Chapter 8 - Twelve Percent
The board meeting began at nine and stopped pretending to be civilized by nine-twelve.
Matteo sat at the head of the table even though Cassian was chairman.
Ara noticed.
Power liked chairs almost as much as it liked signatures.
She took the seat opposite him.
Cassian sat to her right.
Not speaking for her.
That mattered.
Simone distributed copies of Marco’s vested share certificate, Lorenzo’s notarized acknowledgment, the termination memo, and proof the debt had been fabricated.
Matteo read none of them.
He already knew what they said.
“This is extortion.”
Ara smiled.
“By paperwork?”
“You appear after years of silence and suddenly claim twelve percent.”
“I was busy thinking my father owed your friends three hundred and forty thousand euros.”
Matteo looked toward Cassian.
“You brought a waitress into a corporate dispute.”
Ara answered before he could.
“I restore paintings in the morning. I serve champagne at night. Today I own twelve percent.”
One director coughed to hide a laugh.
Matteo’s eyes cooled.
“You think that share makes you one of us?”
“No.”
Ara leaned back.
“That is the best part.”
Cassian looked at the table.
Definitely hiding a smile.
The agenda contained three votes.
First: suspend private auctions pending provenance review.
Second: remove Matteo from operational control.
Third: establish an independent restitution fund financed by the sale of disputed assets and voluntary capital contributions.
Ara had enough shares to swing the result.
That was why Matteo had spent months trying to control her before she knew she mattered.
The first vote passed.
The second tied.
Ara held the deciding proxy.
Matteo stared at her.
“Your father and I were friends.”
“No.”
“He sat at my table.”
“So did I when I catered weddings. That does not make me family.”
“He needed us.”
“He feared you.”
Matteo’s expression changed.
“Marco was weak.”
Cassian’s hand tightened.
Ara answered.
“My father was flawed. There is a difference.”
She cast her vote.
Matteo was removed.
For the first time, his calm broke.
He stood.
“You stupid girl.”
Victor moved toward the door.
Matteo pointed at Cassian.
“You think she saved you? She will turn this company into a museum charity while competitors carve up everything your father built.”
Cassian looked at his uncle.
“Maybe some things should be carved up.”
“This family gave you everything.”
“No.”
Cassian’s voice was quiet.
“This family taught me to confuse possession with loyalty.”
Ara looked at him.
He continued.
“I’m done paying that tuition.”
Matteo grabbed the edge of the table.
“You will regret this.”
Simone said, “That may be difficult from the courthouse.”
Two investigators entered.
Matteo’s face changed.
The art-crime unit had connected him to forged provenance records, fraudulent debt assignments, and instructions sent to the men who broke into Marco’s workshop—not through the spoofed message Carla created, but through separate payment records.
Carla had lied.
Matteo had also been guilty.
Again, truth refused to become simple.
Matteo was taken for questioning.
Not dragged away dramatically.
No instant conviction.
Just lawyers, evidence, and consequences beginning.
The third vote passed unanimously.
Even directors who hated it understood the alternative was public collapse.
Afterward Ara stood alone in the ballroom.
The same room.
Same chandeliers.
Same polished floor.
No auction.
No tray.
Cassian approached.
“You won.”
“No.”
“You removed Matteo.”
“I cast one vote.”
“That is how boards work.”
Ara looked around.
“I don’t want to become addicted to this.”
“To what?”
“Rooms changing when I speak.”
Cassian understood.
“Yes.”
“Do you?”
He smiled sadly.
“I spent twenty years addicted to it.”
Ara looked at him.
“What are you going to do with the criminal side of your family?”
His smile vanished.
There it was.
The question nobody in the art world wanted to ask because Cassian had been useful.
He controlled men who hurt people.
He enforced debts.
He ran businesses built partly on fear.
Stopping Revich did not turn him into a good man.
“I’m dismantling it,” he said.
Ara stared.
“That easy?”
“No.”
“People will come after you.”
“Yes.”
“You could be charged.”
“Yes.”
“You’re still doing it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Cassian looked toward the auction platform.
“Because I heard you talk about Marco.”
Ara waited.
“You said truth that only protects you is not truth.”
His voice lowered.
“I have spent years telling myself I was different from men like Revich because I had rules.”
“Rules?”
“No trafficking. No drugs near schools. No violence without approval.”
Ara’s stomach tightened.
He did not romanticize it.
Good.
“Still violence,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Still fear.”
“Yes.”
“Still people paying because they’re scared.”
“Yes.”
She looked at him for a long time.
“What happens now?”
“I cooperate where I can. I separate legal businesses. I accept what comes.”
Ara thought of her father.
Responsibility, not innocence.
“Then do that.”
“You make everything sound simple.”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“I make the sentence simple. The life after it is your problem.”
He laughed.
That evening Sofia asked Ara to dinner.
Ara nearly refused.
Then went.
Not because she forgave her mother.
Because she wanted to know whether forgiveness might one day be possible.
They ate in a quiet trattoria.
Sofia told her small things.
Marco hated pears.
Ara had never known.
Sofia once broke her wrist dancing on a table in Florence.
Ara definitely had not known.
Marco used to sing badly when nervous.
That she knew.
They cried over the same memory.
At the end, Sofia said, “I loved you every day.”
Ara looked at her.
“I needed you some of those days.”
Sofia closed her eyes.
“I know.”
Ara did not say it was okay.
It was not.
But she agreed to breakfast next week.
That was enough.
Two days later, Simone confirmed Ara’s twelve-percent ownership.
The stake was worth far more than €340,000.
Ara’s first instinct was to sell.
Then she stopped.
Choice.
Finally.
Her choice.
She created a voting trust for most of the shares so no romantic relationship with Cassian could merge their control.
Cassian looked personally insulted.
“You think I would try to use your shares?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because systems should not depend on whether someone is trustworthy.”
He stared.
Then smiled.
“Your father would have liked that.”
Ara’s chest tightened.
“Maybe.”
The restitution fund began contacting families.
Lot 27—the Bellini panel—returned to Emilia under a long-term settlement after legal review.
Cassian lost seven million euros on the purchase.
Ara felt terrible.
For almost six minutes.
Then Victor brought a final packet recovered from Revich’s safe.
Inside was a list of twenty-three artworks.
Nineteen were accounted for.
Four were not.
One line made Ara stop.
VOSS COLLECTION — PORTRAIT OF A GIRL IN BLUE — NEW YORK.
She frowned.
“We never had a collection.”
Cassian looked at the photograph attached.
A young girl.
Dark hair.
Hazel eyes.
Ara’s face.
Painted when she was about eight.
At the bottom was Marco’s handwriting.
NOT FOR SALE. NEVER WAS.
Ara stared.
Someone had stolen more than her father’s records.
May you like
They had stolen a piece of her childhood.
And it was sitting somewhere in New York under someone else’s name.
