Chapter 21
Twenty-One
He loved her.
Maybe there would have been a hope, even a slim fucking prayer, that he would resist falling fully and madly in love with her. That chance evaporated when Sofie showed up dressed as an angel in a sea of sin, ready and willing to submit in every way.
But last night, she had shown up, and despite how it ended last night, he was hopelessly in love with her.
Andrei lay sprawled on one of the couches. It was the middle of the day and there was no one in the club. Club Alibi London was open again tonight, but no one would show up to start prep for at least another two hours.
He could have gone into the London Interpol offices to work, but he was too lazy. He'd been sleeping here at the club in the room Landon had used. That hadn't helped the situation, because he ended up staring at the connecting door, imagining what he would do if he had Sofie in the other room the way Colette had been just next door for Landon.
He was in love, cynical asshole that he was.
Still, he hadn’t changed personalities. He loved her, but God, he was pissed. He wasn't sure if he was angrier with himself for being the fool who loved her, or with her for being so stubborn and refusing to listen.
A more rational part of him said she had every right to be stubborn because, as she’d said, it was her life and her choice.
Would it have made a difference if he told her that he loved her, and it wasn't just her life at stake, but her life and his heart?
The part of him that was an absolute moron hadn't been able to let go of hope. The hope that maybe if she were able to take back even a few of her art pieces, that would satisfy her need to reclaim her life and she could move on from the mental place she was trapped in.
What he really wanted was to rescue her, but she didn't need to be rescued. She needed to be empowered.
And that's why he'd given her every single bit of information he'd been able to pull from Interpol's many databases about Father Noah Visser.
He’d started the file thinking it was merely performative. Something to do to make himself feel better.
But there was actionable intelligence in there.
The most critical was a customs declaration form that had been flagged for further assessment four years ago. The large shipment had been identified for further questioning due to the sheer size—seven oversized boxes, most one meter square.
The shipment was headed from Amsterdam to a large country estate in Lanaken, Belgium. Lanaken was just across the Netherlands-Belgium border from Maastricht, and the property was owned by Visser’s brother-in-law. The notes as to what had been done when the shipment was stopped were sparse, and there were no additional notes to go along with the original declaration of “personal household goods.”
Andrei was fairly certain that Visser had shipped all of Sofie's original pieces to his brother-in-law's house. Probably, he was planning to bring them in one or two at a time over the course of years, then periodically “discover” new art.
For their purposes, retrieving art from a remote estate in eastern Belgium was a far more doable task than stealing something from the Vatican archives.
When he first found this information, he'd almost said fuck it, and gone himself. Simply booked a ticket to Belgium, driven there, and busted in the door.
But doing that wouldn't help Sofie. She had a plan, had made a choice, and he would respect that.
Respect it and wait.
Well…wait as long as he could. Andrei wasn't a patient man. Assholes rarely were.
“Fuck it.”
He grabbed his phone from his pocket and called Landon.
“Andrei?”
“Let me talk to Colette.”
“Yeah, I'm good. How are you?”
“Are you being held hostage and trying to send me a message, or are you just being an asshole?” Andrei closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I could only aspire to be as much of a dick as you are,” Landon said.
“I don't like this new happy version of you. You were easier to deal with when you were brooding and tortured.”
“I was never tortured. I do the torture. I am the torture,” Landon muttered.
“This conversation is making me stupider.”
“You didn't have far to fall on that front.” Landon laughed at his own joke. “Here’s Colette.”
“Andrei?”
“Yes.” He took a moment to switch mental gears. “I’m…I’m just calling to ask how it’s going. With Sofie.”
Colette was silent for a long moment. “What do you mean?”
“This is me calling as a friend, not as an Interpol agent.”
“Very well…” She still sounded confused.
Time to be blunt. “How is it going planning the heist with Sofie.”
“The heist? To steal from the Vatican? We haven’t…I don’t actually think it’s possible.”
Andrei sat forward, stomach now churning. “No, I mean stealing the paintings from the house in Belgium.”
“What house in Belgium?”
“Fuck.” Andrei jumped to his feet. "I gave Sofie a dossier on her father. The main thing, the thing I put on top of the stack, was about a house in Belgium. I think her paintings are there.” He quickly ran Colette through the information he'd gathered from the custom’s investigation.
“She didn't tell me any of this. I was waiting for her to call and tell me how it went when she saw you. I haven’t heard from her. I had hoped maybe she was still there.”
“She was here two days ago. I mean…she probably left yesterday since it was the middle of the night when…” Andrei realized he was starting to ramble and stopped, forcing himself to think. “I'll check if and when she booked a flight.”
“Did she tell you that now she has her passport? She was so proud that she got it. She called her father and made him overnight ship it to her from Vatican City. Confronting him made her so nervous that she threw up, but she did it.” The hopeful pride in Colette's voice was hard to hear.
The image of his sweet Sofie, so anxious and scared by a phone call to her father that she had to vomit made him in turn feel ill.
“She told me, but… Fuck. Colette, can you and Landon go to her house and check and see if she's there?”
“I'll call her too.”
“Thanks.” Andrei felt like a moron because for everything he knew about her, he didn't have her damn cell phone number and hadn't been able to find it in any of their databases. “Can you, uh, send me her number?”
“Of course. And I'm sure she's just at home. Hopefully she's painting. I don't know how long she normally goes without painting, but I don't think she's picked up a brush since that night at the gala."
That calmed his jangling nerves. Sofie probably was at home painting. Maybe she hadn't even opened the envelope he gave her. Or maybe she'd flipped through quickly, not realizing that he put the most pertinent piece on top.
“I’ll call you when we get to her place,” Colette assured him.
“Thank you.” Andrei was up and moving too. To check her flight information, he needed to be in the office on a secure connection that could access aviation administration records for the EU.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Colette said, but Andrei heard in her voice the same sinking dread he felt.
The old house was bigger than she’d imagined. There had been no pictures of it, even on Google Maps. She’d expected something modest based on the one description she’d found of the property as a “stone farmhouse.”
Instead of a single-story stone structure in disrepair, this was a three-story stone structure that felt and looked more like a country estate with a well-maintained drive. Off to the side, what looked like an old barn and several smaller buildings were in disrepair, more closely resembling what she’d been expecting of the house as far as condition.
She’d also expected it to be abandoned, but at first glance, it looked too well maintained for that.
After reading the customs report that Andrei had made sure was the first thing she saw, she combed through the rest of the information he provided until she ran across a property deed. From there, she checked the family tree that had also been included. From what she could tell, the owner of the property—her father's sister and the sister's husband, were both still alive, though in their nineties. She didn't imagine they were living here, unless they had help coming in every day.
Sofie hung back, watching from within a clump of thick bushes. Hours passed, but no one showed up.
Finally, she decided to be bold and approached the front door. Though it looked well maintained from a distance, up close, there were spiderwebs in the corners of the windows, dust thick on the panes, and the plants in the pot by the front door were dead.
Still, Sofie knocked and wiped her sweaty palms on her pants. She might be about to meet her aunt and uncle. Pathetic though it may be to think about them that way, given that her father had never truly been a father, some part of her couldn't shake this primal urge to find and hold onto a family.
She knocked again after a few minutes, and when there was still no answer, she decided to peer in the windows.
Most of the windows were newer double glazing, expertly fitted into the old stone frames. That meant that their locks were also the more modern kind. Until Sofie reached the back of the house. There was one small single pane window with the simple lock that Colette had showed her how to pick one wine-soaked night.
Sofie wriggled in delight as she dug into the satchel slung across her body for a set of jewelers' tools, many of which could double as lock pics as she’d discovered.
It took her far too long, and she left one small scrape on the stone sill when her hand slipped, but it would disappear with the next rain.
Sofie tossed her satchel in first, then wriggled in the narrow window, grunting and groaning as she negotiated getting in without also falling on her head.
The landing wasn’t graceful, but at least it didn't result in a concussion.
She climbed to her feet in a small, poorly renovated bathroom and carefully closed the window. Wait, what had Colette said about an exit plan? Maybe she should leave the window open in case she had to make a quick getaway. Then again, given how hard it had been to get in the window, it probably wouldn't be any easier to exit through it.
She waffled for several moments but ended up closing and relocking the window.
Now that she was inside, the excitement had turned to anxiety. This had been fun when she'd been doing it with Colette at a fancy party with champagne everywhere. Her nerves were already on edge after taking her first train trip, then her first time hailing a taxi, all just to get here.
Sofie lingered in the bathroom, taking deep breaths, until she felt both calm enough, and brave enough, to exit.
The house felt still and quiet as she tiptoed from room to room. The bathroom seemed to have been the very last room that hadn't been updated and remodeled. Every other room in the house was beautiful in a timeless way that meant it could have been done twenty years ago or two. The size of the kitchen and the fact that it had an island meant they'd probably had to merge a few rooms to get the square footage for that.
A dining room, office, and library followed the kitchen. There were no photos or mementos to give her an idea of who lived here. Not until she came to the room at the very end of the house.
She wasn't sure what this room would be called. It was almost a conservatory, given that there were large windows on three walls that let in a massive amount of natural light. Two long tables down the middle of the room gave it an almost library-like quality, though if it were up to Sofie, she would much rather sit on the built-in padded bench under one of the large windows.
The ceiling was double height, the thick beams seeming small they were so high above her.
As lovely as this room was, it felt oddly unfinished, as if it hadn't yet found its purpose. Sofie turned to leave and that's when she saw them.
The one interior wall of the room was covered in canvases. From floor to ceiling, arrayed in neat rows and columns.
And she had painted every single one of them.
Sofie pressed her hands to her mouth. She'd expected to find her paintings locked up in crates and boxes somewhere, if she found them at all. Instead, they were on display in this massive room that now felt like a gallery. She walked up to the closest piece, and it felt like she was greeting an old friend.
“They're beautiful.”
Sofie screamed, jumping back from the scene of Hades watching Persephone she’d painted with heavy chiaroscuro like Caravaggio favored.
Sofie whipped around to see her father standing in the doorway.
Noah Visser walked to stand beside her. For many years, he’d seemed ageless, but now…this was an old man. His hair was as white as his collar, and his cassock hung loose on his now-hunched shoulders.
He still used the heavy cane he’d carried for years, but now he seemed to actually need it. The handle was a large marble ball carefully carved with the continents as shown on the Behaim globe. It had made her giggle that the Americas were entirely missing when he first showed it to her.
“Father,” she said, as much in greeting as in acknowledgment that it hadn’t been all bad. There were times he had been a father to her.
Hadn’t he?
She desperately wished she brought some of those articles Agent Baas had given her, because with her father standing beside her, smiling softly as he looked at her paintings, what had seemed so clear before no longer was.
“You are so talented, Sofie. A true gift from God.”
Sofie clutched the strap of her bag, sending all of her tension into her hands where they gripped the strap so her voice stayed steady. “Whose house is this?”
“If you’re here, surely you must know,” her father chided.
“You never told me I had other family. An aunt. Uncle.”
“Isn’t the church, in all its glory, not your family?”
Her cheeks burned and she wished she could scream at him to stop.
“You should not be here,” Noah said when she didn’t respond.
“Why not, my art is here?”
“Safe. On display even. Isn’t that better than leaning against a wall in your studio?”
“Better is where I say it is. I’m the artist. These are mine. Not copies, mine.” She hated that she sounded like a child arguing over a toy or treat instead of piece of her own soul made material with paint and ink.
Noah shook his head in disappointment. “And what do you plan to do with them?”
“What any artist would. Sell them. Have a gallery show. Start a social media account and film myself painting.”
“And what will happen when people see how good you are? When they realize that your brushstrokes are indistinguishable from those of Caravaggio and van Gogh.”
“You mean, what happens if they realize I can paint like van Gogh, see that you are my father, and then remember that you just happened to magically find two previously undiscovered van Goghs. You care only because my art existing might threaten your scheme.”
She wanted to see shame or maybe shock that she'd figured it out. Instead, he only inclined his head.
“Exactly.”
It was too much. All of it, a whole lifetime building to that moment. “Why? Why couldn't you have adopted me and made me a real daughter? Why couldn't you have encouraged me to be a famous painter instead of a forger? Why did you take my paintings and try and pass them off as these lost masterpieces? Are you going to sell them?”
“Sell them? No. The items in the Vatican Apostolic Archive are not for sale.”
“Then why?” She wished she could be calm and cool in this moment, but emotion leaked into her voice. “Why would you take this from me if you aren’t even going to sell them?”
“Because, in future years, if anyone were to ever question one of your forgeries, I will offer these newly discovered pieces as a basis for comparison. The most famous paintings in the world have been cleaned, restored, and cleaned again. But I will show them a pristine van Gogh, preserved because it was forgotten, and that…that will be what van Gogh truly looks like.”
Sofie stared at him. It made a twisted sort of sense, but she still didn’t understand why.
“That might work in the short-term, but longer-term someone will ask questions. Or there will be some new test that will prove they’re too new.”
“And when that happens, all art will be questioned.”
Perhaps he was mad. Perhaps the reason for all of this was that simple.
“Father…that makes no sense.”
“It does, because when they begin to doubt the art that hangs on their walls—and certainly many of them will be the copies you made, their doubt will not be misplaced.” He paused, apparently regathering his train of thought. “We will take it, those beautiful things now deemed worthless. They will be returned to the church, which is where they should always have been.”
Thinking he'd lost his mind might actually be better than this truth.
“Everything you've done is to sow doubt among the art community so that someday they'll think everything is worthless, and give those pieces to the church?”
“Too many of the things in museums are Catholic art. They were created for the church. The church was their patron. The artists themselves were devout."
“What's the point of the church having all these things when you already have more than you could ever display? Vatican City itself isn't even big enough for the museum you’d need to display all the things already in the museum’s archive.”
“Enough, Sofie. They were made for the glory of God and are being used for the greed of man.”
“But I've made copies of paintings with no religious content. Not painted by Catholics. You keep mentioning van Gogh, but only a handful of his works depict anything religious.”
“I said enough.” Noah tapped the metal tip of his cane hard on the stone floor. The sound rang like a shot.
Sofie flinched, curling in on herself, but only for a moment. She was brave and this was an adventure. A terrible, terrifying adventure, but an adventure nonetheless.
“What about the money? People paid you for the paintings I made. Where did that money go?"
“To do good works.”
“To do good works, or did you give it to your sister so she could remodel this house?”
Again, she hoped for a gotcha moment, but Noah just shook his head.
“I did not want you to feel so alone. That's why I let you live in the city where there were people all around. But I feared that the protection I gave you was not enough."
“Protection? The men who came into my home…you sent them."
“That place is not your home anymore. I think it's best you live here now. It will be less convenient for those who wanted to work with you, but I will find an intermediary.”
Sofie shook her head. “I'm not staying here. And I'm not staying in Amsterdam either.” She raised her chin. “I'll keep your secrets, Father. I have to because I now know that you lied and what I've been doing is a crime, even if I never knowingly created something so it could be sold as the original. So I know that if I try to go to the authorities, I will end up in prison.
“But I'm done. From now on, I will only paint for myself. For my own joy.” She looked up at the wall, at the near sum total of her life’s work. “I will come back for these and then I’ll disappear.”
Noah tapped his cane on the floor again, this time twice in rapid succession.
“No, Daughter,” he said kindly. “I’m afraid you won’t.”
The door opened, and three men appeared. There was something terrifyingly familiar in their builds, though this time she could see their faces.
Noah gestured to her with one hand. “Please take my daughter upstairs.”
She still hadn't really believed that it was her father who had sent those men to hurt and scare her. Still doubted that he would do her any real harm, even as they chased her through the house, one punching her in the stomach when they finally caught her. She doubled over on the floor, mouth opening and closing as she desperately tried to get air into her lungs.
“Take her upstairs,” her father said. “I’m sad it has come to this, but I’m glad we prepared.”