Nathan
The door to the penthouse slides shut, the lock clicking into place like the cocking of a hammer. I stand in the private hallway for a moment, the echo of her final question hanging in the air.
*What if I say no?*
My answer was a threat. A necessity. But the question itself… it was not born of hysterics. It was born of logic. A calculated inquiry into her options.
I turn and walk down the hall, my footsteps silent on the thick carpeting. My security chief, Dimitri, is waiting for me by the elevator. His face is a granite mask, but I can see the tension in his jaw. He knows.
“The car is ready,” he says, his voice a low rumble.
“Cancel it.” I don’t look at him. I stare at the brushed steel of the elevator doors. “Tell me again how this happened.”
“Sir, the target profile was a match. Height, hair color, general build. She was walking on the specified route, at the specified time.” Dimitri’s voice is clipped, professional. He is reporting a mechanical failure, not a catastrophic human error.
“General build?” I finally turn to face him. I keep my voice quiet. A shout is a loss of control. This quiet is far more terrifying, and he knows it. “Lorenzo Rossi’s daughter spends her afternoons with a personal trainer and her evenings at charity galas. My men grabbed a graduate student carrying a bag of library books. Explain the discrepancy.”
“It was dark. Raining. A mistake was made.”
“A mistake,” I repeat the word, letting it taste like poison. “You bring me a civilian. A nobody. You put her in my penthouse, show her my face, and you call it a ‘mistake’.”
“We are prepared to rectify it.”
I know what ‘rectify’ means. A quiet disposal. A body that never surfaces. It is the logical, clean solution. It is also impossible.
“No.” The word is final.
Dimitri’s composure cracks for a fraction of a second. A flicker of surprise. “Sir? She is a witness.”
“She is an innocent,” I correct him. “My rules on that are not flexible. You know this.”
“Of course. But the risk…”
“The risk is my problem to manage. Your problem is the team that failed. I want them gone. Not dead. I want them disgraced and sent so far away they forget what this city looks like.”
“It will be done.”
“And Dimitri,” I add, as the elevator arrives with a soft chime. “Find out everything there is to know about Eva Chandler. Her family, her friends, her professors, her favorite brand of coffee. I want to know what she dreams about at night. I want it on my desk in one hour.”
He nods, his face grim. “Yes, sir.”
I step into the elevator alone. The ride down to my own residence, two floors below, is silent. My mind is a storm. The plan was simple, brutal in its elegance. Squeeze Lorenzo Rossi by taking his only daughter, Isabella. Force his hand, make him cede control of the southern shipping ports. A move that would have crippled his empire and cemented my own.
Instead, I have Eva Chandler. An art history student.
In my office, I pour a glass of whiskey, the amber liquid catching the light. I don’t drink it. I just hold the heavy crystal tumbler, the cold seeping into my palm. On the large screen that dominates one wall, I pull up the security feed from the penthouse suite. One-way, of course. She has no idea she’s being watched.
She is not crying. She is not screaming or throwing things. She is pacing. She walks the length of the living area, her arms crossed, her brow furrowed in concentration. She is not a victim succumbing to fear. She is a strategist trapped behind enemy lines, assessing her cage.
She stops in front of the large abstract painting she analyzed for me. She tilts her head, her gaze sharp, critical. Even now, in this impossible situation, the scholar in her is working. She sees the world as a series of details, of textures and compositions to be understood.
Her quiet strength is a strange, magnetic force. Isabella Rossi would have been a screaming, crying mess. She would have been a pawn, easily manipulated. This woman… Eva… is a different creature entirely. She is a variable I had not anticipated.
A file notification pings on my screen. Dimitri. Already. I open it. Her life is laid out in cold, digital lines. Eva Chandler, 26. Parents in Ohio, retired. No siblings. Top of her class. A mountain of student debt. A single, glowing recommendation from a renowned art conservationist she interned with. The report from her professor, Albright, is dismissive, calling her theories ‘unorthodox’ but her methods ‘obsessively meticulous’.
Obsessively meticulous. The words snag in my mind.
I minimize her file and pull up another. This one contains a single, high-resolution image of a painting. ‘The Lost Star of St. Petersburg’. A rumored masterpiece by a reclusive 18th-century master, lost for two hundred years. It is the centerpiece of a private auction next week. An auction Lorenzo Rossi has staked his reputation and a significant portion of his liquid assets on winning.
My plan was to let him win. Let him bankrupt himself acquiring what my sources tell me is a brilliant fake. A forgery so perfect it has already fooled the world’s foremost expert, a man named Julian Croft. Rossi believes acquiring the Lost Star will give him the prestige to secure new lines of credit, new investors. I know it will be the final nail in his coffin.
I stare at the image of the painting. The detail is exquisite. The brushwork, the craquelure of the aged oils. It is perfect.
Too perfect.
I look from the painting on my screen to the live feed of the woman in my penthouse. She is now in the kitchen, examining the high-end espresso machine as if it’s an artifact in a museum.
*My specialization is in pigment analysis and the detection of nineteenth-century forgeries.*
Her voice in my memory is clear, confident.
*My thesis is on identifying fakes by analyzing microscopic flaws in the canvas weave, a technique most authenticators overlook.*
An idea begins to form. It is reckless. It is unorthodox. It borders on insanity.
To trust a civilian. To bring an unknown quantity into the most delicate and critical business deal of my career. It violates every rule of my world.
But letting her go is a death sentence for my operations. Killing her is a death sentence for my soul. Keeping her locked away indefinitely is just a slow execution, and a waste.
Dimitri’s voice comes through the intercom. “Sir? The arrangements for the team have been made.”
“Good.”
“And for the… witness?” he asks, his hesitation clear.
I look at the screen. Eva has found a notepad and pen left on a counter. She is sitting on a barstool, sketching. Not doodling. She is drawing the skyline, her lines quick and precise. She is not waiting to be rescued. She is documenting. She is working.
What is more valuable? The daughter of my enemy, a predictable leverage point? Or an expert with a niche skill, an ‘obsessively meticulous’ mind that sees what others miss? My men made a mistake. They brought me the wrong woman.
Or maybe, for the first time in their careers, they brought me exactly the right one.
“The witness is no longer a witness, Dimitri,” I say, my eyes fixed on the screen.
“Sir?”
“She is a consultant.”
The silence on the other end of the line is profound. I can picture Dimitri’s confusion, his disbelief.
“We are moving her to the residence wing,” I continue, the plan solidifying with every word. “Give her a suite on this floor. Full access to my library and the digital art archives. Total comfort. But under no circumstances is she to leave. Double the security on this floor.”
“You are bringing her… here?”
“She is an asset, Dimitri. And I am about to put her to work.”
I end the call before he can voice another objection. The decision is made. It is a gamble of the highest order. Placing my trust, and the fate of my empire, in the hands of a stranger I stole from the street.
On the screen, Eva Chandler sets down her pen. She looks toward the door of the penthouse, as if she can feel the change in her own fate. For the first time, a flicker of something raw crosses her face. Not fear. Resolve.
This is a terrible idea.
It is also the most brilliant one I have ever had.
