Chapter 2 - The Sculpture and the Stain
The interior of the Vance Auction House was a cathedral of wealth, marble, and quiet paranoia.
High above the parquet floor, soaring barrel-vaulted ceilings housed intricate gold leaf plasterwork, illuminated by towering wrought-iron chandeliers that cast long, dramatic shadows across the gallery walls. Scattered throughout the main room were the stars of the evening: forty pristine, white marble and bronze sculptures from mid-century Italian masters, each resting on an illuminated black pedestal surrounded by security velvet ropes.
Gia was on a ten-foot aluminum ladder, her hands covered in fresh cotton gloves, securing a thick garland of olive branches and Italian ruscus around the base of a structural pillar.
“Gia! Higher on the left!” called out Leo, her lead assistant, holding a clipboard and looking frantically at his tablet. “Eleanor Vance just arrived through the private elevator, and she’s already complaining about the lighting temperature in the south wing!”
“Tell Leo to adjust the dimmers to twenty-seven hundred Kelvin,” Gia called down through a mouthful of green floral wire. “And tell him if he touches the main breaker panel without checking with the building engineer first, I will personally revoke his coffee privileges for a month.”
She pulled the wire tight, clipped it with her pliers, and stepped down three rungs of the ladder.
Her thumb was still throbbing beneath the linen handkerchief. She had tried to replace it with a standard adhesive bandage from her emergency kit forty minutes ago, but the cut was deep enough that the clean linen was the only thing keeping her work gloves dry. The silver monogram D.V.M. was now dark with dried blood, resting securely inside her apron pocket.
Down on the main gallery floor, the crowd was beginning to filter in through the mahogany entrance doors.
It was the usual Manhattan upper-crust ecosystem: women in emerald satin gowns and diamond chokers, older men in bespoke tuxedos with slicked-back hair, young art advisors whispering into encrypted phone apps, and private security guards pretending to be guests while standing entirely too stiffly near the exits.
And then, standing near the centerpiece of the collection—a six-foot abstract white marble torso titled L'Ombra del Padre (The Shadow of the Father)—was Dante Moretti.
He had removed his heavy cashmere overcoat, revealing a perfectly fitted black tuxedo without a tie, his top shirt button unbuttoned in a subtle display of supreme confidence that set him completely apart from every other man in the room. He wasn't drinking the champagne being offered by silver-tray waiters. He was standing with his hands buried in his trouser pockets, staring at the marble torso with an intensity so profound it looked almost aggressive.
Gia stepped off the ladder, handing her wire cutters to Leo. “Keep an eye on the suspended silks over the bar. If the HVAC kicks on high, they might sway too close to the wall sconces.”
“Got it,” Leo said, frowning as his eyes tracked her gaze across the room. “Gia... why is Dante Moretti here? This is a Vance family private charity gala. The Vances hate the Morettis. Everyone in real estate knows that.”
Gia wiped her hands on her apron. “They hate each other?”
“Are you kidding?” Leo whispered leaning in close. “Thirty years ago, Eleanor Vance’s husband tried to block the Moretti family from acquiring the piers along the Hudson River. There was a huge federal investigation, two warehouses burned down in Brooklyn, and Arthur Vance died in a sudden car crash in upstate New York three weeks later. They haven't been in the same room since 1996.”
Gia looked back across the gallery at Dante. He hadn't moved an inch from the sculpture.
“Interesting,” she murmured.
She walked toward the service corridor to check on the floral inventory, but her path was abruptly blocked by a woman in her late seventies wearing a silver beaded gown that clicked like armor with every step.
Eleanor Vance.
The matriarch was small, thin as a rail, and possessed a face that looked like it had been pulled tight by the finest plastic surgeons in Switzerland. Her eyes were tiny, sharp beads of blue glass behind heavy diamond-encrated reading spectacles.
“You,” Eleanor said, pointing a gold-tipped cane at Gia’s chest. “The decorator.”
“Event designer, Mrs. Vance,” Gia corrected smoothly, dropping into her practiced, flawless professional posture. “Gia Parker. The arrangements are eighty percent complete. We're right on schedule for the eight o'clock preview.”
“The foliage is too dark,” Eleanor declared without looking at the pillar behind Gia. “It looks like a funeral home. I distinctly requested bright spring green.”
“You requested Italian olive and ruscus, Mrs. Vance,” Gia replied politely, pulled her tablet from her back pocket and tapping the screen. “According to the contract signed by your assistant on August fourteenth, section four, paragraph B, we sourced directly from Tuscany to match the provenance of the artwork.”
Eleanor’s lips thinned into a line so tight it practically disappeared. “I don't care about the contract, Miss Parker. I care about the aesthetic of my late husband’s memorial collection. Change the greenery on the main archway.”
“It’s twenty-five feet in the air and rigged to structural steel,” Gia said calmly. “Changing it now would require bringing a scissor lift back onto the floor, which would take ninety minutes and delay your guests’ entrance.”
Eleanor stepped closer, her cane tapping sharply against the marble floor. “Listen to me very carefully, young woman. This auction represents sixty years of my family's legacy. If I tell you to tear down a wall, you tear it down, or you will never work a high-society event in this city again.”
Before Gia could formulate a response that balanced her self-respect with her business’s survival, a low voice spoke from directly behind her.
“She is quite right, Eleanor. The dark green complements the Carrara marble significantly better than a lighter tone would.”
Eleanor Vance froze. The color drained from her aged face so fast it looked as though she had been struck by a sudden stroke.
Dante Moretti stepped up beside Gia. He didn't look at Eleanor with anger or hatred; his face was a quiet, unyielding wall of calm authority.
“Dante,” Eleanor whispered, her hand tightening around the gold handle of her cane until her knuckles turned blue. “Who gave you permission to cross this threshold?”
“The invitation sent to my office on Monday,” Dante replied smoothly, pulling a crisp, heavy card from his inner jacket pocket and resting it on the edge of a nearby pedestal. “Signed by your son, Julian.”
Eleanor’s head snapped toward the far side of the room, where a thin, nervously sweating man in his mid-forties was rapidly downing a glass of scotch while studiously avoiding his mother’s gaze.
“Julian is an idiot,” Eleanor spat out, her voice trembling with a mixture of rage and ancient fear. “You don't belong here, Moretti. None of your kind belongs here.”
Dante’s expression didn't change, but the atmosphere around him grew instantly colder. “My father paid for three of the pieces in this room, Eleanor. I came to see if you were still taking credit for his taste.”
“Your father was a criminal!”
“My father was a businessman,” Dante said softly, taking a single half-step forward that forced Eleanor to take a step back. “Just like Arthur. The only difference was that my father didn't hide behind a charity foundation when he made a deal.”
Eleanor looked like she was about to explode, her cane shaking against the floorboards. She glared at Gia, then back at Dante. “If this... event worker... is under your protection tonight, Moretti, it only confirms what I have always thought of her company’s standards.”
She turned on her heel and marched away, her silver beads clicking angrily against the marble.
Gia let out a slow breath, turning her head to stare at Dante. “Did you just use my floral arrangement to settle a thirty-year-old feud?”
Dante looked down at her, the faint, razor-sharp smile returning to his mouth. “I merely offered a professional opinion on greenery, Miss Parker.”
“You're going to get my invoice canceled.”
“If she doesn't pay your invoice,” Dante said, his dark eyes locking onto hers with sudden, terrifying seriousness, “send it to my office. I will double it.”
“I don't take charity, Mr. Moretti.”
“It wouldn't be charity,” he replied softly, stepping closer until she could smell the cedar and tobacco again. “It would be compensation for standing your ground against a woman who frightens men with ten times your net worth.”
May you like
Gia opened her mouth to reply, but a sharp sound echoed across the gallery floor—a sudden, heavy clunk of an electrical relay tripping, followed instantly by the flickering out of the main hall lights.
The entire auction house plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness.
