Page 34 of His Untouchable Heart

I opened the first dossier, scanning the verification trail. A watercolor believed to be lost in Belgium during the Nazi occupation. I smiled as I read the dossier.“Memory of Light”was painted in 1937 by Belgian watercolorist Elise Van Der Meer, known for her delicate use of light and quiet domestic scenes. The painting, believed to depict the view from her grandmother’s kitchen window in Leuven, was part of a private family collection confiscated during the Nazi occupation. It hadn’t been seen publicly since 1942 until it resurfaced in a discreet estate sale catalog in Zurich.

I made a note for Wilma:Verify the signatures with certified copies.

The second piece, a stolen engraving that had once belonged to a Viennese historian, took nearly a year to trace. The third—an oil portrait—was still under internal legal review, but all signs pointed to approval with a few exceptions. I made another note.

Verify the bank record that indicates the funds exchanged for the most recent purchases.

This was the part I liked best: the tipping point, the moment when years of fog cleared, and a direct line formed from the past to the present.

I felt…good. Steady. Focused. Even a little proud. Not because of the cases themselves but because I knew how much work had gone into each one. How many paintings we’d verified, documents we’d sifted through, and threads we’d followed until something—finally—held.

For a moment, everything else faded away. The judge. Curtain’s game.

None of it mattered here, not in this space.

Here, we were still doing good.

I moved on to the second dossier, already mentally lining up the next steps, when a new email slid into my inbox. It had no subject line, no sender name, and just a string of numbers and dashes for an address—disposable and untraceable.

My gut clenched.

I clicked it open.

The body of the email was blank, but the image attachment loaded immediately. It was a grainy, slightly tilted photo. The color balance was off, but the content was unmistakable: me, Gabrielle, framed in the glow of a gallery lamp. My hand was at the small of her back. Her bare legs were around my waist. My head was thrown back in pure ecstasy.

The angle—low, from the gallery steps—told me everything I needed to know. He’d taken it that morning when we were too wrapped up in our desire to care that someone could be watching.

A line of text followed beneath the image:

If you try to stop your girlfriend from carrying out my request, I’ll make sure this goes viral. You’ll lose your job, your credibility, and what’s left of your precious reputation.

I leaned back in my chair, the cheap plastic armrests creaking beneath me.

There it was.

The second move.

Frank Curtain wasn’t bluffing. He never bluffed. He was the kind of man who collected leverage like currency, who waited for people to bury themselves just deep enough, then handed them a shovel to finish the job.

But this time, he’d miscalculated.

I wasn’t ashamed of Gabrielle. And I wasn’t hiding anymore. Not from her. I’d told her the truth about my past, about who I was, and what I’d done to get here. The worst parts. The hardest parts. And she’d stayed, even promised to help me work through my issues from losing Charlotte.

So no—there was no guilt now.

Only fury.

My pulse hammered against my ribs as I closed the photo. I hadn’t deleted the email yet. I flagged it, encrypted a copy, and moved it into a locked folder under a nondescript file name. If Curtain wanted to play games, fine. But I’d been trained to anticipate every move on the board. Even the ones that hadn’t been made yet.

The bastard had made his move to Gabrielle and now to me. And now we needed to make ours.

Leaving my desk behind, I couldn't bear the charade of poring over paperwork when the real challenge loomed elsewhere. With a decisive click, I shut my laptop, snatched up my suit jacket, and made a beeline for the exit.

"You've got everything under control, Wilma," I breezed past her station with a casual smile. "No need to trouble yourself with arranging my trip back to Miami. I'll take care of everything. You've got plenty on your plate here as it is."

"Thank you, Anthony. Have a safe journey," Wilma replied, lifting her gaze from the computer screen with a genuine warmth in her eyes.

Returning to the cabin, the morning haze had dissipated, unveiling a crisp, unyielding daylight that laid bare every detail. Gabrielle, fresh from the shower and wrapped in a robe, sat perched on a stool at the kitchen island. Her legs crossed, she cradled a steaming mug in her hands. As I entered and closed the door behind me, she glanced up.

---