Dmitry couldn’t decide how much to tell his daughter about the paintings. He remembered when his father had bought them on a trip to Tajan auction house in Paris. His father stayed behind in the city while he and his older brother and mother visited her favorite cousin’s 17th-Century estate. He and Sergei ran wild through the huge castle and sprawling grounds. That was before Sergei started torturing small animals, before he killed anyone, before he betrayed their father. Now, those idyllic fraternal days in the French countryside seemed like a childhood fantasy, something he’d dreamed, or a story his mother had read to him from a children’s book.
Her cousin the Count was a handsome man a few years older than his mother. He had kind eyes and a gentle voice. At the time, concerned only wit
