Chapter 3

The shreds of paper slid off Evelyn's face, and her smile finally died.

She stared at me for a long time, her gaze frighteningly cold. "You haven't changed since you were a child. Still poor. Still stupid.

"No elite school, no family name, no powerful people backing you. It took you years to climb this high, didn't it?"

She stood and walked toward me one deliberate step at a time. "One word from me, and you lose your job and your professional credentials. I can make sure no gallery will ever hire you again. Then you won't even be able to pay your mortgage."

I clenched my fists until my nails nearly broke the skin.

Evelyn leaned close to my ear and dropped her voice to a whisper. "That old woman of yours died because she didn't know when to shut her mouth. Died because she was naive enough to think she could come to me and demand some kind of fairness."

I pointed at the door, my voice shaking so hard I could barely speak. "Get out!"

Evelyn looked into my reddened eyes, satisfied, and walked out across the carpet of torn paper.

When the door shut, every last bit of strength drained from my body.

I crouched on the floor with one hand over my mouth, unable to stop the tears.

I was consumed with hatred. Hatred for her. Even more hatred for the fourteen-year-old version of myself who couldn't do a single thing.

After dark, I pulled the scrap of canvas from the very back of my drawer.

The red had darkened, and the bloodstain along the edge had long since turned black.

It was the last thing Grandma ever left me.

I ran my fingers along the rough edge and thought about the twenty years that had brought me here.

After Grandma died, I had no home.

During the day, I scrubbed dishes in a restaurant kitchen. At night, I slept in the storage room with the flour and potatoes.

Brother Miguel, a young friar, taught me to read a few words every day. He helped me fill out school forms and pressed his old winter coat into my hands.

The day I came down with a high fever, he told me not to go take the exam. I went anyway.

Because I could never forget the way Grandma pounded her chest at the police station, so frantic she couldn't form a single sentence.

She knew exactly who had stolen her paintings, but she couldn't get a coherent word out.

When I graduated high school, I applied to only one program: art restoration.

The day my acceptance letter arrived, I ran to Grandma's grave and read it to her, word by word. "Grandma, I'm going to learn how to read a painting. I'm going to learn how to tell what year the paint is from, where the canvas came from, and who covered up the signature.

"So even if a dead person can't speak, I'll make the painting speak for them."

During college and graduate school, I spent every day in the restoration lab.

My hands cracked open from the chemicals until I couldn't hold the tweezers. I taped them up and kept going.

After graduation, I knocked on more than a dozen museum and gallery doors.

The moment they saw my school and my background, they wouldn't even flip past the first page of my resume.

Finally, the warehouse division of an international art marketplace was short-staffed, and I got my chance.

I started by cataloging old files.

Over seven years, I combed through moldy records, dismantled rusted frames, and went into warehouses to inspect filthy shipping crates everyone else avoided.

Everyone said the work was exhausting and led nowhere. I didn't care.

I knew that no matter how well stolen property was hidden, it always left a trace.

My phone lit up with a text from Chloe: "Rivera, the global launch is the day after tomorrow. Once it's over, the twelve paintings will be split among private foundations, storage facilities, and vaults."

"All you have is a dead woman's story. You can't stop this."

I was so furious I slammed my phone on the desk.

She was right.

The scrap in my hand could prove, at most, that Grandma had touched one painting. It still couldn't prove all twelve were hers.

I stared at the torn edge of the scrap and suddenly thought of someone: Maria Alvarez.

She lived next door to our old trailer. Before everything happened, Grandma had secretly gone to see her.

I grabbed my phone and dialed a number I hadn't called in twenty years. "Maria, it's me. Lina."

The line went silent.

My throat tightened, and I nearly cried. "I need to ask you something. Before Grandma died, did she leave anything behind?"

Maria's breathing suddenly grew heavy. After a long silence, she said hoarsely, "There's a tin box. She said her paintings might be in danger. She told me not to give it to anyone but you.

"Lina, I've kept it hidden for twenty years."