Sixteen
Amelia
Van Wyk isn’t there when I wake up. His cuffs are loose, fastened to only one wrist.
It’s only a buckle. Impossible to open with both cuffs on, easy enough with just one.
This is the second pair he’s gifted me. The first I enjoyed destroying before I threw them in the trash. These are going too, but I’ve no doubt he has more.
Maybe he buys them in bulk.
I can’t believe he turned up last night, let himself into my apartment with keys for fuck’s sake, then chained me to my bed and joined me. Naked. Without even waking me, until it was too late.
Then didn’t even fuck me, but just… listened.
In some respects, it was more disturbing than the last visit. I found myself empathizing with him, and that’s dangerous. The man’s a monster.
So why do I find myself fantasizing about him? About what he’s done to me?
Because it’s a way of processing. Because it’s empowering. Because it keeps fiction separate from reality.
It used to be a good excuse. It’s wearing thin, now.
How the hell did he even get keys?
That’s a mystery I can’t answer, but I spend half an hour calling around until I find a locksmith willing to turn up immediately, fitting new locks at an exorbitant emergency rate.
More money I don’t have to fritter away. But if it keeps Van Wyk out, it’s worth every damn cent.
Now I have the weekend, and I’m dreading it. Van Wyk, Serranto, my gallery, the exhibition—thinking of any of them leaves me in a cold sweat.
Focus, Amelia.
I have two days to do nothing but think.
There must be a solution here somewhere.
Monday, I’m in the gallery early, sitting at my desk when Sierra walks in with coffees.
“Morning. Two days to go! So exciting!”
The worst possible greeting. Still, she’s not wrong. Just not for the reasons she thinks.
“Thanks,” I say, accepting my latte.
I should tell her, but I can’t bring myself to. I have no answers.
“You look a little drawn.” She perches on the edge of my desk. “Is it getting to you?”
It’s an effort not to break down in floods of tears. “A bit, I suppose.”
She nods in understanding. “Don’t worry, Ammy. It’ll all turn out just fine.”
With that utterly unlikely prediction, she leaves me to it.
I look back at the list of confirmed attendees open on my screen. Two hundred and twenty-seven, including Jordan Fletcher of Time Out.
They’re all going to walk in here, expecting Amiento and Quek, and all I’ll have is leftover stock. Artists no one’s heard of, work most of this list has already seen, that would stir no interest if I slapped fifty-percent discounts on everything, and made it a bargain sale instead.
With a sigh, I pick up my phone and call the first artist on the list I made late yesterday.
At two days’ notice, I know the best I’m going to get is stuff no one else wants, but I have to try.
It’s a frustrating, hopeless day, and by mid-afternoon I’ve all but given up. I’ve managed to secure four more pieces of work, all from artists that are mediocre at best. The only saving grace is that they are new, but I’m not even sure two of them will arrive in time.
Sierra chooses that moment to walk back in with her usual energy and excitement, and I brace myself for the conversation I have to have.
“We need to talk.” I get in first before she can say something encouraging that I can’t bear to hear.
“But…” She glances at the door. “…Okay.” She leans against the wall, looking at me expectantly.
“Michael Amiento has canceled,” I tell her, hoping it’ll be easier if I just rip off the band-aid.
“Oh. Right.” No other reaction. I was expecting more.
“So has Jeanne Quek,” I add, in as steady a voice as I can muster.
“Okay.” She nods. “Hence the other arrivals?”
I blink. “What arrivals?”
“The shipment that’s just come.”
I’m on my feet. “What shipment?”
“The two vans at the back with about twenty pieces. They just got here. I was coming to let you—”
I’m already walking past her, heading for the receiving area. It’s not even a loading dock, it’s just a service entrance into an alley with barely room for one van, let alone two.
It must be another screwup. Except the last one wasn’t a mistake at all.
Two delivery guys are waiting when I round the corner, both in Crozier uniforms. I can’t help but give them a puzzled look, taking in their usual clipboards along with a folder bulging with papers.
I peer outside, seeing the vans Sierra mentioned.
The doors of one of them are open, a dozen pieces within, packaged carefully in plywood crates.
Four more uniformed men stand around, waiting to work.
“Is this… for here? Or are you collecting?” Maybe they want the Amiento pieces I didn’t hand over last week.
“Delivery for Anderson Gallery,” one of them says, proffering his clipboard. “We need a signature, please.”
I take it in a daze, looking down the manifest. Four pieces by Wolfgang Tillmans. Three by Taryn Simon. Sculptures by Liu Wei and Wangechi Mutu.
This isn’t emerging artist territory, it’s established blue-chip gallery. Gagosian, Pace, David Zwirner level.
My jaw is hanging open, and I close it with a snap. “This is… uh…” A mistake. But my name is on the docket. “Where has this come from?”
“We just deliver it, ma’am.” He raises his folder. “But these are the provenance documents for each work.”
Sierra has followed me, standing a short way back, and I pass her the clipboard then take the larger folder. Of course there’d be provenance for works of this value. I’ve never had to deal with it before—not at the scale I usually work—but Sierra’s good with this stuff.
I open it with fingers that somehow aren’t trembling, because it hasn’t yet sunk in that this can be real.
The first page is a loan agreement for one of the Taryn Simon pieces.
It’s from a private collection for me to sell on their behalf, and take my commission.
One Bastien Fournier—who I’ve never heard of.
The next piece is the same. And the next. I flick to the end of the folder, checking the last. They’re all pieces from the same collection, and I don’t know anything about it.
“I need to… look this over,” I mutter, flicking back to the loan agreement and reading carefully. My commission would be sixty percent. The usual for this sort of thing is forty to fifty. It’s generous beyond measure, and this is a private lender. Those usually work at thirty.
I don’t understand. How has this happened?
“Yes, we were told you might say that,” the other man says. I hadn’t even realized I’d spoken out loud. “We were also given this package.”
I look up. He’s holding out an envelope, bulging with its contents. My name is written in hand on the front, with no address.
I pass Sierra the folder and take the envelope, ripping it open. There’s no note but a small velvet presentation box inside. I take it out, my confusion deepening as I open it up.
Then snap it shut. A rush of nausea climbs up my throat, but it’s quickly tempered by a sense of… relief? Exhilaration? No, fear. But the other emotions are undeniably present.
Dear god, Van Wyk really is insane. “Uh… I need a moment in my office.” My voice wavers, and I clear my throat and try again. “Sierra, would you please start processing all of this?”
“Of course, Amelia.”
“Ma’am, the signature?”
“Oh, yes.” I accept his pen, scrawl my name on the docket with trembling fingers, and hand it back. Then I turn and walk away, my heart racing, my breaths sharp and rapid.
I don’t make it to my office before I open the box again. Just around the corner is enough. Out of sight.
The contents are what they were the first time: resting in the purple silk is a severed finger with a signet ring I’ve seen before.
It’s Serranto’s, there’s no mistaking it.
And it’s his finger—short, fat, blood under the nail.
The other end isn’t a clean, surgical cut; the skin is pulled slightly back, the white of the bone visible in the center.
Horror and a terrible sense of perverse satisfaction slither through me, intertwining and mixing until I don’t know which takes precedence.
I briefly shut my eyes, fighting back a renewed wave of bile.
I’m not sure insane is a strong enough word to describe this. Surreal fits better.
I’m standing in my gallery, where a collection of priceless art just showed up. And, with it, the finger of the blackmailing bastard who nearly brought my life to ruin. I already know who’s responsible for all this; it can only be one man.
The single card resting beneath the finger confirms it. It’s signed LVW.
My monster has saved my gallery.
I can’t accept this. Can I?
Fuck it.
Yes, yes I can.