“How much are you making off of this?” I asked the slimy authenticator. “More than ten percent, I’d bet?”
Caulfield moistened his lips, clearly less comfortable with this whole setup than he was pretending to be. “It would be easier, Grace, if you accepted Mr. Kessler’s offer.”
Easier forhim, maybe.
Didi had held it for Marcel Dubois through a world war and eighty years of silence, and I wouldn’t break that chain because a rich man waved a number at me, no matter how big the number was. “Why don’t you buy it from Henri?”
Kessler’s jaw tightened. “Mr. Richter approached him in Zurich, and Mr. Dubois made it abundantly clear he would not sell it to me.”
“So you needmysignature because you can’t get his.”
“I need your signature because the egg was in your possession. The provenance chain requires?—”
“You need it to be a real sale, don’t you? A willing one?”
It all made sense. He needed a legitimate sale because the collection wasaboutlegitimacy. It was about proving hisbloodline and his claim. A coerced transfer could be challenged, and a challenged sale wouldn’t prove anything at all. “If you could just take the egg, you would have. You need me tochoosethis.”
Kessler was polished and pleasant, but both of those qualities would only last so long. Heneededme to say yes, and he couldn’t make me.
You have power here, Grace.
For the first time since Dmitry Ivanov showed up in my café, I was in the driver’s seat. Or maybe I always had been and simply didn’t know it. Kessler had the guards, the locked doors, and the money, but he couldn’t get what he wanted without my cooperation.
“No,” I said.
Kessler marched to the desk and took the pen from Caulfield. “I’d encourage you to think carefully about?—”
“I have thought about it. The answer is no.”
He held my gaze. The pleasant mask didn’t drop, but it thinned enough to show his desperation, which forty million dollars and a castle full of artifacts would never fix.
Something inside me softened. Not from pity, but from the image of a boy on the floor beside his grandmother’s chair. He’d believed her stories and had spent forty years trying to turn the belief into reality.
But I wasn’t going to hand his grandmother back to him at the expense of my own grandmother’s promise.
Didi hadn’t needed anyone’s permission to be who she was. She’d been Delphine, a spy who was brave enough to smuggle that treasure out of France.Andshe’d been the grandmother who’d told stories and braided my hair before school. She hadn’t needed to prove any of it. She justwas.
I wasn’t Didi. But I was her granddaughter. And goddammit, I would be as strong as she was.
Kessler studied me for a long moment. “You’re making a mistake.”
“Maybe. But it’s mine to make.”
“You’ll have time to reconsider.” He placed the pen gently back onto the desk. “I’m a patient man, Ms. Laurent. I’ve waited decades to find this egg. I can wait a few days more.” He nodded to Richter. “Take her back to?—”
A guard appeared in the doorway and crossed to Kessler. He leaned close and whispered something I couldn’t hear.
Kessler’s lip curled. Then, very quietly: “How many?”
Another whisper.
“It would appear we have visitors.” Kessler smoothed his jacket, adjusted his cuffs, and turned to Richter. “Take Ms. Laurent to the wine cellar.”
Chapter 35
Galahad
The police carsturned onto the main road and disappeared. Their taillights faded from the tree line, and my jaw was so tight my back teeth ached. Forty minutes. They’d been inside Werner Kessler’s estate for forty minutes, and they were driving away without her.
