Bitter inheritance

chapter 10

### Chapter Eleven: Provenance

By the end of the week, the reading room floor was buried in a decade of paperwork, and Elena had stopped being surprised by what they found.

Her father hadn't smuggled one piece. He'd smuggled eleven — spread across two decades, laundered through a rotating cast of "private European estates" that, on closer inspection, didn't exist. A silver reliquary. A set of Ottoman daggers. A painting Elena had dusted as a child, hanging in her father's study like it was nothing more than sentimental clutter. Each entry in the ledger was meticulous, precise, almost loving in its detail — as if her father had taken more care hiding his crimes than he ever had with anything else in his life.

"He had a partner," Damian said, holding up a shipping manifest with two sets of initials on it. Her father's. And another set she didn't recognize. "Someone on the acquisition side. This wasn't a one-man operation."

"Do we know who?"

"Not yet. But whoever it is, they've stayed quiet for twenty years. That's not an accident. That's someone with as much to lose as your father had."

Elena sat back on her heels, surrounded by ledgers, and felt something cold settle low in her stomach. "You think Fontaine isn't the only one who knows."

"I think," Damian said carefully, "that we should assume there are more people watching this than we can currently see."

Her phone rang before she could answer. Fontaine's number, the one he'd left with unnerving confidence, like he'd known she would eventually need it.

She answered on speaker, Damian going very still beside her.

"Ms. Voss." Fontaine's voice was pleasant, almost warm, which somehow made it worse. "I trust the archive review is proving educational."

"What do you want, Fontaine?"

"A partnership, actually. Not money — well, not only money. I'd like Ledger and Voss to handle the Fontaine Collection's next season of sales. Exclusively. Given how thoroughly I understand your provenance issues, I imagine you'll find my terms generous."

"You're blackmailing us into a business deal."

"I prefer *strategic alignment.*" She could hear the smile in it. "You have until Friday to consider. After that, I go to the other interested parties instead — and I suspect they'll be less interested in your discretion than I am."

The line went dead. Elena set the phone down very carefully, like it might go off again on its own.

"Other interested parties," she repeated. "He's not the only one who knows. He's just the only one who's offered us a deal instead of a lawsuit."

Damian's jaw was tight, the particular stillness that meant he was furious and controlling it with everything he had. "Then we don't have until Friday. We have until whoever else is circling decides blackmail is slower than exposure."

He reached for her hand without seeming to think about it, the way he'd started doing lately — not for comfort exactly, but like touching her was how he kept himself from spiraling into the coldest version of himself.

"We'll figure it out," Elena said, and surprised herself by believing it. "Together. That was the deal."

"That was the deal," he agreed, quiet. "I intend to keep it."