Chapter 2 - My Sister Had Been Using My Gallery
The man’s name was Felix Moreno.
I knew him.
Not well, but enough to feel betrayed by recognition.
Felix represented collectors. He came to Marlowe House three or four times a year, always dressed beautifully, always asking strangely specific questions about shipping dates. He once bought a painting for a client in Zurich and tipped our installer two hundred dollars.
Now he stood on the Belmont balcony shaking in front of Carter Battalia.
“You said the gallery,” I repeated. “What did you mean?”
Vanessa grabbed my wrist.
“We’re leaving.”
Carter looked at her hand.
Vanessa released me.
“Diana,” she said softly, “this has nothing to do with you.”
Felix made a choking sound.
“Everything has to do with her.”
Carter turned.
“Explain.”
Felix looked toward the closed doors.
“I moved packages through Marlowe shipments.”
My mouth went dry.
“What packages?”
“Documents. Cash sometimes.”
I stared.
“That’s impossible. Every outgoing crate is logged.”
“Yes,” he said. “By you.”
A cold feeling moved through me.
Vanessa stepped in.
“He’s lying.”
Felix snapped, “You signed the swaps.”
The city disappeared behind me.
“What swaps?”
No one answered fast enough.
Then I understood.
At the gallery, we occasionally sent crates to a bonded warehouse for international collectors. Vanessa had offered to “help” me network with higher-end shipping contacts last year. She connected us with a logistics company called Delmar Fine Transit.
I had been grateful.
“You used Delmar,” I whispered.
Vanessa’s face hardened.
“Diana, you do not understand the business.”
“What business?”
Carter spoke.
“The kind that gets people killed.”
My heart beat against my ribs.
I looked at him.
“You knew?”
“I suspected.”
“That’s why you stared at me?”
He said nothing.
The answer hurt more than it should have.
Vanessa saw it.
A cruel little smile appeared.
“Oh, Diana.”
“Don’t.”
“You thought he noticed you.”
I turned toward her.
She leaned closer.
“You actually thought Carter Battalia walked into a ballroom and fell helplessly in love with the quiet little gallery girl?”
My face burned.
Carter’s voice went low.
“Vanessa.”
She ignored him.
“You’re evidence, Diana. That’s all.”
Carter stepped between us.
“I said enough.”
Vanessa looked pleased despite everything.
Because even danger could be used to humiliate me.
Felix whispered, “She told us Diana never checked the secondary manifests.”
I stared at my sister.
“I check everything.”
“Not after I started bringing you coffee on Thursdays,” Vanessa said.
My blood went cold.
Thursday was international freight day.
She visited almost every Thursday.
Coffee. Pastries. Complaints about our mother.
While I was distracted, she had access to my office.
My login.
My paperwork.
“You stole my credentials.”
Vanessa lifted her chin.
“I borrowed access.”
“You used my name.”
“I protected you from knowing.”
I laughed.
The sound came out wrong.
“You committed crimes through my job and call that protection?”
“Lower your voice.”
“We are on a locked balcony with a man everyone in Philadelphia is afraid of. I think volume is the least of our problems.”
Carter’s mouth almost moved.
Vanessa saw.
Her expression sharpened.
She turned to him.
“What exactly do you want?”
“The drive.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Felix says you do.”
Felix quickly nodded.
Vanessa looked at him with hatred.
“I should have known you’d fold.”
“I should have known you’d sell me first.”
Carter stepped closer to Vanessa.
“Where is the drive?”
She looked past him at me.
Then smiled.
“With Diana.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
Carter’s eyes narrowed.
Vanessa said, “Her red clutch.”
I looked down.
The clutch had been Vanessa’s idea too.
She had handed it to me in the car.
“Matches the dress,” she had said.
I opened it with shaking fingers.
Lipstick.
Phone.
Compact mirror.
And beneath the inner lining, something hard.
Carter took the bag gently.
He pulled out a black flash drive.
The man in gray cursed.
Felix closed his eyes.
Vanessa smiled.
“There. Problem solved.”
I stared at her.
“You planted this on me.”
“If security searched anyone, they’d never search you.”
“Because I’m invisible.”
Her silence answered.
That hurt more than the insult would have.
Carter handed the drive to his man.
“Leon.”
The gray-suited man nodded and disappeared inside.
Vanessa folded her arms.
“So now we’re done.”
“No,” Carter said.
She blinked.
“What?”
“You used her identity. Her workplace. Her credentials. Her body as storage.”
“I didn’t know you were sentimental.”
“Neither did I.”
For one second, neither of them moved.
Then Vanessa laughed.
“You want her.”
The words landed like a slap.
Carter did not deny it.
Vanessa looked at me.
Something raw appeared behind her eyes.
Not jealousy exactly.
Possession.
I had broken a rule simply by being wanted in the same room as her.
She stepped toward me.
“You have no idea who he is.”
“And you do?”
“Yes.”
That answer mattered.
Carter heard it too.
“How?” he asked.
Vanessa realized her mistake.
Too late.
Felix whispered, “Tell him.”
She spun.
“Shut up.”
Felix looked at Carter.
“She’s been meeting with Dominic.”
The air changed.
I did not know Dominic.
Carter did.
His face became completely still.
“Dominic who?” I asked.
No one answered me.
Vanessa’s eyes moved toward the ballroom doors.
Carter noticed.
“Don’t.”
She ran anyway.
Fast.
She grabbed the handle.
Locked.
Leon had locked it from the other side.
Vanessa slammed her palm against the glass.
“Open this door!”
Carter never raised his voice.
“Who is Dominic?”
She turned.
“Go to hell.”
Felix backed away.
Carter’s expression did not change.
That was worse.
“Who?” I asked again.
Carter looked at me.
“My brother.”
I stared.
“Your brother is involved in this?”
“My half brother. Dominic Rafe.”
Felix said, “He wants Battalia territory.”
Vanessa snapped, “Stop talking.”
Felix laughed bitterly.
“You were sleeping with him.”
My head turned toward my sister.
Carter’s did not.
He already knew.
Or feared.
Vanessa slowly straightened.
The beautiful smile returned.
The one she used when she had decided lying was easier than surrender.
“You invited me here because of him,” she said to Carter.
“No.”
“Then why?”
His eyes moved to me.
Vanessa saw.
The smile died.
Carter said, “I came because somebody had been moving money through Marlowe House under Diana’s name.”
I felt the floor tilt.
“Under my name?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
Carter looked toward the city.
“Enough to make federal investigators think you’re not a gallery assistant.”
“What do they think I am?”
He faced me again.
“A financier.”
I almost laughed.
Then Leon returned holding the flash drive.
His face was pale.
“Carter.”
“What?”
Leon looked at me.
“The drive has transaction ledgers.”
Carter waited.
Leon swallowed.
“And Diana’s signature is on every account.”
My knees nearly gave out.
Vanessa did not look surprised.
That told me everything.
I looked at my sister.
“You weren’t hiding evidence on me.”
She said nothing.
“You were building me into the crime.”
For the first time, Vanessa stopped pretending.
“Yes.”
The word broke something old inside me.
Not my heart.
Something weaker.
My loyalty.
Carter stepped beside me, not touching.
“Diana.”
I turned toward him.
“Don’t protect me.”
His eyes held mine.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
“What are you going to do?”
I looked at Vanessa.
She looked back at me with the confidence of a woman who had spent thirty years believing I would always forgive her.
I smiled.
May you like
And she finally looked afraid.
“I’m going to stop disappearing.”
