His voice dropped to something low and gentle. Something intimate. Something so exactly like the voice I imagined when I read Lis's messages that my breath caught and tears pricked at my eyes and I nearly—
"Breathe, Auralia."
My name. He said my name like he was tasting it. Like he was learning it. Like he was keeping it.
"You're alright," he continued, still in that low, steady voice. "I've got you."
The tension I'd been carrying since I walked through the gallery doors dissolved, replaced by something warm and terrifying and entirely too much.
He was holding me.
He was holding me, and I wanted him to keep holding me.
I wanted to stay here, pressed against his chest, letting him tell me I was alright until I believed it.
The wanting scared me more than the fall had.
He didn't let go until I was steady, and even then his hand lingered at my elbow—warm and grounding, a silent question rather than an assumption.
My face was burning. My whole body was burning, caught somewhere between mortification and something far more dangerous.
The shameful urge to step back into his arms and stay there.
To let someone hold me up for once. To surrender to the warmth of his presence and stop fighting the gravity that seemed to pull me toward him.
I couldn't do this. I needed to leave immediately.
"I'm sorry," I managed, my voice strangled. "I don't usually—this isn't—I should go."
The words came out in fragments, broken and inadequate. I expected irritation. Dismissal. The polite condescension I'd learned to anticipate when I failed at being normal, when my brain misfired in public and made me look foolish.
Instead, Maksim reached into his jacket.
His movements were calm, unhurried. He produced a business card—cream-colored, thick stock, the kind of quality you felt before you saw—and held it out toward me.
Not pushing it into my hand. Offering it. Letting me choose whether to take it.
"Think about my proposal," he said. His voice had returned to something more professional, though I could still hear the warmth underneath. "No pressure, no timeline. My contact information is there. Call or email when you're ready to discuss further."
I stared at the card, unable to make my hand reach for it.
"And Auralia—"
The way he said my name. Like it mattered. Like I mattered.
"—the lighting in here is a crime against gallery design, and that platform shouldn't be in a walkway. You have nothing to apologize for."
Something cracked open in my chest.
It was such an elegant reframe. Such a careful, deliberate kindness.
He was giving me an out that had nothing to do with my brain misfiring, nothing to do with sensory overwhelm or social failure or any of the ways I constantly disappointed myself.
The gallery was poorly designed. The platform was in the wrong place.
My stumble was architecture's fault, not mine.
He couldn't know how much I needed to hear that. Couldn't know how rare it was for someone to look at my awkwardness and find a way to make it not my fault.
Or maybe he could. Maybe he saw more than I wanted him to see.
Gratitude flooded through me, and underneath it, a wanting so sharp it frightened me. I wanted to stay. I wanted to hear what else he had to say. I wanted to know what his hands would feel like if they weren't just steadying me, if they were touching me with intent.
I took the card.
The paper was smooth against my fingertips. His name was printed in elegant serif font: MAKSIM BESHAROV. Below it, a phone number and email address. Nothing else. No title, no company logo, no explanation of what he did.
I couldn't say goodbye. Didn't have the words left. So I just turned and walked as fast as I could without actually running, past the leather chairs and through the viewing room door and down the too-long hallway.
The receptionist said something as I passed—probably a farewell, probably professional pleasantries—but I didn't hear it. I didn't hear anything except the blood pounding in my ears and the echo of his voice saying my name.
Through the glass doors. Out onto the street.
The noise of Chelsea traffic crashed over me like a wave—car horns, construction, the rumble of a delivery truck, a dozen conversations from pedestrians on their phones. Too loud, all of it, but at least it was real. At least it wasn't the pressurized silence of that gallery.
I didn't stop walking until I was three blocks away.
I found a brick wall and leaned against it, pressing my back into the solid reality of stone and mortar.
My legs were shaking. My hands were trembling.
Maksim Besharov's business card was clutched in my fingers like a talisman, and I couldn't stop thinking about the weight of his arm around my waist.
The way he'd caught me without hesitation. The way he'd held me without agenda. The way he'd said I've got you like it was the simplest thing in the world, like catching me was something he'd been prepared to do all along.
I thought about Lis asking me my color level. The same care. The same attention. The same quality of presence that made me feel seen instead of observed.
I thought about the way Maksim said my name like it was something precious.
I thought about calling Lis Daddy two nights ago, and the warmth that had spread through my chest when he'd accepted it. When he'd called me his sweet girl. When he'd told me that being mine wasn't conditional on anything.
My throat tightened.
I felt like I was betraying someone. The guilt sat heavy in my chest, tangled up with confusion and longing and the sense that something important was happening and I couldn't see the shape of it.
But I didn't know who I was betraying.
Lis, for feeling this pull toward a stranger I'd just met? For wanting Maksim's hands on me, his voice in my ear, his attention turned entirely my way?
I pushed off from the wall and started walking toward the subway. My legs still felt unsteady. The card was still clutched in my hand.
Tomorrow I would analyze this properly. Tomorrow I would think through the job offer, the risks, the implications of getting involved with someone who tracked "dangerous" people through art world fraud.
Tomorrow I would be logical and careful and make decisions based on evidence rather than emotion.
Tonight, I would message Lis and hope his voice—his typed words, his careful questions—would make sense of the chaos in my head.
Tonight, I would try not to think about how badly I wanted both of them.
And how terrifying it was to want anything at all.