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Chapter 47: The Walk
publish date:
2026-03-29 00:49:48
Latest chapter
FAMILY SECRET: CLAIMING MY FATHER'S TOY Chapter 74: The Fight
I tell Vincent about the Allard meeting over dinner and he listens with his full attention the way he always does and says the right things... that I handled it correctly, that Allard's professional consequences comment is bluster, that the Commission process will run its course.He doesn't ask about Mikhail.I don't mention Mikhail.We do the dishes together and he tells me something funny about his Amsterdam broker and I laugh and it's warm and normal and underneath it the unfinished thing from three nights ago sits in the room like furniture we keep walking around.In bed he reaches for me and I go to him easily, his mouth on mine, his hands warm and certain, and we move together in the familiar close way and it's good, it's genuinely good, his forehead against mine and his voice low in my ear saying things that undo me, and when it's over, I lie with my head on his chest and listen to his heart slow down and think about the text on my phone that says you did well."Mikhail helped
FAMILY SECRET: CLAIMING MY FATHER'S TOY Chapter 73: Bernard Allard
He is shorter than his voice suggested.That's the first thing I notice when Bernard Allard walks into the hotel lobby on Thursday morning, the Lutetia, naturally, because men like Bernard Allard do not meet inconvenient young women in neutral locations.He chooses the ground. He is maybe five foot eight, silver-haired, beautifully dressed in the way of men who have been wearing good clothes so long they've stopped thinking about it. He has a warm handshake and direct eye contact and a smile that reaches his eyes completely, and if I didn't have twelve pages of documentation in the bag on my shoulder, I might find him entirely charming."Mademoiselle Chen," he says, in French, then switching to English when he clocks me, smooth and immediate. "Thank you for making time.""Of course," I reply.He steers me toward a seating area at the back of the lobby, quiet and upholstered and selected for privacy, and a waiter materializes before we've fully sat down. Allard orders tea without consu
FAMILY SECRET: CLAIMING MY FATHER'S TOY Chapter 72: What Vincent Notices
He doesn't ask where I've been.That's the thing about Vincent. He gives me space as a feature not a flaw, this deliberate, principled looseness of hold, and usually I love it and tonight when I come through the door at seven with cold-coffee thoughts and Mikhail Volkov's pale eyes still somewhere in my peripheral awareness, the space he gives me feels like something I have to walk across before I reach him.I kiss him hello and he kisses me back, warm and present, and his hand cups my face briefly in the way he does, like checking I'm real, and then he goes back to the stove and I sit at the kitchen counter and watch him cook and try to locate myself in the room."Natasha's installation is coming," I say."Good," he replies."I walked back through Belleville," I say. Which is true."Mm," he says.He doesn't ask anything else and I don't offer anything else and we eat dinner and talk about other things, his Amsterdam broker, my Sorbonne seminar on Thursday, whether the restaurant on R
FAMILY SECRET: CLAIMING MY FATHER'S TOY Chapter 71: Coffee With Mikhail
He walks slowly, which I didn't expect from him. Vincent moves with purpose, always somewhere to be, always the next thing. Mikhail walks like he has decided the street is exactly where he wants to be and the rest of the world can organize itself around that.I tell him about the Allard situation. Not all of it, not the Marco complexity, but the shape of it, the Weis inventory, the restitution claim, the voicemail with its careful language about reaching an understanding.He listens without interrupting, the coffee warm in my hand, Belleville moving around us in its afternoon way, the market stalls and the noise and the particular light of a Paris afternoon that can't decide if it wants to be winter or spring.When I finish, he is quiet for half a block."He'll try to reframe the documentation," he says. "Position it as a legitimate wartime acquisition through some intermediary that no longer exists and can't be questioned. It's the standard approach for collections with this kind of
FAMILY SECRET: CLAIMING MY FATHER'S TOY Chapter 70: The Part Where It Gets Complicated
Marco calls the next morning at nine while I'm still in bed and Vincent is in the kitchen making coffee and the day is grey and soft outside the windows.I answer it because I've decided to be direct and there is no version of direct that involves avoiding the call."You found something," he says, before I say anything past hello. His voice is careful, not confrontational."Yes." A pause. "How significant?" "A Weis inventory piece," I say. "Documented seizure 1942. Unresolved restitution claim filed 1946. Currently in Allard's collection with no acquisition record between 1942 and 1948."The silence that follows is long enough to tell me everything I needed to know about what Marco knew and when."Elena..." "I've already notified the Commission," I say. "Professor Moreau advised me yesterday. I've suspended work on the four affected pieces pending investigation." I keep my voice even. "I want to be clear that this is not negotiable and I'm not calling you to discuss whether I did
FAMILY SECRET: CLAIMING MY FATHER'S TOY Chapter 69: What We Do With Tuesday Nights
Professor Moreau takes one look at my documentation, asks three precise questions, and tells me to file a formal notification with the Commission for Looted Art in Europe within the week and to stop all work on the four affected pieces until the claim is investigated. She says it without drama, the way she says everything, like ethics are not complicated, only the situations that require them.I walk out of her office at five feeling lighter than I expected.The decision is made. The process is started. Marco doesn't know yet and Bernard Allard doesn't know yet and the fee is almost certainly gone and I find, standing on the pavement outside the Sorbonne with the evening coming in cold and pink over the rooftops, that I don't care about the fee. I care that I found it and said something. I care that Rachel Weis's eight unlocated paintings are one fewer tonight than they were this morning.I text Vincent: Leaving the Sorbonne now. Long day. Need you.His reply comes in forty seconds: I
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