Chapter 7 - A Scent of Dammar and Deceit
Genevieve’s throat clicked audibly as she swallowed her champagne.
Her manicured hands trembled against her silk skirt, her diamonds catching the chandelier light in frantic, jagged spasms.
“Julian, darling... what is this crude joke?” Genevieve forced a light, musical laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping over concrete. “Why are you placing shipping boxes on our banquet table?”
Julian reached into the excelsior straw with his bare hand.
He withdrew one of the heavy glass jars, slamming it down on the linen cloth directly in front of Charles Sterling’s plate.
Titanium White — High Molecular Acrylic Polymer.
The two hundred guests leaned forward, whispering in confusion.
Julian withdrew a second object: the three-foot canvas of the Vermeer landscape, its edges hacked raw where the box cutter had severed it from the seventeenth-century stretcher bars.
He laid the ruined canvas flat on the tablecloth, beside the silver candelabra.
Charles Sterling went completely rigid.
All the color drained from the older man’s face, leaving his skin the shade of sour milk beneath his silver hair.
“This canvas was cut from its frame forty minutes ago in vault three, Charles,” Julian said, his baritone dropping into a register that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “Packed into a shipping crate addressed to your private holding facility in Zurich.”
The ballroom fell into an abyss of absolute silence.
Several elderly syndicate capos sitting near the center of the table exchanged sharp, lethal glances.
In the New England underworld, cargo was moved under iron rules. You taxed the docks. You settled disputes with lead.
That was business.
That was the code.
But stealing historical heirlooms from an allied family’s private museum, slashing canvases that had survived the Second World War, and replacing them with twenty-dollar German acrylics—that was an unforgivable, cowardly theft that carried an immediate death sentence under the syndicate charter.
“This is an outrageous smear!” Charles Sterling shouted, his patrician composure shattering into desperate, sweaty fury. “Julian, you are being manipulated by internal saboteurs! My family has invested thirty million dollars in your maritime expansion!”
Julian reached into his pocket and tossed a thick sheaf of decrypted customs manifests onto the table.
“Your container ship Northern Star was boarded by federal port marshals at Logan twelve minutes ago, Charles,” Julian said softly. “The Rembrandts were recovered from your personal cabin safe.”
Charles swayed on his feet, his hands clutching the edge of the mahogany table for support.
Julian turned his dark, predatory eyes onto Genevieve.
Genevieve was backing away toward the terrace French doors, her breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps.
May you like
“And you,” Julian whispered, stepping toward her with deliberate, terrifying precision. “You broke Clara Vance’s shoulder against a bronze pedestal because she saw the synthetic paint on your fingers.”
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