THE EXILED PRINCE SON-IN-LAW STRIKES BACK

Chapter 7: The Night of the Auction

"The landlord of my old flat," I said. "He says I still owe him for a broken window."

Victoria didn't move from the lift. The purple flashlight hung from her hand.

"At midnight," she said flatly.

"He works nights. Like me."

She looked at me the way she'd looked at the back of that canvas, slowly, carefully, searching for the place where the paint didn't match. I held still and let her look.

"Go home, Leon," she said at last. "It's late."

"I'll lock up."

"I'll lock up." She stepped out of the lift and walked past me toward the back door. Then she stopped with her hand on the handle and spoke without turning around.

"Leon. If someone wanted to warn me about something, but couldn't tell me to my face... why do you think that would be?"

I was quiet for a moment. "Maybe they were afraid you'd stop listening if you knew who it was."

Her shoulders went still. Then she opened the door and walked out into the night.

The next three days passed in a blur of gold paper and polished floors.

Victoria spoke to me only twice in those three days. Once to ask me to move a crate, and once, late on the second night, to ask whether I'd seen her purple flashlight, which she had put down somewhere and couldn't find. I found it for her behind a stack of frames. She took it without a word, but she looked at me for a moment longer than she needed to.

Beatrice took over the auction house like a general. She ordered new flowers for the showroom, new velvet for the chairs and a champagne bar for the buyers. She had the catalog reprinted twice so Anton's painting would look bigger on the cover. She told every newspaper in Rosegate that the Spring Auction would be the event of the season and the beginning of a new future for the Ashworth family.

Anton came to the auction house every afternoon. He walked through the showroom with his big white smile, touching the frames and joking with the staff, and every day he stopped by Victoria's office with flowers. Every day, she thanked him politely and put them in the hallway.

"She's nervous," Beatrice told him. "Brides always are."

"Of course," Anton said, smiling.

On the second day, he passed me in the hallway while I was carrying a ladder. He didn't step aside. I had to turn and squeeze against the wall to let him pass.

"Still here, stray?" he said cheerfully. "Enjoy it. Two more days, and you'll be someone else's problem."

"One," I said.

He laughed. "He can count! Victoria, did you know your husband can count?"

Victoria was standing in her doorway. She didn't laugh.

I spent the nights in the shed, and the hours after midnight in the room beneath the bookbindery with Sasha and Dorov, checking every piece of the plan again and again. Raven Holdings was ready. The creditors' lawyers were ready. Nikolai, who'd heard about Anton from Sasha, wanted to break into Northline Arts and burn their files. Dorov told him to sit down.

"The boy's plan is a quiet one," Dorov said. "Quiet plans don't need fire."

Nikolai rolled his eyes and said nothing more.

"Quiet plans don't win wars," Nikolai muttered.

"This isn't the war yet," I said. "This is just the first battle."

Nikolai threw himself into a chair and spun it around. "And after this battle? You save a family that makes you sleep in a shed. Then what?"

"Then I stop my uncle."

"From a shed in Kingsmere?"

"From wherever I am, Nik."

On the evening of the auction, the showroom of Ashworth Fine Art and Auctions glowed like a jewel box.

Three hundred buyers filled the velvet chairs: collectors, bankers, dealers from five countries and the richest families in Rosegate. Reporters stood along the walls with their cameras. Waiters in white jackets carried trays of champagne. At the front, under a single bright spotlight, stood the auctioneer's podium, and behind it, a giant screen showing each painting as it went up for sale.

I stood by the side door in my black driver's suit, where Beatrice had told me to stand, ready to carry paintings to the stage.

Beatrice sat in the front row in a gown of pale gold silk, glowing. Beside her, Anton wore a white dinner jacket and his heavy gold watch, and kept leaning over to whisper in her ear. Charles sat on her other side, staring at his program. Rupert stood near the bar, laughing too loudly. At the end of the row, Edmund sat with both hands on his silver cane. He hadn't touched his champagne. He was watching the room the way a chess player watches a board.

Backstage, on a small table near the curtain, a leather folder lay open beside a silver pen. I didn't need to read it. I'd seen the first page three days ago.

Divorce Agreement.

Victoria stood at the edge of the stage in a long black dress, her hair pinned up, the gold magnifying glass hanging at her neck. As director, she would open the sale and close it. She hadn't looked at me once all evening.

Then the auction began.

A small seascape sold for forty thousand dollars. A pair of silver candlesticks sold for ninety. A portrait of a forgotten duchess sold for half a million, and the room clapped.

"See?" Beatrice whispered to Anton, loud enough for half the front row. "Our house is still the best in Rosegate."

"Of course it is," Anton said. "And soon it will be even better." Lot after lot went by. The auctioneer's voice rose and fell, smooth as music. The buyers raised their numbered paddles. Beatrice clapped loudly every time.

At my side, the phone in my pocket buzzed once. A message from Sasha.

Raven Holdings is standing by. Say the word.

I didn't answer yet.

Not until the hammer was ready to fall. Not until Anton believed he'd won.

Lot forty-eight. Lot forty-nine.

Then the lights in the showroom dimmed, and the spotlight brightened on the stage.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the auctioneer said, his voice dropping to a hush. "Our final lot of the evening. A painting thought lost for eighty years. Winter Over Kestrograd."

Two workers carried it onto the stage and set it on a golden stand. On the giant screen behind it, the snowy city glowed: the red roofs, the stone bridges, the golden palace on the hill.

The whole room sighed.

"We'll open the bidding at two million dollars," the auctioneer said.

A paddle went up in the third row, held by a quiet man in a grey suit I'd never seen before. Northline Arts. Anton's own company.

"Two million. Do I hear three?"

Another paddle, at the back. Then Northline again.

"Five million!"

"Seven!"

The room murmured. Cameras flashed. Anton leaned back in his chair, smiling with his big white teeth, as relaxed as a man watching his own horse win a race.

The man in the grey suit raised his paddle one more time.

"Ten million dollars," the auctioneer said slowly, his voice almost trembling. "Ten million, from the gentleman in the third row. Going once..."

Beatrice clutched Anton's arm. Rupert raised his glass.

"Going twice..."

The auctioneer lifted his wooden hammer high above the podium.

And at the edge of the stage, Victoria Ashworth stepped into the spotlight.