5. Rafe #3
“They may also attempt to drag out negotiations until the legal cost becomes part of their leverage.”
I held her gaze. “That would be an error on their part.”
A brief silence followed. Then Moira coughed into her hand, very politely disguising what I suspected was amusement.
The lacrosse attorney’s mouth moved at one corner.
Helena, to her credit, didn’t smile. “Noted.”
We spent another half hour on possible approaches.
Demand letters with more teeth, and if that failed, reaching out to trustees.
Pressure points within the museums’ governance structures.
Using publicity as a threat if needed. The auction route for the shrine mirror would proceed separately; that, everyone agreed, was the most straightforward of the three identified pieces, though “straightforward” in the art world still involved enough money and ego to fuel minor wars.
By the end of it, I knew two things.
First, they were good.
Second, they had correctly concluded I wasn’t interested in being soothed.
Helena closed the file. “We’ll take the case.”
Something in my chest eased with such abruptness that I disliked it on principle.
“Good,” I said.
Her expression didn’t change. “Moira will handle day-to-day coordination with support from our restitution and family law teams. We’ll move quickly.”
Moira gathered her notes. “We’ll have engagement paperwork to you this afternoon, and I’d like to begin the formal document review tomorrow, if possible.”
“That is possible.”
She nodded. “Excellent.”
The meeting concluded with handshakes, assurances, and the subtle mutual acknowledgment that money, grief, and expertise had entered into a professional agreement and would now have to make the best of one another.
Moira walked me toward the elevators.
“Thank you for coming in,” she said. “I know these matters can be… difficult.”
There was enough tact in the pause before difficult that I didn’t resent it. “They are what they are.”
“Yes,” she said. “Still.”
We had just rounded the corner into the open bullpen outside the conference suites when I heard singing. The communal sort inflicted on colleagues in the name of affection and sugar.
“Happy birthday to you?—”
I looked up, spotting a small cluster of people near one of the copy rooms: a broad-faced older man in shirtsleeves looking mildly trapped, a very tall, alarmingly narrow-framed young man holding a grocery-store cupcake with a single candle shoved into the frosting, and a woman standing beside him with two more cupcakes on a cardboard tray.
She was young. Mid-twenties, perhaps. Pretty in a way I registered only generally at first because what struck me before her looks was brightness.
She was wearing office clothes that had clearly been assembled with intention rather than money, and she was smiling wholeheartedly, which told me she’d probably been the one who organized the impromptu celebration in the first place.
I might have kept walking.
I should’ve kept walking.
Then she turned her head as she laughed at something the older man said, and the chain at her throat shifted against her skin.
My mind refused the evidence my own eyes were seeing.
The song went on around me, suddenly distant and unbearable.
The pendant resting just below her collarbone was dark with age, scorched on one side, unmistakable in shape even from several yards away.
I froze.
Moira took one more step before realizing I was no longer beside her. “Mr. Virelli?”
I barely heard her.
The necklace.
It couldn’t be. It absolutely couldn’t be, because I’d been looking for years.
The surviving descriptions were inconsistent, and the thing had vanished before my mother was born.
The odds of finding it here—here, under the fluorescent lights in a midtown law firm—were so ridiculous they insulted probability itself.
And yet…
I knew the irregular darkening near the upper left edge where fire had kissed it. I knew, with the cold instantaneous certainty of recognition, that I was looking at one of the two missing heirlooms that had thus far eluded every search, every inquiry, every paid expert and archive request.
My grandmother had worn it.
“Mr. Virelli?” Moira said again, sharper now.
I walked away from her.
I heard my name, followed by a polite but increasingly concerned “sir?” from someone else.
None of it mattered. All that mattered was the necklace and the woman wearing it as if it were merely jewelry, as if the thing hadn’t crossed generations, continents, war, loss, and fire to arrive—somehow, impossibly—at her throat.
I got close enough that there could be no mistake.
The woman looked up. Her smile faltered as I stepped directly into the cluster.
The tall young man blinked at me. The older man still held his cupcake. The candle guttered once in the office air.
I heard myself speak before I’d chosen the words. “Return it.”
The woman stared at me.
I stared right back at the necklace. Her hand instinctively moved toward it, confusion gathering in her face.
Then, distantly, the rest of the room seemed to remember it existed and began moving toward us.