El Coleccionista Novels & Stories

She doesn't need to shop here and his other users are married so he must have brought his flings here. Fuck, now I'm motivated to take it out on his credit card. “Sarah,” I call out to her, knowing she's right behind me. “Show me your most expensive collection, I'm not talking a few thousand dollars, I want something over the top,” I tell her. “You came at the right time, we just stocked 'something blu' it's a collaboration between 'Miss and Gia'.” “Excellent,” I clap. “Show me.” I beam, I'm not excited for the collection, I'm excited to spend Enzo's money in a way that leaves him gaged.

“Which one?” “The Flagellation of Christ,” he replied smoothly. “A private acquisition. Naples period.” She put down the wine glass slowly and tried to think clearly. The piece that Luca had just mentioned wasn't something that anyone could just guess easily. It wasn’t a name that could just be dropped casually…It was a knowledge that could only be earned through obsession or serious study. “Are you being serious right now?” she asked slowly. He nodded. “I am.” She studied him carefully, feeling her hostility fighting a losing war with reluctant fascination. “And here I thought you only collected weapons and enemies.”

Neither of them says anything else for two full minutes, which is either awkward or comfortable depending on who you are, and Valentina finds, with the specific clarity of someone who spent twenty-five years misreading silences, that this one is comfortable. "Ethan Cole," he says, when the panel breaks for questions. He extends his hand. "Valentina Serra." She shakes it. His grip is firm without being performative, which is rarer than it should be. "Mercer and Cross." "Investment side," he says. "Cole Family Partners. We manage a hospitality portfolio — mid-luxury, mostly Europe and the Northeast." "I know the firm," she says, because she does — because she has known the firm for nine years

It was made of delicate, white paper, intricately folded. Lina picked it up. It unfolded itself in her hands, not into a bird, but into a geometrically perfect, silent origami of a bird. And tucked inside was a business card. The card was heavy stock, flawlessly white. In embossed, elegant font, it read: THE COLLECTORS Acquisition & Curation of Singular Moments No Moment Too Small Below, in smaller print: By Appointment Only.

I was the asset he had decided to acquire. At the penthouse Eleanor was waiting with the results of her own inquiries. Sterling did not collect companies for their own sake. He collected artists whose work contained embedded information: financial records, political connections, private histories. He turned those artists into public brands and then extracted and sold the intelligence hidden inside the work. I was not the first. I was simply the most valuable he had identified so far. “He has done this three times before,” Eleanor said. “Each of those artists is dead. Each death was ruled accidental. He is not only a financier. He is a harvester.”

Eco-conscious architecture, experimental aesthetics, top-tier partnerships- and now, possibly working with Montgomery & Co? She felt her pulse quicken. "Sophie," she said slowly, eyes still on the screen. "You know anything about Damien Cole?" Sophie looked up. "Uh, billionaire hotel guy? Stoic. Serious. Kind of a ghost. Nobody knows much except he's practically built an empire and avoids the press." "Well," Elena murmured, "he just scheduled a meeting with us." Sophie's eyebrows rose. "Us?" "Me," Elena clarified, her voice quieter now.

|Rocco| Seeing Luca’s name on the list was quite shocking but after a few seconds, I realized that it was not a big deal because Luca was known to love luxury. He collects rare fashion items because of their uniqueness, according to him. Shaking the suspicions off my head, I turned to the next page and the buyers had been streamlined to fit the size of the foot that was found at the scene. Luca’s name was also there; this got me more confused. They were only three, including him.