Sapphire

by Sophie Lark

  So many thefts these days were smash-and-grabs, relying on firepower rather than planning. It seemed like half the heists she heard about were gang-operated, most often by the Fratellanza.

  She wondered if the thief she had seen had been one of their number. He didn’t follow their usual mode, but it seemed like most everyone had been swept up in their web, in one way or another.

  Of course, Lex had no intention of joining. She worked alone—always—and she answered to no one.

  She smiled to herself, remembering how she’d swapped out the cross. She wished she could have seen the other thief’s face when he figured it out. She hoped he got all the way home first, for maximum disappointment.

  She didn’t like to be malicious, but she did love a good trick. It was the playful side of her that drove her to do outrageous things, for the fun of getting away with it.

  She bore no ill-will toward the other thief, even though he had tried to take her prize. Actually, she rather liked him. He had a playful tone himself, eyes that laughed from behind his mask. And though she’d teased him about his size, under different circumstances, she wouldn’t have minded getting a closer look at that tall, muscular frame.

  The kettle began to hiss and sputter. She looked around for proper loose-leaf tea. It seemed that Angioletto only had a few old teabags in a musty canister.

  He came into the kitchen, looking thoroughly chastised.

  “Go sit down,” he urged Lex. “I’ll bring it out.”

  He dropped a teabag into each mug, pouring in the hot water and shooing Lex back into the living room.

  She took a seat on a dilapidated armchair, choosing not to join the sulky girlfriend on the couch.

  Angioletto followed her out a moment later, handing her a mug.

  “You want sugar?” he asked. “I don’t have any milk.”

  “It’s fine this way,” Lex said.

  She took a sip. It was not fine. It tasted terrible, bitter and sharp. She shuddered to think how long it had probably been sitting in Angioletto’s cabinets.

  “So, what brings you into town?” Angioletto asked. “A job?”

  “Just wanted to ride a gondola,” Lex said.

  “Right,” Angioletto nodded, not believing her in the slightest.

  Angioletto was drinking his tea, but his girlfriend had left hers untouched on the coffee table as a form of protest.

  “What time you want to leave tomorrow?” he asked Lex.

  “First thing,” Lex said, taking another sip. “As soon as it’s light.”

  She set the tea down on the coffee table, next to Martina’s. She had better go to sleep as soon as possible, to get some rest before she had to leave again. Her head was pounding.

  “I have that little Fiat you can take,” Angioletto said. “Leave it at the train station in Padua, and I can come get it later.”

  Lex nodded. She rubbed her eyes, which were tired and beginning to blur.

  “You can sleep right here on the couch,” Angioletto said. “I have blankets.”

  Lex stood up from the chair. The room swirled around her like a merry-go-round, the colors blurring into a whirl. She fell down hard, striking her head on the floorboards.

  “Che cazzo?” she heard Martina shout.

  “Angioletto, you little piece of shit…” Lex muttered, her mouth going numb.

  That goddamn tea.

  “Mi dispiace, Bella,” Angioletto said, already picking up her bag. “I’m in a tough spot. You understand.”

  The dingy apartment faded to black all around her.

  6

  Luca Diotallevi

  Rome

  Luca waited outside the vast seaside villa on the cliffs of Ostia. Like most the mansions in this area, it was built of ancient stone, with a turret on one side from the part of the building that had once been a castle. However, inside, he knew it was modern in every regard, particularly the extensive security system.

  Armed guards patrolled the walkways, grounds, and every floor of the interior. These were not the sleepy hourly-wage employees of a museum. They were tactically trained ex-military,

  It was his nature to note their patterns of movement and the placement of cameras and motion-sensing lasers, but he would never break into this place. It belonged to Federico Bruni, the head of the Italian branch of the Fratellanza.

  Luca was there by appointment.

  It was impossible for Luca to feel anything as pedestrian as nervousness, but he wasn’t exactly looking forward to the interview. It was the first time he’d ever come back empty-handed.

  Bruni already knew it was bad news. That’s why he was keeping Luca waiting so long.

  At last, the head of his security team allowed Luca to come inside, through the cool marble hallways, up the grandiose staircase to Bruni’s office.

  Luca had been there before, but usually under more celebratory circumstances.

  He had once been close to Bruni. Luca would even have considered him as the closest thing he had to a father. Distance had grown between them in recent years. Luca wanted to leave the Fratellanza, and Bruni knew it.

  So when Luca came into the inner chambers, Bruni didn’t rise and embrace him as he might have done a few years earlier. Instead, he stayed seated behind his desk, bulky and imposing.

  He had a broad, fleshy face, deep pouches under his eyes, and the hunched shoulders of a boxer. He had gotten his start as an enforcer. They used to call him “La Mazza.” The Sledgehammer.

  “Buongiorno, Luca,” he said in his low, quiet voice.

  “Buongiorno,” Luca replied.

  He took the seat opposite Bruni’s desk. It was a small, leather chair, deliberately low to the floor so Bruni was always looking down on whoever came to visit him.

  “How did your trip to Venice go?”

  “Not great,” Luca said. “I didn’t get the cross.”

  “You didn’t get it?” Bruni asked, raising his eyebrows in pretend surprise.

  Luca knew that Bruni was already well aware that he’d blundered the job.

  “Another thief got there first,” Luca said.

  “I’m surprised,” Bruni said. “I thought I had the best thief.”

  That stung. Bruni knew the best place to hit Luca was his pride.

  “It was an unexpected complication,” Luca said.

  “So, who was it?” Bruni asked, folding his massive hands in front of him on the desk. He had a boxer’s fists, too, swollen and over-sized from the many times he’d broken knuckles and finger-bones on other people’s faces.

  “I don’t know,” Luca admitted. “I’ve never seen her before. Never even heard of her.”

  “Her?” Bruni chortled. “You got fucked by a little donnaccia?”

  Luca winced. He didn’t appreciate the mockery, and for some reason it bothered him to hear Bruni calling the other thief a little slut. She deserved more respect than that.

  “So how are you gonna get it back?” Bruni demanded.

  “Get it back?” Luca asked blankly.

  He knew Bruni had called him here to chew him out, but he had assumed that afterward Bruni would just send him off to steal something else.

  “I want that cross,” Bruni said, flatly.

  “There’s a lot of other pieces I could get quicker,” Luca said.

  “It has to be that one.”

  “Alright,” Luca said, as if it wouldn’t be problem.

  It might be a big problem.

  He had no information on this woman—none whatsoever. He didn’t know how he’d even start tracking her down.

  Bruni could see on his face that he wasn’t feeling confident.

  “The Roma will help you,” Bruni said.

  Luca had to stifle a groan. That was the worst news of all. The Roma was creepy as fuck. Luca would prefer not to be in the same room as him, let alone work a job with him.

  “I can handle it,” he tried to demur.

  “Doesn’t seem like you can,” Bruni said, dryly. “Take the R
oma.”

  Luca didn’t dare argue any further.

  He walked out of Bruni’s office, cursing his luck.

  The Roma appeared at his shoulder like a shadow.

  It was disturbing how sullen and silent he was. He was only medium height, average build. But there was nothing common about the blankness of his face, or his lifeless eyes, dull as a shark’s. He kept his black hair tied back with a leather thong. He wore the simplest and cheapest of suits.

  Nobody seemed to know his actual name, or where he came from. Everybody called him the Roma, but Luca doubted he was actually Romani. He could have been anyone, from anywhere.

  All Luca knew for certain was that he handled the worst and dirtiest work for Bruni. He was ruthless and cold.

  And now Luca had been saddled with him until he got that damn cross back.

  All the more reason to get the job done as quickly as possible.

  Luca’s first idea was to try to track the buyer for the cross. He put out feelers to every contact he had in Italy and some of the neighboring countries, asking if anyone had heard of a Russian cross for sale, or any impending deal.

  The network of dealers for stolen art was small. It was a compact world, highly interconnected. Luca knew them all, in one way or another.

  The problem would come if the thief already had her buyer set up, someone she knew personally. If it was someone discreet, someone outside the usual web, Luca didn’t know how he would ever find them.

  The Roma followed him around relentlessly, rarely offering suggestions, but always listening in to every conversation, every attempt. It was nerve-wracking, having someone looking over his shoulder, reporting back to Bruni.

  After shaking down a dozen different contacts with no luck, Luca snapped, “Why does he want that cross so bad anyway?”

  He didn’t expect the Roma to answer.

  To his surprise, the man turned his dark, expressionless eyes on Luca and said, “So he’ll have all the biggest stones.”

  “All the biggest stones?” Luca stared at him blankly.

  “The ruby,” the Roma said.

  Luca thought for a moment. The ruby in the center of the cross was, indeed, probably the largest flawless stone of its kind in the world. And he knew that Bruni already had in his possession the Chalk Emerald, stolen from the National History Museum in D.C.

  Bruni had shown it to him once, down in his underground vault. It was a heavy cushion-cut stone, deep velvety green, set in a Harry Winston diamond-encrusted ring.

  Did Bruni have some kind of collection?

  Most the of thefts the Fratellanza undertook were unromantic in nature—cash, gold, diamonds, or easily re-sellable jewelry like luxury watches. This smacked of something more personal, more idealistic.

  It surprised Luca, because Bruni was usually so practical in nature.

  But there was something about gemstones. They bewitched people. Bruni obviously wanted that one particular cross, not another piece of equal value.

  Luca nodded slowly. The Roma was probably right.

  That got him thinking. What if the girl had a collection of her own? What would be the next thing she would try to steal?

  It might be easier to intercept her at the next job, versus trying to track her down wherever she was hiding.

  But how could he possibly guess what she might want?

  It could be so many different things, in so many places.

  He could spend weeks staking out the wrong piece of art, while she flew to another country and snatched something else completely. She might be flying away at this very moment, with the cross hidden in her suitcase.

  “Dannazione!” Luca shouted, in frustration.

  “Calm yourself,” the Roma said. “Venice is not that big. Somebody knows something.”

  7

  Byron Black

  Stockholm

  Black returned to the temporary furnished apartment he had rented in Gamla Stan. This area between the waterways was one of the oldest parts of the city. It had been built on the bones of the original medieval town. If Lex had been with him, that’s where she would have wanted to stay, or so he supposed.

  The apartment he had rented was small and simple in the extreme. He didn’t bother to cook or use the sauna in the building. He was only there to work, only staying until the job was done.

  He had taken down the Durer prints the owner had hung on the wall. In their place, he had pinned up what little photos and evidence he had. However, it was not evidence of his current case. It had nothing to do with the Brotherhood at all.

  It was evidence of his search for Lex.

  Case files from thefts that he believed she might have perpetrated. Satellite maps of the locations through which he had tracked her. Witness statements from people who might have spoken to her. And in the center of it all, a photograph.

  Her beautiful face, in full color, staring directly at him. The waves of long, dark hair, framing the high cheekbones and delicate jawline. The dark, winged brows and thick lashes around the brilliant blue eyes. The full lips just slightly tilted up in a smile. Mocking him. Or inviting him. His opinion on her expression changed by the day.

  It was the only picture he had of her. In the time they were together, she had always avoided having her photograph taken. He thought then that it was a rare instance of self-consciousness. Now, of course, the real reason was obvious.

  God, she had made such a fool out of him.

  When he’d first begun searching for her, it was in a rage. He wanted revenge; he wanted to send her to jail.

  Then, as time went on, he wanted to question her instead.

  Questions like, Why did you do it?

  And, Did you ever actually love me?

  And now, sometimes, he felt like all the time he had spent, everything he had sacrificed, would be worth it if he could just see her one more time, even just for a moment.

  That was insane, of course.

  He should hate her for everything she’d put him through.

  But sometimes he thought he loved her more now than he did two years ago.

  For one thing, he knew more about her now than he did then. He knew how daring, how intelligent, and how meticulous she actually was. He had been impressed with her as an appraiser—he couldn’t help but be a hundred times more impressed now that he knew she might be one of the most successful thieves of the modern era.

  She had no arrest record. She left no evidence behind. And from what he could tell, she had stolen hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of artifacts, including some items that had been considered impossibly secure.

  In fact, as far as he could tell, the only stupid thing she had ever done was date a police officer.

  Why had she done that, exactly?

  He knew why she had started.

  He had been investigating a case. His very first art theft case, in fact. A sculpture had been taken from the National Gallery. It was small, as far as sculptures went, only as long as a person’s forearm. It was the figure of Artemis by Rodin.

  At the time, Black knew virtually nothing about Rodin—or Artemis either, for that matter. With virtually no clues to go on, he had been sent to run down a list of potential sources, including the owner of the gallery where Lex had been working at the time.

  She had been hanging a painting when the officers arrived. It was a vast modern oil—over six feet tall and nearly as wide—in a flat frame. She stopped what she was doing, hearing the door open. She turned from her position on the step ladder.

  Black was caught staring at her taught calves and thighs, her shapely bottom, and the lovely curve of her back. He watched her long sheet of dark hair swing over her shoulder. She coolly regarded the two uniformed officers standing in her doorway.

  “How can I help you?” she asked.

  He’d been expecting a high, feminine voice.

  Instead, he heard that low, clear, tone of hers, almost sensuous, though she wasn’t flirting with him. At least, not yet.
<
br />   Stumbling a little over his words, Black had explained that they were looking for a sculpture that had gone missing from the National Gallery. They needed to speak to anyone who might have information about a similar piece being put up for sale.

  While they were talking, Black asked if she’d like some help mounting the painting.

  Lex agreed, and the two officers lifted it into place. Black was surprised, hefting the heavy frame, that she’d been able to move it at all on her own. She was stronger than she looked.

  Once it was hung on the wall, they all stepped back to see the effect.

  It was just blocks of color, meaningless to Black, and to his partner as well.

  “That supposed to be art, then?” Smith had said with a scoff.

  “It’s a Rothko,” Lex said.

  That explained nothing to Black.

  “What does it mean?” he asked Lex.

  She trained her eyes on Black, hearing the sincerity in his question.

  “Well,” she said, “Rothko wants you to decide that for yourself. See how it’s called, ‘Untitled’? He didn’t give it a name, because he doesn’t necessarily want you to know what it means to him. There are no symbolic references in his work. The mood comes from the color and the texture.”

  Black looked again at the massive painting, the blocks of vivid blue that seemed to float atop the field of orange. The way the edges bled slightly into each other, in some places transparent, in others solid. It was more complicated than it had seemed at first glance.

  He took a step back, to take in all of it from a distance. Now he could see Lex framed by the painting, her arms folded in front of her. He saw how the cool blue exactly matched the intense color of her eyes, and how the burnt orange seemed to emanate around her like a halo, like a fierce energy coming out of her.

  “I see,” he said. In that moment, he actually did.

  “What’s it cost, then?” Smith asked.

  “This one last sold for twenty-four million euros,” Lex said calmly.

  Smith hooted in disbelief.

  “Well, modern art isn’t my favorite either,” Lex admitted. “I like things that are older. That have history.”