Chapter 7 - He Wasn't Following Me for the Dress
The storage facility lights returned thirty seconds later.
No gunfire.
No masked attacker.
Just a broken breaker box and a rear exit standing open.
Dominic found fresh tire marks outside.
Roman found something worse.
The lock on Unit 314 had been photographed.
A tiny adhesive camera sat above the frame, no bigger than a button.
Someone had been waiting to see when I returned.
I stood beside Roman in the parking lot while Dominic’s team swept my car.
“You knew I was being followed before the studio break-in,” I said.
Roman looked at me.
He did not deny it.
Anger arrived immediately.
“How long?”
“Since the gallery.”
“Since when at the gallery?”
“Before your dress tore.”
The answer hit harder than I expected.
I folded my arms.
“Explain.”
Roman glanced toward his security team, then guided me several feet away—not touching me, just moving far enough that the others could not easily hear.
“I saw Bellandi watching you.”
“Victor?”
“Yes.”
“He hired me.”
“I know.”
“People watch employees.”
“Not like that.”
I stared at him.
“You followed me because he was watching me?”
“I had Dominic check who you were.”
“That is not better.”
“No.”
At least he knew.
Roman continued.
“Bellandi left the gallery twenty minutes before you did. One of Moretti’s men was waiting across the street.”
“You saw him?”
“Yes.”
“And you said nothing.”
“You did not know me.”
“I still don’t.”
His jaw tightened.
“Fair.”
I looked away.
Traffic moved on the expressway above us.
For days, I had built one version of the night in my head.
My dress tore.
Roman saw me.
He came downstairs.
Something unexpected passed between us.
That was true.
But it was not the whole truth.
He had already been watching because danger had entered the room before I noticed.
“So the dress was irrelevant.”
Roman’s eyes met mine.
“No.”
I waited.
He seemed almost annoyed with himself.
“The dress was not why I noticed you.”
“But?”
His gaze dropped for one second, then returned to my face.
“It made forgetting you difficult.”
Heat rose into my cheeks despite everything.
I hated that.
I hated more that he saw it.
“Terrible timing,” I said.
“Yes.”
Dominic approached.
“Car is clean.”
Roman nodded.
“We leave.”
I looked at the storage unit.
“My father’s things.”
“We move them.”
“Where?”
“My secure archive.”
“You are not taking my father’s entire life.”
“I am keeping it from men who planted a camera outside the door.”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
“Fine.”
Roman almost smiled.
“That sounded painful.”
“It was.”
Back at the penthouse, I spread the copied ledger page across the dining table.
Roman had brought in a forensic accountant named Mara Chen, a woman with blunt bangs and no visible fear of anyone in the room.
She examined the numbers for twenty minutes.
“These are not art sales,” she said.
“What are they?” I asked.
“Layered transfers. The art values are cover. See the shipment IDs? Each corresponds to an insurance value, then a secondary payment routed through shipping subsidiaries.”
Roman leaned over the page.
“Cash?”
“Some. Maybe weapons. Maybe narcotics. Depends on what the secondary codes mean.”
She tapped the initials.
“V.B. appears on every transfer.”
Victor Bellandi.
My employer.
My stomach tightened.
“Could he have hired me because of my father?”
Roman answered before Mara could.
“Yes.”
The certainty frightened me.
“Why now?”
“Because the Valetti resurfaced.”
“So he knew the hidden record might still be inside the frame.”
“Yes.”
“And he put me on the restoration because my father built the frame.”
“Probably hoping you would find something and reveal where Elias hid the rest.”
I sat back.
Every compliment Victor had given me changed shape.
Your hands are precise.
You have your father’s eye.
I trust you with old things.
He had not been mentoring me.
He had been searching through me.
Mara pointed to another code.
“S.C.”
Roman’s face went still.
“Sofia Costa,” I said.
He nodded.
“What if those are not payments she approved?” Mara asked.
Roman looked at her.
“What else?”
“Internal audit references. Maybe she was marking transactions.”
I leaned closer.
“Sofia could have been building her own ledger.”
“Yes.”
Roman stood.
“Where would she keep it?”
Dominic answered from the doorway.
“She had an office at the burned warehouse.”
Roman looked at him.
“It was cleared.”
“After the fire.”
I thought about the second set of supports in the shipping crate.
“Maybe she did what my father did.”
Roman turned to me.
“Used the art.”
“Yes.”
“The missing second painting?”
“Maybe it is not valuable because of who painted it. Maybe it is valuable because of what Sofia put inside it.”
No one spoke.
Then Roman’s phone vibrated.
A photograph appeared on the screen.
He showed it to me.
A painting leaned against a concrete wall.
Small landscape.
Dark river.
No frame.
A sheet of paper beside it held a handwritten message.
BRING ELIAS REED’S COPY.
MIDNIGHT.
COME WITH THE RESTORER.
I read it once.
Then again.
Roman took the phone back.
“No.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“You are not going.”
“Roman—”
“No.”
I stood.
“They already know who I am. Hiding in your apartment does not erase that.”
“It keeps you breathing.”
“And what happens if they destroy the painting?”
His face hardened.
“I can replace art.”
“It is not the art.”
“I know.”
“Then stop treating me like the least important evidence in the room.”
His eyes flashed.
“You are not evidence.”
The words came sharper than anything he had said to me.
Silence followed.
Mara looked down at her notes.
Dominic slowly left the room.
Roman and I stared at each other.
“What am I?” I asked.
His anger disappeared.
For one dangerous second, so did mine.
Roman stepped closer.
“Exactly the problem.”
My breath caught.
He stopped before touching me.
That restraint felt more intimate than contact.
Then he walked away.
May you like
Midnight was six hours away.
And for the first time, the threat was no longer the only thing I was afraid of.
