Page 12 of Silence and Surrender

“My reputation?” I blinked, wondering for a split second if she was talking about my not-so-secret affairs.

“Mm. The man who makes problems disappear. Who keeps the bank’s sordid secrets.” Another measured sip. In the low light, I could see the tension she carried in her shoulders, betraying her composed exterior. “Tell me, when you saw those shipping manifests, what bothered you more, the fraudulent art purchases or the irregularities in the routing?”

I set my glass down, studying the wall to my left. Beside me, a portrait of some long-dead aristocrat stared down with painted disapproval. I was used to being the one who asked uncomfortable questions, who controlled the flow of information. Isabella Delacroix had quite neatly reversed our roles, and I didn’t like it.

“You think there’s more to this than art fraud.”

“I know there is.” She reached for her briefcase—it was expensive and stylish, like everything else about her professional presentation. She withdrew a single file with careful precision, the kind of methodical movement I recognized from years of handling sensitive documents. “Look at the temperature controls on these shipments. The weight distributions. The routing through specific ports.”

I studied the documents, forcing myself to focus on the numbers rather than my growing discomfort with the situation. The numbers didn’t make sense, not for art transport. But for something else...the implications made my legal training scream warnings. “What exactly are you suggesting?”

“I’m not suggesting anything yet.” She took the file back, her movements deliberate. “I’m seeing how you react to inconsistencies. To patterns that don’t quite add up.”

“Testing me?”

“Naturally.” A slight lift of her eyebrows. “Would you trust you, in my position, Mr. Moreau?”

She had a point. Outside, London’s traffic hummed against the windows, a steady rhythm that matched the growing tension in the room. The fireplace in the corner popped and hissed, throwing a spark towards the expensive rug every once in a while. I watched a particularly large spark extinguish just as it reached the ground, then turned back to her.

“So, what now?”

“Now,” she said, “you tell me if you’re willing to look deeper. To ask questions that might have very uncomfortable answers.” The light caught her expression—not mysterious or calculating, just worried. Genuinely worried.

I continued studying her face, trying to read past the stoic mask. She never appeared vulnerable or emotional; she was used to operating in worlds where precision mattered and women had to be as tough, if not tougher, than men to survive. Where mistakes could cost millions. “And if I am?”

“Then we continue this conversation. If not...” She shrugged slightly. “Then we finish our drinks, go our separate ways, and pretend this meeting never happened.”

“While you investigate on your own?”

“I’d prefer not to.”

The weight of what she wasn’t saying hung between us, heavy as the aristocratic atmosphere of Brooks’s. Whatever she’d discovered, she needed help, and my help specifically. But she wasn’t going to show her full hand until she was sure of me.

Smart.

Irritating, but smart.

Like everything about her.

I swirled the cognac in my glass, buying time to think. The bank paid me incredibly well to handle their problems discreetly, to make sure certain questions never got asked. Isabella Delacroix was nothing but questions, exacting, troubling questions wrapped in professional competence and an elegant beauty she wore like a mantle.

Through the window, street lights blurred in the mist as the rain let up. We sat in silence, two colleagues on opposite sides of a line neither of us had fully drawn yet. She waited patiently while I weighed my loyalty of serving the board against the growing certainty that something was very wrong at Devereux Private Bank.

Finally, I set my glass down. “Show me what you have. All of it.”

Her smile this time was different, smaller, but somehow more real. Earnest. “Not yet, Mr. Moreau. Not quite yet.”

Smart woman indeed. And possibly the most frustratingly thorough art expert I’d ever encountered in a skirt suit.

Chapter Eight

Isabella

I sat in my apartment, staring at the file on my laptop. Shipping manifest AQ-2878: The Museum of Modern Art’sWater Lilies. Document after document detailed its journey from New York to London, its multimillion-euro price tag, and its carefully controlled transport conditions.

One small problem: I’d been at MoMA last week. The original Monet was still there.

My fingers traced over the documents, gliding past the weight specifications, temperature controls, customs forms.

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