Page 58 of Sweet Animosity

I gave him a mock salute before getting out of the car.

How hard could it be to find five stupid paintings?

It wasn’t like he could roll them up and stick them in a cupboard somewhere.

Technically, with the real Russian Mona Lisa accounted for, all five of my forgeries were worth nothing, not even on the black market.

So it wasn’t like they truly needed to be kept under lock and key.

I lifted the last painting on the wall in Var’s office to check for a wall safe.

Nothing.

He would be back from his meeting at any moment.

A floor vault.

Maybe Var had one just like Abakar. Clearly Var knew where to look for the paintings, and not many people had the money or resources for a floor vault, so perhaps he knew because he owned one himself?

I stomped on the carpet where I was standing. Solid.

I took a few steps and stomped again.

Still nothing.

A few steps more and another stomp.

“What are you doing?”

I screamed as I grasped my chest.

Var was standing on the threshold.

“I was… I was… um… breaking in my new shoes!”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, they were a little tight and so the best way to break them in is to stomp around on the carpet.”

There was no freaking way he was going to buy that.

Var shrugged and walked past me. “Whatever. Close the door on your way out.”

As I walked past him, his phone rang. I grasped the doorknob and made a show of closing it… just very slowly.

With his back turned, he didn’t even notice me.

“No. No word on the forger yet. Did you pull the Masaccio from the German auction?”

Aw, they found the Masaccio. I liked that one. I’d forged what looked like an artist’s sketch of his masterpiece Madonna and Child with St. Anne. Collectors loved to peek behind the curtains and peer in at an artist’s method through sketches like that. It would fetch as much as a painting, but it would also not be put to the same level of scrutiny.

“I know the Triad are pissed. I’ll call Haoyo and smooth things over.”

The Triad as in the extremely dangerous Chinese Triad gang?

“They need to understand that all operations are paused until I take care of the forger.”

Take care of the forger?

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